We’re almost three weeks into the new year as of this writing, and Candywriter keeps rolling out those BitLife challenges every weekend, effectively giving you new ways to enjoy the popular life simulator game on your iOS or Android device. These limited-time events, as most players are aware, allow you to create a character and have them live their lives based on certain parameters, requirements, and themes. They can oftentimes be general themes, but they can also pay tribute to pop culture in a number of ways. That is certainly the case with the latest of its kind — the Gatsby Challenge.
For those unfamiliar with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and/or the 2013 film of the same name, Jay Gatsby is a man with lots of money, a luxurious mansion, and a penchant for wild parties. And while he traditionally knows how to hold his alcohol and keep his drinking under control, the BitLife version doesn’t.
How quickly can you complete this new challenge? Granted, it appears to be a rather easy one, but if you follow the tips in this BitLife mini-strategy guide, you should have no problem whatsoever completing the Gatsby Challenge with minimal rework and wasted time, if any at all.
Be Born In New York And Make Lots Of Friends At School!
While it may seem like living a virtual life like a character once played on film by Leonardo DiCaprio might require some special statistical requirements, the only real prerequisite when creating a character for the Gatsby Challenge is to be born in New York. Of course, you can have your Bitizen born elsewhere and migrate to the United States once you reach adulthood, but as you should know by now, you still cannot choose the city to migrate to.
Other than that, though, you don’t need to keep rerolling until you get a specific type of character (unless their Smarts are especially low), though if you have God Mode, you can reduce their Willpower to 20 or lower in order to increase the odds of becoming an alcoholic and fulfilling one of the challenge’s later requirements.
Once you start school, it would be advisable to start making friends as soon as possible — we’d advise making at least one new friend per year, which should ensure that you have at least 13 by the time you graduate from high school, or at least 17 if you choose to attend college as well.
That’s right — you don’t need a college degree in order to qualify for a Writer job and eventually become a famous author in BitLife. But you should ideally have more than a dozen friends by the time you start work — normally, publishing houses in the game have no more than five rank-and-file employees, and we all know how difficult it is to befriend one’s supervisor.
Keep Working Hard And (Ideally) Stay Sober And Single Until You Become Famous!
Working as a Writer is, at first, far from the most lucrative form of employment in the BitLife universe. Your starting pay will often be below $20,000 per year, and if you’re using a first-generation character starting out with nothing in the bank, it’ll be hard to make ends meet until you become famous. However, you can reach Famous Author status in about a decade or so if you consistently hit the Work Harder button and ensure that your Performance bar always stays at 100 percent after you’ve gotten there.
In order to maintain 100 percent job performance, it would be best to remain clean and sober and avoid hitting the club until you reach celebrity status as a Famous Author. Avoid all sorts of drugs as you wouldn’t want to die from a fatal overdose, and avoid getting married and/or having kids as well till you’ve got more than enough money in the bank! It would likewise help if you don’t purchase any other assets, as that will also make it easier for you to save money to buy a mansion and fulfill what should typically be the final requirement in the Gatsby Challenge.
Visit The Gym To Keep Your Health Up After Becoming Alcoholic!
As we mentioned above, it’s best to start drinking alcohol at the club only once you’ve become famous. However, you can theoretically start drinking — and get hooked on the bottle — the moment you turn 18, and regardless of when you decide to have your first sip of alcohol, we would strongly advise you to keep your health as close as possible to 100 percent by visiting the gym, learning a martial art (works as long as your Health is above 50 percent), walking, or meditating. This especially comes in handy once you become alcoholic and your Health starts taking an eight-point hit each time you age up.
Theoretically, anyone can become a virtual alcoholic in BitLife, though the number of drinks it takes to get you started will depend on your Willpower — a hidden stat that you can only view during character creation in God Mode. That means you may become alcoholic after you accept your very first drink at the club, or you may need to accept several more drinks while clubbing before you get an addiction.
Once again, we cannot stress this enough — you only need to become alcoholic in order to mirror Jay Gatsby as part of the challenge that bears his name. Any other addiction will further complicate things!
Buying A Mansion And Holding Parties – It’s Not A ‘Wild Party’ If Nobody Shows Up!
As usual, we’ve saved the most difficult requirement for last, and that’s the one where you need to hold at least 10 wild parties in your mansion. Typically, mansions in BitLife cost upward of $2 million, and in order to accumulate that fortune, you will need to reach 90 percent Fame as quickly as possible as a Famous Author. Starring in commercials helps increase your Fame if you perform well in them, but doing so only becomes truly lucrative ($1 million+ per ad) once Fame is at 90 percent and above.
That means you’ll need to do at least a few nude photoshoots for magazines, publish at least one book, and have at least one social media account verified. Do all this and you should be at 90 percent Fame or higher by your early 30s, assuming you didn’t attend college. Once there, simply star in repeated commercials for $1-2.5 million each by quitting the app, restarting it, and going back to the Commercial option in the Fame sub-menu under Activities.
Once you’ve earned enough to buy a mansion (and you should make sure it is one, and not another house type), simply do the old quit-and-restart technique until one is available with either one of the two real estate brokers. After buying the mansion, hold EXACTLY one party at your new home, apologize to the cops when the neighbors complain (don’t argue), hit Age, and repeat the process until you’ve held ten parties across ten years.
As much as it would be nice to hold multiple house parties per year, we noticed that once you organize a second such event before tapping on Age, nobody will show up. Naturally, the game won’t consider it a “wild party” if no one else is there, so be patient. After your tenth party with people in attendance, you should complete the Gatsby Challenge, thus allowing you to pick a new hat or eyewear from one of the four prize chests — as is always the case!