Hideout raid risk is affected by wanted level and visibility. The DDS2 Fandom wiki confirms that during a raid, helicopters may appear and you can lose stored assets. Community strategy: split raw materials, finished product, and cash across 3+ hideouts. Never keep everything in one location.

The Fandom wiki states: Use parkour to find shortcuts, to make it easier to escape from enemies chasing you, or to sneak into otherwise inaccessible areas. Vaulting, wall-running, and climbing break NPC line of sight instantly -- no weapons needed.

Your wanted level directly impacts how likely your hideouts are to be raided. Heat levels escalate from None to Person of Interest to Suspect to Wanted. Keep heat low by: avoiding gunfire in public, rotating selling locations, and laying low during increased patrol periods.

Recipes are not auto-unlocked. You find recipe cards in the world as collectible items. The first basic meth recipe is in the tutorial zone warehouse. Always explore new areas thoroughly and check every shelf, desk, and container.

A Steam community quick-start guide mentions that police hours bring higher payouts. During peak patrol times, demand increases and customers pay premium prices. Time your production cycles to finish batches just before these windows.

Before you can assign dealers to handle customers, you need to build a distributor desk at your hideout. This is the critical bottleneck -- until you build it, your employees cannot sell product automatically. Make this your first major purchase after the basic lab kit.

According to Steam community discussions, you can get employees from three sources: (1) notices on bulletin boards found in town, (2) completing missions for influencers unlocks staff as rewards, and (3) story progression reveals higher-rarity employees with better stats.

DDS2 supports 3-person co-op. Players can share tasks efficiently: one cooks and manages production, one handles deliveries and street sales, one manages staff assignments. This triples your effective throughput per hour compared to solo play.