GTA Online: Acid Lab Business Guide

Image: Rockstar North, Rockstar Games via HGG / Koby Gibson Ross

Human Made

Penned by Gibson Vasela

My name is Gibson Vasela. I am a freelance writer who has been playing video games for almost 20 years now. I play all kinds of games, but I especially love immersive sims and RPGs.

Reviewed by Ashley Johnson

The GTA Online: Drug Wars DLC is finally here, and with it comes the much-anticipated Acid Lab! This is a brand new business that — unlike many of the businesses in the game — is entirely mobile! Not only is it mobile, but the lab can be operated entirely by yourself, making it a true solo business.

But just how do you get the new Acid Lab business in GTA Online? What missions do you need to complete in order to unlock it? What are the best upgrades to get for it? And how much money can you make? We’ll be covering this and more in this guide to the Acid Lab business in GTA Online!

Let’s get started!

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Unlocking the Acid Lab

Let’s get the first and most obvious thing out of the way — how to actually get the Acid Lab in GTA Online. In order to unlock it, you’ll first need to do a series of six missions (known as “First Dose” missions) for a character named Dax.

To start these missions, you’ll need to wait on a phone call from our old friend, Ron. There’s no way to trigger this call manually, as far as I’m aware. You’ll get it automatically in free roam, so you just have to wait a bit to get it.

Starting Up

Once you get Ron’s call, head on over to Sandy Shores in Blaine County. You should see an icon on the map in the shape of the letter R, similar to the mission markers you get in single-player. After you’ve reached the place shown on the map, interact with the yellow circle on the ground to launch the First Dose missions.

Now that you’ve started the first mission, you’ll be treated to a cutscene that introduces Dax and the rest of his crew. After the cutscene, you’ll begin the actual mission, which requires you to complete several different objectives. Once you finish the mission, you’ll have unlocked The Freakshop, a brand new location on the map where Dax and his crew will hang out.

First Dose & Fooligan Missions

Outside The Freakshop will be another yellow interact marker, which you can use to start the next mission. You’ll start the rest of the First Dose missions from this same marker. Once you finish the remaining missions, you’ll unlock the Acid Lab in GTA Online.

I recommend contacting Dax to request work between each of these missions. This launches a Fooligan mission, which is a special mission type that nets you $50,000 when completed. It also counts toward unlocking a necessary upgrade for your Acid Lab (more on that later).

Warehouse Mission & Purchase

Once you’ve completed all six of the First Dose missions, you’ll be notified of a free-roam mission you need to complete. You’ll have to look for a yellow square icon on the map. This symbolizes a warehouse that contains valuable equipment you’ll need to get started with your Acid Lab business. Raid it at any time and deliver the stuff you’ve stolen to The Freakshop.

You’re just one step away from your Acid Lab empire. All you need to do now is purchase it! Yeah, I know — you stole the vehicle and the equipment to make a lab, and now it’s being sold back to you. Rockstar logic.

You can buy the Acid Lab for $750,000 from inside The Freakshop. You should be pretty close to that after completing all the First Dose and (hopefully) some of the Fooligan missions. As soon as you’ve purchased it, you can begin making some product! Before you get started with that, however, you should get some upgrades.

Best Acid Lab Upgrades

Inside The Freakshop, your Acid Lab can be modified and customized to your liking. All you need to do is talk to Mutt, the guy standing next to your Acid Lab and the delivery bike you use for it. He acts as a mechanic, allowing you to customize both vehicles like you would customize any car at Los Santos Customs. He can also get your Acid Lab fitted with special upgrades to make your business run more smoothly and efficiently in GTA Online.

The first and most important upgrade is the Equipment Upgrade. To unlock it, you have to complete at least ten of the Fooligan missions. After that, you can pay $237,500 to purchase the Equipment Upgrade. This speeds up your acid production and increases your profit on the final product. This is a must-have if you want to make the most out of your Acid Lab business.

You should also buy a proximity mine. These are deployable weapons that allow you to easily deal with hostile NPCs and any players chasing you. I went with the EMP, as I think it’s the most useful.

You can also purchase a ram for the front of your Acid Lab, but it’s way too expensive to justify buying. Only get it if you’re not on a budget. You can also upgrade the engine and brakes, and pick up turbo tuning. This upgrades your vehicle’s stats and make driving a bit easier. Your lab already comes with armor plating, so you don’t need to worry about that.

Making the Product

(Note: Double money for the Acid Lab was active at the time this screenshot and several others were taken. This does not reflect actual in-game profit normally.)

Now that you’ve unlocked your Acid Lab and purchased all the basic upgrades, let’s do a quick breakdown of how it works. The Acid Lab is very, very similar to the five Motorcycle Club businesses. Inside your Acid Lab will be Mutt, the NPC we mentioned earlier. He acts as your primary worker, and is responsible for making your product and helping you manage the lab.

You’ll need supplies to start making product. You can talk to Mutt to get more supplies, either by purchasing them for $60,000, or by launching a source mission to steal them. I don’t recommend the latter, as they don’t give you much and take too long to complete. Purchasing allows you to do other money-making activities while your Acid Lab is busy producing.

If you’re away from the lab, you can always call Mutt and ask him to purchase some supplies for you. This makes it easy to restore the Acid Lab. The only downside to purchasing supplies this way is that you can’t see how many materials you currently have stored. I recommend just visiting the Acid Lab when you need to purchase supplies.

Visiting the Acid Lab has other benefits — once a day, you have the option to boost the amount of acid your lab produces! There’s a lab table in the back that you can interact with once per day, which you can use to create product personally. Your character will start an animation, and you’ll quickly get a small amount of product added to your lab that you can sell later.

Selling the Product

Now that we’ve gone over the basics of making acid, it’s time for the most important part — selling your product and making a big profit! Whenever you’re ready to sell your acid, simply walk up to your stored product and interact with it to begin the sell mission. You can find where your acid is stored by looking for the icon on your map — it’ll be red if you’ve reached the maximum amount of product you can store.

There are three different sell missions you can get. The first has you drive around, throwing deliveries tucked inside rolled-up newspapers. The second has you stash the acid in various places marked on the map. The third has you walk straight into a police sting, where you’ll need to fight off the cops to escape.

Mission Types & Walkthrough

Newspaper Deliveries

This mission type is pretty easy, as you just have to aim and throw the papers from your bike, with no need to get off your delivery vehicle. I do recommend exiting your vehicle and throwing the papers on foot if you’re having a hard time hitting the targets. You can select the papers from your weapon wheel while on foot and aim at the targets much more easily.

Stash Deliveries

In the second mission, you’ll need to stash the acid in one of several different locations marked on your map. This is by far the easiest one to complete, as the game tells you exactly where you can stash. It doesn’t matter which one you stash them at, so just do the one that’s closest to you.

Sometimes, a police car will be hidden nearby, waiting for you to drop off the acid. You’ll get a wanted level once you deliver the product. When this happens, simply call Lester and ask him to remove your wanted level for you.

Police Sting

This is definitely the most difficult of the three mission types. In order to successfully complete this mission, hold off on delivering the product right away when you arrive at the drop-off location. Instead, take a look around. You should see a few cars with silhouetted windows and gray or black paint jobs. These are undercover police cars. Place some sticky bombs on each of them.

Then deliver the product like normal. Once the police launch their ambush, detonate the sticky bombs and blow up the police cars. It might not kill every cop, but it will make your job a whole lot easier! Now just pull out your phone and call Lester after you get on your bike to remove your wanted level.

Acid Lab Profit — Is It Worth It?

After reading all that information on the Acid Lab, many of you are probably wondering, “This business sounds cool, but how much money does it make, and is it worth the time/effort?”

Yes, absolutely! The Acid Lab is one of the best businesses added to the game in recent years. Even better, it more than justifies your time and investment costs. According to this chart posted on Reddit, you can make about $120,000 per hour if you stop by the lab to boost your production twice before selling. This makes it much more profitable than many of the other businesses in the game. To make things even better, this business cannot be raided like the MC businesses and bunker can. Meaning you won’t have to worry about losing product before a sale!

On top of that, this business can be done entirely solo! Everything from the First Dose missions to the re-supply missions to even the sale missions can all be done by yourself. The deliveries are all done with a single vehicle (that can be upgraded and customized). This alone makes it much better than many of the other businesses in the game.

If you are a new player, I definitely recommend making this the first business you buy after the Kosatka. It is very solo-friendly and easy to get, as you’ll make a decent amount of cash from the First Dose missions. This means you won’t break the bank by the time you buy the Acid Lab. Even if you aren’t a new player, this business is very easy to operate and makes great money per hour, making it a must buy for money grinders.

Tips & Tricks

Before we end this Acid Lab business guide for GTA Online, let’s end with some tips and tricks for how you can make the most money out of this business. Only the first three tips are unique to this section. The rest are repeats from information already in this article. This is just in case some of you skipped over earlier sections or you would like a summary of the tips given in this guide.

• Make sure your Acid Lab is in Los Santos before doing a sell mission, as all sell missions take place in the city.
• You can give your Acid Lab a custom name by going into Interaction Menu > Services > Acid Lab and then selecting the option to name it.
• You can pause the production of acid at any time by talking to Mutt inside the lab.
• In between doing the First Dose missions, call Dax and request work from him. These are called Fooligan missions, and you need to complete ten of them to unlock the Acid Lab upgrades. These missions have a cooldown, so it’s important to get ten of them done ASAP.
• You can call Mutt from your phone and order a resupply away from your Acid Lab.
• Stop by your Acid Lab once a day and interact with the chemistry set to boost production.
• During the paperboy sell missions, you can dismount your bike and throw the newspapers while on the ground to make aiming at targets much easier.

Join the High Ground

We hope you enjoyed this Acid Lab business guide for GTA Online! What are your thoughts on the new business? Do you think that it is worth buying? Let us know down below, and make sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more content. We offer regular features on GTA Online and more.

Happy gaming!