BitLife — the life simulator game where you control the lives of virtual human characters, and not virtual canine or feline characters, in case you missed the sequels — is still cranking out the weekly challenges. It’s what has kept Candywriter’s most popular title relevant despite the fact it’s now more than three years old, and it’s because of these limited-time events, which launch every Saturday afternoon and give players four days to complete a series of tasks or requirements based on a given theme.
The latest BitLife challenge is called Mischief Managed, and some of you may recognize this as a name of an incantation from Harry Potter. But that’s the only pop culture shoutout present in this challenge, as the rest of it is classic BitLife challenge mechanics that don’t have anything to do with any film, television show, or other intellectual property.
It’s one of the easier challenges we’ve completed in a while, and you can, in fact, complete it before you reach the age of 12, but in case you’re having a tough time figuring things out, we recommend going through this BitLife mini-strategy guide as we show you how to complete the Mischief Managed Challenge as quickly and with as little difficulty as possible.
Start Messing With Your Classmates First
To underscore how easy the Mischief Managed Challenge is, this is one of those challenges where there are no true requirements in terms of your character’s gender, birthplace, or stats. God Mode players can select Crime as a Special Skill for an added chance of causing enough trouble at school to get expelled and sent to juvie, but even if you don’t have this feature, it’s fairly easy to get into enough trouble to attract the attention of the law.
Out of the five requirements in BitLife’s Mischief Managed Challenge, we would recommend starting out with the one that asks you to mess with at least five classmates. Just go to the School section, tap on the name of the school you’re currently attending, then on Class, then on any one of your classmates.
Scroll down to the bottom and you’ll see the Mess option, and once you confirm that you’re sure you want to mess with this classmate, you will end up bullying them in one way or another. This may cost you some Popularity, because nobody likes a bully, but at the end of the day, what really matters here is messing with five different classmates to be credited for the requirement.
The reason we suggested getting this requirement out of the way before the others — preferably once you’re five years old and in your first year of school — is because there is a chance that one of the classmates you mess with might retaliate in a violent enough way to kill you. This will obviously force you to start once again from square one, and while the chances of this happening may be relatively small, it’s best to do all your messing around with classmates at the soonest possible time so you don’t end up losing too much progress if your character gets killed.
Don’t Be Afraid Of The Consequences When Insulting Your Principal / Headmaster
Now some classmates may attack you if you mess with them, while some others may choose to ignore you. This depends largely on their Craziness stats — if it’s low, they’ll take the high road, and if it’s high, they’re likelier to respond with violence. But most of the time, and this would be for NPCs with middle-of-the-road Craziness stats, their response would be to snitch on you and tell the principal or headmaster. Don’t fret if this happens — in fact, you should see this as a golden opportunity to take care of the second requirement in the Mischief Managed Challenge.
When sent to the principal or headmaster’s office, all you have to do is to choose the Insult option. Sure, there’s a chance you’re going to be expelled if the administrator in question has high Strictness and (usually) low Professionalism, but that’s what this challenge is about anyway — the goal here is to be as bad as you want to be, and the worst that could happen is a scolding from a parent and an empty Happiness bar once you get expelled and forced to transfer to a new school.
Mischief And Porch Piracy Can Be Done At The Age Of 8 Onward
We’re going to group the next two requirements together, as they both can be found in the Crime section under Activities. Mischief and Porch Pirate are two of the first options that become available under Crime once your character celebrates their eighth birthday, and there’s nothing to it when it comes to completing these two requirements.
For Mischief, you can create trouble by yourself or enlist a friend or relative — random adults may be less willing to join you. It doesn’t matter, as long as you do this at least five times.
As for the Porch Pirate requirement, this will require you to successfully steal the mail 10 times before you reach the age of 12, and since there are six houses that are available among the options, we suggest raiding six houses in one year and another four the next year. Or you can do it all within a single year — it’s all up to you, as long as you reach the minimum of 10 porches pirated before your 12th birthday.
How To Get Sent To Juvie (And How To Escape)
Last, but not the least, let’s talk about the final requirement in the BitLife Mischief Managed Challenge, which is to break out of a juvenile detention center. You have up until the age of 17 to complete this challenge for obvious reasons, but how can you get sent to juvie anyway? The easiest way to do this would be by pirating more than 10 porches, doing so until you reach the point where the cops are on to your scheme. You can also try shoplifting from the mall until a mall cop catches you, or creating mischief until the cops finally bust you.
We wouldn’t suggest anything that involves the death of an NPC — petty crimes will only get you one to three years in juvie, and lengthier sentences and more serious crimes means a larger cell and a more complex layout to navigate when escaping. On the other hand, if you have the Crime special skill in God Mode, you can retaliate against a school bully, kill them, and get put away for three years for manslaughter, as was the case with our test character.
Escaping these small, 4×4 layouts normally doesn’t require a map on one of the many pages or YouTube videos that offer walkthroughs on how to escape from jail in BitLife. If you take note what it says before the escape mini-game begins — guards move two spaces for each one space you move and will always walk horizontally by default — you should have little problem escaping. If worse comes to worst, you can quit the game, restart it, and try escaping again with a new layout.
Once you’ve busted free from juvie, assuming this is the last requirement you’ve yet to complete, that will do it for the Mischief Managed Challenge, and allow you to choose the usual prize and unlock a new hat or eyewear.