Character guide part: Investment Banker

Before I begin with this absolute hell hole of a character, let me just say—I’ve put real effort into making this guide actually useful. So yeah… enjoy 😄

The Investment Banker has one of the easiest Big Quests in the game, but that does NOT mean the character is easy. In fact, it’s probably one of the hardest in the entire game. The reason is simple: this character constantly limits your freedom and forces you to play around one brutal mechanic—withdrawals.

Withdrawals:

The Investment Banker has the Addict trait, which means you must consume status-inflicting items every 60 seconds or you’ll go into withdrawal.

When withdrawal kicks in, you:

• Take damage over time (1 damage every 2 seconds, capped at 10 HP)
• Lose 2 Speed, 2 Melee, and 2 Firearms

This won’t kill you directly, but it will absolutely ruin your run if you’re in a bad situation. If there are no drug dealers nearby or a disaster is happening, this can spiral FAST. Avoid withdrawals at basically any cost.

Toilets:

Toilets are one of your most important tools. They remove all status effects, both negative and positive.

This means you can:

• Use something like a Poison syringe
• Immediately flush it away
• Reset your addict timer with no downside

However, be careful—this also removes positive effects like Resurrection Shampoo, so don’t accidentally throw away something valuable.

Cigarette lighter:

The cigarette lighter is one of your starting items and has two main uses.

First, you can light cigarettes. This pauses your addict timer for 30 seconds. So if you’re about to hit withdrawal, you can freeze the timer and buy yourself time. Cigarettes are cheap and easy to stack from drug dealers, and while they deal 5 damage, that’s usually not a big deal.

Second—and this is huge—you can use it on barbecues.

Fud is normally terrible, only healing 5 HP, and usually better to sell. But if you light a barbecue (found in Park and Downtown), you can cook up to five Fud and triple their healing. This turns one of the worst foods in the game into one of the best.

If you can, try to get a Fud processor. It lets you turn worse food into Fud, which you can then cook. This combo alone can carry your survivability.

Be economical:

You start with $300, which sounds like a lot—and it is—but here’s the problem: you’re going to need that money constantly.

Most runs, you won’t go much above $300 because you’re always spending on survival.

Sell items early that aren’t essential, especially things like thieving tools or situational gear. Even if they’re strong, you usually need the money more than the utility.

Syringes:

When buying syringes, you should mainly focus on:

• Speed
• Strength
• Invincibility

If you’re near a toilet, you can also safely use:

• Weak
• Poison
• Slow

Just use them and flush immediately to avoid the downsides.

Also, don’t rely only on drug dealers—many syringes come from trash cans.

Loot everything:

This character should be looting almost every trash can you see.

Trash cans give you:

• Money
• Fud
• Syringes

All three are essential for survival, so skipping them is basically just making your life harder.

Get it done:

The Investment Banker is surprisingly good for fast runs. Because you’re constantly using sugar and other consumables, you’ll often complete missions quickly and get the “finished fast” bonus.

If you run into a tough mission, especially in later levels, don’t hesitate to go all in:
Pop Speed, Strength, maybe Invincibility—and just ram through everything with a sledgehammer.

This kind of aggressive play is usually saved for the last floors, so make sure you’ve stocked up on syringes, sugar, and muscly pills beforehand.