DEA Raids Guide

Datamined & Verified: All values on this page are pulled from the game's Blueprint Kismet bytecode using UAssetAPI. Earlier versions of this guide used hardcoded constants that turned out to be Normal-difficulty values quoted without the difficulty context. The table below shows the real per-difficulty scaling.

1. Heat threshold — observation can only begin once your expoFactorLevel reaches the difficulty-specific expoLevelDEA_start value.
2. Target selection — on Normal/Hard the DEA picks the apartment with the most visits (areaVisits). On Hardcore every eligible apartment is observed simultaneously.
3. Observation interval — once selected, an internal timer counts up to deaObservationInterval seconds. While the timer runs, repeated drug activity at that apartment increases raid probability.
4. Raid roll — when the timer expires the game rolls for a raid using deaChanceMultiplier. If it fires, you get the in-game warning and the raid begins.

⚠ Eligibility filter: An apartment is only considered for observation if it is currently rented, not flagged areaForever, has an active save station, and is not already under areaDEAobserved. Buying an apartment outright (areaForever) removes it from the observation pool entirely.

Parameter	Easy	Normal	Hard	Hardcore
expoLevelDEA_start Heat needed for DEA to start watching	600.0	500.0	400.0	400.0
deaObservationInterval Seconds in the observation window	3200	1600	1300	1300
deaChanceMultiplier Raid roll multiplier at end of interval	0.55	0.65	0.80	0.80
expoFactorDropRatePS Heat decay per second (continuous)	0.18	0.13	0.10	0.10
expoFactorMin Floor — heat never decays below this	35.0	50.0	80.0	80.0
ExpoFactorMultiplier Global heat scaling factor	0.70	1.00	1.20	1.20

Practical impact: On Easy the DEA gets 3200 seconds (~53 min) of observation per cycle and rolls a 55%-weighted raid chance. On Hard/Hardcore that window collapses to 1300 seconds (~22 min) with an 80% roll. Hard/Hardcore raids are not just more frequent — they hit nearly 4× faster per cycle and 45% harder.

Difficulty	Drop / sec	Drop / minute	Floor (min heat)
Easy	0.18	10.8	35.0
Normal	0.13	7.8	50.0
Hard	0.10	6.0	80.0
Hardcore	0.10	6.0	80.0

Reading the table: Easy bleeds off ~10.8 heat per real-time minute; Hard/Hardcore only 6.0. From a peak of 500.0 heat (DEA start threshold on Normal), passive decay to the floor takes roughly 57 minutes of real time on Normal, 70 minutes on Hard, and 43 minutes on Easy. The decay is multiplied by ExpoFactorMultiplier when reading the final clamped level — on Hard your effective heat reads 20% higher than the raw factor.

• Drug sales contribute heat via calcSaleExposure(): base Clamp(50 + qty*10, 60, 200); multiplied by 1.2 between 9 PM and 6 AM (the EXPO-NIGHT-SALE-MULTIPLIER BalanceFlag).
• Events read from the ExpoEventDatabase DataTable. Each event has an ExpoEventValue and a weight (ExpoEventMedianePoints).
• Sample handouts fire the CLIENT-SAMPLE event for +500 expo. Yes — samples add heat, even though the rest of the sample system is positive.
• Base inactivity contributes via EXPO-BASE-INACTIVITY-MEDIANE — a small constant that prevents the running average from collapsing too fast when you stop selling.

• Rotate apartments. The DEA targets the most-visited apartment on Normal/Hard. Spreading visits across multiple safehouses spreads the risk.
• Buy outright when you can. An areaForever apartment is removed from the observation pool. Permanent ownership = permanent exemption.
• Avoid night sales when hot. The 1.2× night multiplier compounds with already-elevated heat. Run daytime routes whenever your exposition factor is above the DEA start threshold.
• Watch the heat floor. On Hard/Hardcore your expoFactorMin is 80, which means even after long inactivity you sit near the DEA-trigger range. Easy lets you decay all the way down to 35.
• Hardcore is different. On Hardcore every eligible apartment is observed simultaneously. Rotating apartments stops being a defensive strategy — only buying them outright or keeping heat low works.