BitLife is still going strong in the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store now that it’s four years old and counting, and since Candywriter just rolled out a major update (the Stock Market Update) with the next big one probably due to come out in a few months from now, the company’s still got weekly challenges to help tide you over and keep you busy on the weekend and the first few days of the new week.
Candywriter, just as we hoped, rolled out a new challenge to get 2023 started, and just like the Christmas weekend challenge from last week, it has nothing to do with the holidays. It is, however, a “best o” type of challenge as it requires you to use features from two of the more popular recent updates — the September 2020 Royal Update and last year’s Street Hustler Update.
How well can you get back on your feet through dubious means after you’ve been overthrown as king and exiled from the country you once ruled with an iron fist? That’s the crux of the Riches to Rags Challenge, and if you’re having some trouble completing it, we’ve got everything you need here in this BitLife mini-strategy guide.
You Only Need to Reign for 15 Years as a Royal, Not as a King
Though not included in the official requirements for the Riches to Rags Challenge, you need to create a male character and choose a birthplace that is considered a kingdom — several European countries would qualify here, including the United Kingdom, Spain, and Sweden. And in order for you to be next in line to the throne, you’ll need to start out as a Prince. Players who have God Mode equipped can set this up immediately by tapping on Royal Status and then on Prince, but otherwise, some re-rolling may be required.
Although it may take some time before non-God Mode players can come up with a character who’s born as a prince, the good thing is that the requirement of reigning for 15 years does not apply to ruling your country as a king. That means you can tick this box once you reach the age of 15, though you may want to do some extra re-rolling early on to make sure your father, meaning the incumbent king, is in his 50s or older.
That means you’ll likely still be very young (likely a young adult) once you take over the throne, though if you don’t want to wait that long before becoming your country’s highest-ranking leader, you can always go to the Crime menu and kill whoever’s ahead of you in the line of succession. You will need to be a pretty despicable individual to take care of the next requirement, so it’ll all be on-brand for this challenge!
Mix Up Executions, Public Disservices, and Random Crimes Until Your People Revolt
The next step in this challenge is to lose all your power and almost all of your fortune by getting overthrown as king and getting exiled to another country. And the best and fastest way to do this is by ordering a series of executions and committing various acts of public disservice.
Now it’s important that you mix things up here, because if you execute so many random people without taking a break every few years or so, it will become “old hat” to your constituents. You’ll need to throw in an act of public disservice at least once a year, and you can also head to BitLife’s Crime menu to commit various crimes in hopes of getting arrested.
When it comes to the crimes you commit while ruling as King, it doesn’t matter what they are, and if the cops arrest you, you can always avoid jail by using your royal influence to convince them to let you walk free.
This almost always works except for extremely high-Professionalism law enforcement officers, so you don’t need to worry about getting imprisoned in the middle of the challenge. The cops may let you go with a little persuasion, but the people won’t be that forgiven — this is a good way to increase your chances of getting overthrown and exiled, so keep up with those executions, disservices, and crimes until the people revolt!
The Real Work Begins After You’re Exiled
If your nation’s people successfully overthrow you — and it doesn’t seem to matter whether you react indignantly or accept your punishment — you will then be exiled to a random country and you will also lose most of your multimillion-dollar fortune. You’ll essentially be starting at square one, and this is where the real grind begins, both in the BitLife universe and as a player trying to complete the Riches to Rags Challenge.
It’s very easy and straightforward to complete the second to last task — just select Scam Artist as your street hustle of choice. But the task of earning $500,000 through your scams is going to take a while — not even a disgraced former royal can make everybody fall for their confidence tricks!
For this part of the challenge, we suggest starting out at the bottom with a couple of the simplest, beginner-level scams, becoming fairly good at them (Skill bar filled up to 50 percent or more), moving on to one intermediate scam and becoming at least 30 to 40 percent good at it, then graduating to one of the expert-level scams. The more advanced scams are harder to pull off, even if your Skill bar is filled up most of the way, but they pay bigger, and the better you get at your scamming, the more passive income you can earn per year after you tap on the Age button.
As is always the case with challenges that involve the Street Hustler Update, we should warn you that encountering a setback — someone refuses to pay for your merchandise, the person you’re selling to turns out to be an undercover cop, your potential victim reports you to the cops — is often a double-whammy situation.
Let’s take this very common example — for every 4 percentage points you gain in your Street Smarts and Skill bars, you will lose 8 percentage points for each time you run into someone who’s wise to your scam and move to another street. That means you may want to quit and restart until you complete one or two perfect runs that don’t involve anybody saying no to your scam or the law getting involved in one way or another.
To keep expectations reasonable, it may take about a decade or so before you reach the $500,000 mark in cumulative scam earnings. But once you hit that magic number, that will do it for the Riches to Rags Challenge, and allow you to start the new year with a new hat or eyewear for your BItLife characters to use.