Candywriter’s BitLife is still going strong in its third year since its release, and since people are still spending more time at home than they should (well, maybe just a little more), the company is still serving up weekly challenges, all of which start on the weekend and end early the next week.
These are specially themed events where you need to complete a series of tasks based on the theme, and just in case you haven’t been paying attention, most recent challenges have centered on popular movies (Legally Blonde) and even more famous real-life celebrities (the Frank Sinatra-themed My Way Challenge).
After mostly sticking to pop culture-themed challenges in recent weeks, it would seem that Candywriter has gone back to the basics for this one. The King to Kingpin Challenge isn’t based on any form of popular media — it’s just s simple challenge where your goal is to eventually be crowned as your country’s King, and then to behave badly while in power and become a high-ranking officer in the mob after the dust has settled on your forced exile.
But just because the premise is simple doesn’t mean the challenge is one of the easier ones out there — in fact, it may take a fair bit of grinding and repeating several actions before you complete this challenge. This is one of those challenge where patience will serve you well, but if you want to complete it faster than most other people, sit back and keep reading as we present this week’s BitLife mini-strategy guide.
The Beginnings – Create A Male Character, Assassinate The King Or Queen Once You Turn 18
Although it isn’t explicitly stated among the requirements of the King to Kingpin Challenge, the fact that the word “King” is mentioned means you should create a male character for this challenge. Obviously, you want to choose a country whose heads of state are kings or queens, so the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, and Belgium, among others, should all be good choices for your character’s place of birth. Players with God Mode can immediately select the character’s status — choose Prince for the best chances of being the first in line to the throne.
Likewise, Crime should be selected as a Special Talent, as that should make it easier to complete the final task in the challenge. If you don’t have God Mode, you may need to keep re-rolling until you get a character who’s a Prince, and as far as Special Talents go, it really isn’t all that necessary to have one — you can still commit crimes once you’re back down to Commoner status, but you may also have a greater chance of getting arrested. (Simply quit and restart if that’s the case!)
Aside from that, the four basic stats will be largely irrelevant to the completion of the challenge, and there’s no need to be well-behaved while attending school, or even pursue further education after high school. But if you want to complete the challenge quickly, you can hire a Hitman to kill the King or Queen, thus allowing you to be crowned as your country’s new King.
Just Keep Doing Bad Things As King, And They Will Revolt
It may seem like one of the simplest things to do in the King to Kingpin Challenge — execute a few people, do a bit of public disservice, and that’s it. It doesn’t take much for people to get ticked off by their royal heads of state, so doing a few bad things should do the trick, right?
That, actually, is not the case, as BitLife will require you to pull off a steady stream of executions and disservices until your people are angry enough to organize a revolt. We’ve experienced situations where our in-game royals get dethroned in five years or less, but during our test run for this challenge, our badly-behaving King was exiled some 15 years after he took the throne.
We’re not quite sure just how many executions or disservices you need to do per year, but during our test character’s reign of terror, he executed about three to five people a year and did no fewer than two Public Disservices.
It may also help to release books, appear in commercials, and generally conduct yourself like a celebrity — these things tend to annoy your constituents, so you can throw that in as well while trying to get overthrown. You can also commit a few crimes, and in almost every case, you can avoid any sort of prison time, or even a trial, by flaunting your royal status in an effort to convince the cops to let you walk free.
When the people finally revolt, you can insult them or refuse or accept your fate — don’t apologize, and if the Anger bar isn’t anywhere close to being filled up, don’t choose the “Accept Your Fate” option. You need to act as remorseless as possible for the revolt to work, and when it does, that should lead you to the final two requirements of the challenge — joining a crime syndicate and getting promoted to Underboss.
Becoming An Underboss Also Requires Some Grinding
After getting overthrown as king and exiled to a random country, you will lose all your money as well as your royal residence. That also means you cannot return to your home country legally, so while you can emigrate back home right after getting exiled, you won’t have any option but to take the illegal route. While there are times when the authorities will be waiting for you at the airport and ready to arrest you for illegal immigration, you should have no problem with this on most occasions — just quit BitLife and restart it while still on the dialog box in order to give it another try.
As you would have likely executed a whole bunch of people by this point, any of the five crime organizations will be willing to take you in without any question. That’s the easy part. The hard part, however, would be completing the King to Kingpin Challenge’s last requirement, which is to get promoted to Underboss after joining the syndicate of your choice.
The key to getting the quickest promotions possible is to commit as many crimes as possible per year through the Job menu — these crimes, after all, count toward your Performance and Notoriety as a member of the organization. Typically, we would recommend earning about the equivalent of 50,000 pounds per year, and killing at least one person, usually by choosing the Whack option while extorting money from local businesses.
Based on our observations in this challenge and a few others that required players to join a crime syndicate, it should take no less than five years before you can become a made man, or rise from Associate to Soldier. Getting promoted from Soldier to Captain takes about six to seven years or more, and getting promoted from Captain to Underboss would require a ten-year wait or thereabouts.
All in all, that’s about 20 to 25 years, and if that’s too long, we’ve found out that trying to bully your way through the pecking order by whacking your superiors doesn’t work. The game will even promote mobsters below you in the rankings if you, for instance, are a Captain and you attempt to assassinate the Underboss in order to get their position. If anything, you may encounter situations where there are two Underbosses, yourself included, instead of just one.
Once you get promoted to Underboss, that should complete the King to Kingpin Challenge, and free you up to open a prize chest and get a new piece of eyewear or headwear for your future Bitizens or NPCs to wear.