How to become a Kingpin in BitLife

BitLife’s Dealer Pack is about joining a cartel, taking complete control over your streets, and rising the ranks to Kingpin or Queenpin. There’s a lot of money to make and equally as much danger that can ruin your character’s life or even end your playthrough instantly.

How to become a Kingpin or Queenpin in BitLife

Becoming a Kingpin or Queenpin in BitLife requires purchasing and owning the Dealer job pack. Without it, you won’t have access to cartels or the ranks that come with it. In short, you’re required to spend money on this expansion pack or Boss Mode to unlock every current and future special career.

Joining a cartel

If you already have the Dealer pack, you’ll gain the dealing special talent, which’ll help you succeed quicker in your future cartel. Once you make your character, age up until they turn 18 before heading into Occupation, Special Careers, and Dealer. Choose any cartel and try to join them for a chance to receive an invite.

There’s a chance the cartel will deny you entry into their ranks. I got in immediately on my first two dealer characters without committing any crimes since they had the dealer special talent. After trying it with a third, they got denied, with the cartel requesting they get their hands dirty. You can get around this by committing other crimes throughout your character’s life, like pickpocketing, shoplifting, or even more challenging ones like train robbery.

Cartel ranks

Once your BitLife character joins their first cartel, you can head into the Job tab to view its infamy, standing, and turf control. Before you can become a Kingpin or Queenpin, you’ll have to get through the following ranks:

• Dealer
• Runner
• Manufacturer
• Lieutenant
• Kingpin/Queenpin

Since you start as a dealer, your first goal is simple: gain control of your first street. Enter the Turf menu, go through each person, and attempt to sell drugs to them. You’ll slowly gain control over the street as you make successful trades.

Reaching 100 percent will impress your Kingpin and often result in an almost immediate promotion to Runner. Otherwise, keep at it for a couple of years until you receive your first promotion.

Succeeding as a dealer

When selling to people on your street, there are two stats to consider: their vices and profession. People with your cartel’s drug as their vice will make them more willing to buy, so focus on maintaining good relations with them. People with different vices also occasionally say yes, so don’t skip them. Lastly, while most professions are fine, you’ll want to avoid cops and rough up rival dealers rather than sell to them.

There’s also a chance you’ll run into undercover cops throughout your time as a dealer. You can try to run away or cooperate and deal with the jail time. What you do here is entirely up to you, but just be careful as you approach different people.

You’ll also have opportunities to choose between selling pure forms of your cartel’s drug or ones mixed with other substances. In some cases, you may even have multiple drug types to pick. Both have their pros and cons; selling mixed versions can make your buyers angry the following year, but they’re cheaper to produce, allowing you to lower the costs slightly without much penalty. I tend to stick to selling pure forms, but you can safely experiment with both without much issue.

After gaining control of your first street, assuming you don’t annoy your lieutenants and Kingpin or Queenpin, you’ll get a promotion to Runner. Becoming a runner unlocks Supply Runs as your next primary money-making method. You can keep selling on the streets for extra money, but supply runs are your go-to for your next promotion.

How to perform supply runs

Supply runs are tricky in BitLife, as losing products with the wrong packaging or drops happens very often. A lot of this is luck-based, but there are a few areas to focus on:

• Have good packaging that’s unlikely to break and will fit the products.
• Call attention to contacts that try to take some of the drugs.
• Pick quiet locations for your drop location.
• Don’t wait too long for a good drop location.

Packaging is an important part of the run, as you can easily lose product with poor packaging. I often struggle with this part, too; fortunately, it won’t completely kill your run as long as the rest of the process goes smoothly. Nonetheless, I’ve had success with options like hollowed-out pens, tubes of mascara, and deodorant cases, while options like pool noodles, mason jars, and pizza boxes often fail. Generally speaking, the more fragile something is, the more likely it is to be considered poor packaging.

The next thing that often happens is a cartel contact trying to take some of the product for themselves. Call attention to this immediately, as you’ll often get some extra supplies as an apology.

Another option you might find is a random event where you and your cartel take part in some leisure. I usually pick the options that are safest for my character or the product and haven’t run into many issues here.

Lastly, and by far the most important aspect, is your drop location. While there is a degree of randomness here, you’ll want to focus on quiet locations. Below are some examples that often succeed for me:

• Rural areas
• Graveyards
• Parking lots
• Back alleys
• Baseball field

However, even the quietest locations can have some hiccups along the way. For example, while a forest is often safe, you can have squirrels eat the product or your cartel members get lost while looking for it. Similarly, while parking lots are usually safe, the supply crates can occasionally burst open. I’ve yet to find a location that works every single time, so be careful and don’t be afraid to wait once or twice for a better spot.

Once you complete seven supply runs with most of the product intact, you’ll receive your promotion to manufacturer, which involves some interesting strategies.

Manufacturing the right products

As a manufacturer, your main goal is to create new drug recipes using various cutting agents that generate profit. The exact profit needed for a promotion varies by cartel, but you can expect it to be between $75,000 and $100,000 cumulatively.

Being a manufacturer is one of the most challenging roles in the cartel, as you have to pay attention to the cutting agent, percentage, and the product’s demand. While there are multiple strategies you can use for this, the main idea is creating recipes that are in high demand, have a relatively low cut percentage, and a solid agent that won’t draw too much attention to itself.

One strategy is to have a recipe with only 10-20 percent cutting agent to make the difference subtle. Alternatively, you can go the opposite direction and make your cutting agent 90 percent of the mix to create massive profits within a couple of years. I find I generally have more success with the latter as long as the initial test subject reacts positively.

You’ll also want to make sure you sell some of the product yourself. Even if it makes a ton of money, you usually won’t get a promotion until you sell a few batches yourself.

Once you reach your cartel’s profit goal for your manufactured goods, you’ll receive a promotion to lieutenant. From here, becoming Kingpin or Queenpin is fairly simple and shouldn’t take much longer than a year or two.

Overthrowing the Kingpin

Now that you’re a lieutenant, it’s time to be nice and friendly to everyone in your cartel. You’ll need to overthrow the current Kingpin, requiring you to gain the trust of every other member so you can band together and take power. Approach each cartel member and give them compliments and gifts until they have high relationship stats with you before choosing Mutiny.

Once you begin overthrowing the Kingpin, you’ll see options to use the Assassin’s Blade to finish the process instantly or pick a method from a drop-down menu. I find that I have the most success when promising rewards to the other members. If your plan works, they’ll overthrow the Kingpin, with someone new taking on the role.

In some cases, someone else will take on the role of Kingpin, preventing you from reaching the rank yourself. If this happens, spend a couple more years in the cartel to gain seniority before befriending everyone again and attempting it a second time. Having seniority and a bit of luck will usually get you there. After your attempt succeeds, your BitLife character will take on the role of Kingpin or Queenpin in the cartel.

Related: Best BitLife Dealer Job Pack Tips and Tricks on ProGameGuides.