[Spoilers] How to cheese the (potentially) hardest ending in the game.

Keep Driving added a new ending called "The Trip" where you drive around an insane Swedish couple who just want to rock climb and do... something. I won't spoil it if you haven't beaten the ending, but you can't understand what they want to do because they only talk in Swedish. They talk shit behind your back and give off an incredibly bad vibe, causing your driver to suddenly start stacking an insane number of debuffs- Sad, Tired, Hot, Cold, Hungry, Headache, they come at you relentlessly.

If you're really unlucky with their quest location spawns, you're going to have to drive across the entire map multiple times. Even if you're not unlucky, it's \*incredibly\* annoying when they drop Sad on you so you cannot take extra turns. Headache makes you take more damage. Tired and Hungry make it impossible to use any skills that use Energy as a resource cost. You cure your Tired and Hungry with coffee and food... Joanna and Markus just drop it back on you again, making it feel like a resource pit that you're constantly fighting. The other hard endings can be beaten with enough prep, but The Trip specifically counters everything you do, and it feels like RNG.

Worse, these two hitchhikers give you basically useless abilities that don't help at all.

There's a way to beat them though.

There's a mechanic in Keep Driving where if you max out on status effects, at six status effects, \*adding a seventh will rotate out one of them\*, and it will be like you never had it at all. This \*includes\* stacking debuffs like Hungry and Tired. At 8 stacks of tired, and your Energy is capped out at 2? But if you have five other statuses that were added more recently, add another status effect, and suddenly- BOOM. All eight stacks of tired are gone. It's like you just drank eight cups of coffee for free.

This becomes even more powerful when you've done this a few times, and then you get the *Moody* trait- which gives you *free energy* every time you rotate out a status effect.

Now, ordinarily, Joanna and Markus load your status bar up with afflictions and then it's hard to handle because since Tired and Hungry can stack, you're just loaded up with six bad debuffs and they rarely rotate out- instead your Tired and Hungry just keep ramping up. To get the good buffs like Inspired or Happy, you usually need special events, or other Hitchhiker skills, and those often have difficult conditions- for example the Idiot needs you to use his skill to \*remove no threats\* to get Happy, which is a waste of a turn.

But what if I told you there was a way to trivialize the mechanics that Joanna and Markus use to sabotage your run?

What if I told you...

**The best way to beat the toxic Couple is to** ***be even more toxic yourself?*** **Like, Steven Tyler from Aerosmith toxic.**

Because there are only *three items in the game* that easily add special status effects that then bump off the negative afflictions that Joanna and Markus curse you with.

Those items are:

**ALCOHOL.**

**COCAINE.**

and **WEED.**

That's right. To beat Joanna and Markus, all you have to do is just *get completely fucked up while driving*.

Now the most dangerous of the three is Alcohol since the Drunk Debuff is extremely punishing. You have less time to take your turn, and you get way more threats and attacks. This should go without saying. Don't Drink and Drive. But you don't really *need* it.

*Because the High and Speeded status effects are relatively benign*, *and what's more, Weed* ***also*** *gives you the Hungry debuff*, *one of the easiest debuffs to get rid of in the game*.

Now you *can* get pulled over by the cops when you're High and Speeded, but since they're far less punishing than Drunk, it's really just the same as encountering a late game event on the Eastern side of the map.

So, this is how you easily rotate out the status effects you don't want:

1. If you have a stack of hungry, don't smoke weed. Do some cocaine first, which could potentially bump off hungry, and *then* smoke weed\*.\* This gives you Speeded => High => Hungry, thereby bumping off three of your status effects *immediately*, meaning there's a very high chance you just reset your hungry stacks if it progressed to Starving, and can cure it with less food. 2. If you *don't* have a stack of hungry, then *do* smoke weed first, because then the hungry itself acts as a rotator to knock off a much worse debuff, like Sad, then you just eat some food to get rid of the single stack of Hungry after it's served its purpose to knock off a worse debuff. 3. If you eat too much sugary foods, you get the Sugar Addict trait, and what that means is that you can use the *added Tired* effect from eating sugary foods (which you naturally get from soda btw, even without the trait) to *knock off one more status effect*. So, if you have Sugar Addict or a soda handy, but you *don't* have Hungry *or* Tired in your status debuff bar, you should go Sugary Food => Cocaine => Weed. Then all it takes is just some coffee and food and you've gotten rid of that Tired and Hungry debuff. That's *four* different status rotations because you're doing Tired => Speeded => High => Hungry. 4. And here where it gets crazy. If you *do* have Hungry or Tired on your bar and it's stacked up high, what you could try is *drinking first*. Because drinking gives you Drunk *and* Happy. This gives you a *full six status effect rotation*, meaning you will knock out your stacked Hungry or Tired effects, and replace with \*only a single stack\*. So, what you'll do is Drink Alcohol, Do Cocaine, and then Eat Sugary Food *before* you smoke Weed since it will go Drunk => Happy => Tired => Speeded => High => Hungry (or if you're just trying to get rid of high stacks of Tired, you can swap the order of the last two so that the Sugary Food naturally gets rid of the Hungry from Weed). Then all you need is just \*one more\* status effect to knock off the Drunk and you can just keep driving, and that can easily be accomplished by keeping any book on hand. 5. Even better, if you have the Hurricane in your car, getting High means you can use "You're Fun", which is, by far, one of the strongest Hitchhiker Abilities in the game. Even better, Hurricane is constantly generating trash you can sometimes sell in your car for a tiny bit of passive income generation, *and* she shoplifts one small item for free any time you pass by a store, making her one of the *best* Hitchhikers to have for economy. And money is by far the most powerful thing in the game- if you have enough money, you can't lose. You don't even have to call Mom and Dad if you have the money for a tow truck. 6. What's funny is that as long as you have some weed, *Joanna and Markus end up bumping their own debuffs off*. Since weed rotates out two debuffs, and since they usually hit you with multiple debuffs at a time, you only really need weed to knock off the worst two which are Sad and Headache, after which point they'll start knocking off their *own* debuffs since you've capped your status effects. Just do the Cocaine => Weed rotation, survive one route, and then the Sad is gone by the next stop since they add three more. Headache can also be easily remedied with Aspirin which can be found in most stores. The only one you really need to manage is Sad. 7. And here's the truly broken part: when you keep rotating your status effects out, even when cocaine runs its duration and you get the withdrawal effect- *you just end up rotating withdrawal out too*. You only get addicted to cocaine if you take it again *during* withdrawal. If you rotate withdrawal out though, *you can immediately take cocaine again with no repercussions.* 8. And if you think that's crazy, guess what? In actual fact, you might actually be better off letting yourself get addicted. Because once you get addicted you *always* have the Withdrawal status effect, meaning it takes up one of those six slots on your status bar permanently... which means, in other words, that you have yet another rotator to block Joanna and Markus debuffing you. You can never get more than five of their debuffs if you're constantly jonesing on drugs, constantly in withdrawal. And what's the cost of withdrawal? Well, your energy costs go up by three. But what does Moody do? It constantly tops up your energy whenever you rotate a status effect... including withdrawal itself. And, of course, Speeded negates it completely. So you essentially have unlimited energy, so what does it matter if your energy costs go up?

**But how do I get these drugs?** You may ask.

It's simple.

When you start the game with the package **Shady Things**, which you get by unlocking the Rehab Ending, which is far, far easier to conquer than The Trip, you get two crucial objects: The switchblade and the crowbar. These two items let you bypass most obstacles in the Explore sections of the game, which are also some of the most rewarding pit stops you can make, so you just need to make sure you pass through several cities and explore the alleyways. You are very likely going to find drugs there, and even if you don't, you just sell all the stuff you find at the thrift shop and then go to the drug dealer to buy some. Worst case scenario? Work a couple of shifts at the Employment Office and then go buy drugs.

All you really need are a few baggies of cocaine and a few baggies of weed and then get the RNG to spawn the Couple as a Hitchhiker. From that point onwards it's pretty self-sustaining, because their route will usually naturally pass by a few of the major cities, at which point you just hit the Employment Office, Explore, and then re-up on your drugs. Their journey has a pretty forgiving time limit, so as long as you just build up a small supply of drugs before you start their quest and don't go wandering off in country roads, you should be able to handily beat the Trip very, very easily. Especially if you have the Hurricane too.

What makes this all even more ironic is when you finally beat The Trip ending and realize... just what Joanna and Markus are really up to.