The weekend habit is still alive for BitLife players on both iOS and Android versions alike. For about three years or so, BitLife has remained relevant despite the fact it debuted way back in 2018 through the weekly challenges, and it’s this game-changing feature (quite literally) that keeps players coming back for the next theme and the next set of tasks related to the theme in question. These challenges would usually require four days tops to complete, and a lot of them involve a fair deal of grinding and repetition — not always the most fun thing to do, but a necessary evil to make the challenges, well, more challenging.
BitLife may have dialed down on the pop culture-influenced challenges in recent months, but this one should be a treat for the anime/manga fans out there. The Death Note Challenge doesn’t exactly require you to write people’s names on a notebook to kill them — the point is moot anyway, as BitLife does not have that function available.
But it will require you to do a lot of killing…while also being on the good side of the law as a detective. That’s just a brief teaser of what to expect in this challenge, but if you’re looking to complete it quickly or if you’re having some trouble with one or more tasks, we’ve got everything you need in this BitLife mini-strategy guide.
Keep Re-Rolling Until You Get a High Smarts/Looks Character
The very first requirement of the Death Note Challenge is to be a male born in Japan — it would seem the challenge is staying true to the anime and manga as opposed to the U.S. film adaptation from a few years back. Though you can call this the easiest of the requirements to complete, we don’t really count this as this can easily be selected in the character creation screen.
But aside from choosing Japan as your birth country and Male as your gender, you can also max out your Smarts and Looks stats from the get-go if you signed up for God Mode. This will come in handy later on as you try to get a perfect rating for both attributes.
Those who don’t have God Mode enabled will have to keep re-rolling for a new character (i.e. creating a new character immediately if the stats aren’t at a certain level) until they get one with Smarts and Looks of at least 80. You can always increase both as you keep aging — joining extracurricular activities at school improves Smarts greatly while playing team sports helps with the latter.
You Need Ten Years of Work Experience to Become a Detective
Next up, you’ll need to find work as a Detective to complete the second task of the BitLife Death Note Challenge, and this is another easy one to knock off. It will, however, take more time than the average career track, as the entry-level position here, Junior Detective, requires that you have at least ten years of work experience.
To prepare for detective work, you’ll need to take a relevant course in college, with Criminal Justice being the best one to choose. You can then get a similar job to a Private Investigator to accrue the ten years of experience you need to qualify for the Junior Detective openings. And if you aren’t having the best luck with job interviews, the option is always there to join a frat in college to increase your chances of bypassing the interview process and getting hired on the spot.
The Drive-By is Still the Best Choice for the Murder Requirement
This is the BitLife Death Note Challenge, so you shouldn’t be surprised to find out that one of the requirements is to kill a certain number of people. To be specific, you need to commit at least ten murders, and the safest way to do this without getting arrested on the spot or your intended victim turning the tables on you is to execute a drive-by shooting. You will naturally need a car for this method of murder, but this shouldn’t cost you too much — an inexpensive used vehicle will do, or you can use the car gifted to you by your parents if you still have it.
There is no right or wrong way to complete this requirement — it doesn’t matter that much if you decide to commit all the murders in one go or space them out across multiple decades. Sooner or later, the law will catch up with you and you will inevitably see a “Police” dialog box pop up after hitting on the Age button — if you see this, just quit the game and restart it, and repeat the aging process until you can get through it without getting arrested.
The Trickiest Part — Turning an Enemy into a Friend
Most of the Death Note Challenge is quite straightforward and uncomplicated, but there is one part of the challenge that may throw you off in more ways than one. That’s the requirement where you have to make a co-worker your enemy and then make them your friend afterward. But before we get to the steps you need to take to repair a broken friendship, you have to take note that this is something you’ll want to do once you’ve got a job as a Detective.
The operative word in the requirement’s description is “co-worker,” so if you befriend a co-worker at your first job, become enemies while still working there, and become friends again once you’re working at your second job, that won’t count toward the task’s completion.
With that out of the way, the first thing to do, of course, is to pull up the list of co-workers, and choose anyone you have a fairly good relationship with as long as they’re not too old (you don’t want them to die before you become friends again), and befriend them. You can choose to make them your enemy at any time, but after you’ve done that, you’ll need to spend at least a few years trying to refill the Relationship bar until it’s about 90 percent full.
The best ways to do this are by watching YouTube videos with them, which they never seem to refuse, and having conversations with them. Make sure you’re quitting BitLife and restarting if the bar is red or orange after you initiate the conversation — that will only decrease your Relationship bar, so if this happens, quit and restart and try initiating another conversation, repeat until the bar is green.
If you have God Mode enabled, you can simply edit your enemy’s stats, change Willpower to 100 percent, and try changing the status from Enemy to Friend if you’ve rebuilt your relationship sufficiently. For some reason, high Willpower characters are more amenable to talking it over and patching things up. Otherwise, you may need to make multiple enemies and rebuild each relationship in hopes that one of them will agree to become your friend again. It’ll be a bit of a grind, but once again, this is the only truly complicated part of the Death Note Challenge.
After That, It’s All a Matter of Boosting Smarts and Looks
Once you’ve squashed the beef with your enemy and made them your friend again, the only thing left to do is to get your Smarts and Looks up to 100 percent so that you can complete the final requirement of the Death Note Challenge. Provided both stats are close to 100 percent at this point, this is as easy-peasy as it gets.
Take a quick trip to the gym, engage in other physical activities (walking or training martial arts, among others), or get some plastic surgery from a reputable doctor to get perfect Looks, read books or take the IQ test to improve your Smarts. It’s nothing you haven’t done before, so this should be a good way to relax, so to say, after all the grinding while trying to turn an enemy into a friend.
You will likely notice this requirement getting checked every now and then before getting unchecked, but since Looks and Smarts fluctuate as you hit the Age button, it’s always best to save this easiest requirement for last. It will be worth it, as completing this will allow you to complete the challenge and unlock a new accessory — a hat or some eyewear — for your characters and NPC Bitizens alike to wear.