BitLife’s Landlord Update is coming very soon, and while we don’t have any exact date for its rollout, Candywriter is whetting those appetites with more weekly challenges. A popular feature of the game since late 2019, the Challenge feature provides great replay value for longtime BitLife players and a fantastic selling point for new players, as these are limited-time events where players are given a certain theme and a list of tasks or requirements to complete before the event closes. So what could Candywriter have in store for iOS and Android players this week?
This week’s BitLife challenge may not be based on a specific pop culture property, but it is based on a popular trope that’s often seen in movies, TV shows, and books about contagious diseases and/or zombie attacks. The Patient Zero Challenge will require you to “play host to a horde of maladies,” but aside from carrying multiple diseases at the same time, you’ll also need to work a rather hazardous job and, to top it all off, marry a doctor.
If you’re having some difficulty completing this challenge, we would recommend that you keep on reading, as this week’s BitLife mini-strategy guide shows you how to complete the Patient Zero Challenge in as little time as possible.
Starting Out — Be a Florida Man and Work as a Roadkill Remover
The first two tasks in the Patient Zero Challenge are, as they often are, the simplest, starting with the one where you need to create a male character from Florida. No additional sub-requirements here in terms of having a certain level of Smarts and/or Looks, just as long as you choose Miami, Jacksonville, Orlando, or Tampa as your birth city.
There’s no need to behave especially well in school or get especially high grades, and no need either to attend college. Roadkill Remover, in fact, is one of the few jobs that don’t have any educational requirements.
But you do need to own a car in order to be considered for an interview, so if your parents didn’t give you one as a reward for passing your driver’s license test, you will have to work a little bit elsewhere for a year or two and buy a car in the Shopping menu that’s in decent condition or better. (You’ll want to avoid jalopies with their Condition in the red or orange level, as you might lose your job while completing the challenge if your car breaks down!)
How to Deal with the Disease-Related Requirements
As this is the Patient Zero Challenge, your character will need to be ill quite a few times in order to fulfill some requirements. We are, of course, referring to sexually transmitted diseases, which Bitizens can get at random after having unprotected sex with NPCs who aren’t their partner or spouse.
The first of these requirements is to contract three STDs and recover from them — this should be fairly easy. Assuming you got a Roadkill Remover job straight out of high school, all you need to do here is go to the club and accept any hookup offers while not wearing any protection or do the same while using the Hookup option under Love.
Keep repeating until your character contracts three STDs and recovers from them after a trip to the doctor, hence the importance of already working as a Roadkill Remover. It doesn’t have to be the same kind of disease, just as long as you recover thrice.
Bear in mind, though, that you run the risk of impregnating women you may hook up with, so that could mean some additional expenses unless you quit the game and restart it before accepting this consequence. Also, Genital Herpes is the one STD that doesn’t seem to be treatable at a doctor’s office — you’ll need to take a trip to the Witch Doctor, which could be pretty hit-or-miss.
As for the requirement of having five diseases at the same time, you don’t necessarily need to contract an STD, but since the chances of getting another type of illness are very small and random while your character is still young, the quickest way around this is to repeat the above process until you have five different STDs at the same time. Do NOT visit the doctor yet, though, until you complete the fifth and final requirement!
Marrying a Doctor — Physicians, Yes! Psychiatrists, No!
The last requirement in the Patient Zero Challenge is the one that requires the most grinding, and that would be marrying someone who’s a doctor. This is one of the rarest professions among NPCs in the BitLife universe, given the educational requirements, and that means you might need to repeatedly look for dates (either for free or with the Dating App, which costs $100 per use) until you find someone who works in a medical field.
And that also means a good deal of quitting and restarting if you ever run out of matches using the Date option for free. (The advantage of the Dating App is that you won’t run out of matches as long as you’ve got a hundred dollars to spend.)
When looking for a potential spouse from the medical field, you don’t need to literally look for the word “Doctor,” or even “Surgeon.” Physicians qualify as doctors in BitLife, so if you find one via Date or Dating App, you can go ahead and date them. Psychiatrists, however, despite having a “Dr.” In front of their name in real life, are not counted as doctors in the game, so keep this in mind before dating one and buying a ring for them so you can propose.
If you come to think of it, though, you don’t even need to buy a ring if you can’t afford one on your Roadkill Remover salary just yet — just keep having positive interactions with your significant other (but no you-know-what due to the medical conditions mentioned above), and when the Relationship bar is full, you can propose without a ring. The trick here is to propose at a venue that can be considered romantic (e.g. definitely no strip clubs or sporting events) to increase your chances of your partner saying “yes.”
Once engaged, you can plan your wedding (choose Courthouse/No Honeymoon if you’re really tight on cash), and after tying the knot, that should wrap it up for the Patient Zero Challenge. As is always the case, the next step would be choosing one of the four prize chests for a new set of eyewear or a new hat.