Self-Imposed Challenges

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Habitica offers numerous ways to test the resolve of players, such as achievements, quests, and challenges. However, a player may reach a point where they feel they have earned every in-game award. Other players may find their current level or stockpile of gold makes the game too easy and allows them to indulge more bad habits than they would like.

The suggestions below have been created by users to keep the game feeling new and challenging even for advanced players. Most of them make the game more difficult, but some change play style in other ways. Several of these can be combined to create a truly challenging play experience.

Increasing Difficulty[]

No Equipment, No Potion, No Spell Run[]

With a new character, or after using the Orb of Rebirth to return to Level 1, play through the game relying only on level ups and Perfect Day Buffs for stat increases and healing. A variation on this involves also not allocating stat points. The Hide Reward Items extension can be used to hide equipment and health potions from your task page, which will assist with avoiding temptation.

No Health Potion Run: Shopping Spree[]

A new or low level account is recommended for this method: Play the game the same as usual but the moment you get enough money to buy a piece of equipment, buy it. Continue to do so for each piece of equipment or Reward. This method attempts to keep your gold reserve empty. The reason this increases the difficulty of the game is that you ideally won't be able to afford to purchase health potions. This is somewhat different from a no potion run in the sense that even if you want to purchase a potion, you will not have enough gold to do so. As such, this pushes the player to use little to no health potions. This method could be considered to be a "health potion cessation" as opposed to cold turkey and could ease the player into transitioning into a complete "No health potion run".

This will work exceptionally well with seasonal items such as spooky sparkles.

Poisonous To Do's[]

Finish sending all thank you notes

This task is POISON

0

If you have a To Do that you don't want to procrastinate doing, make it a Daily. Until it is completed, you will take increasing damage every day and will be unable to get a Perfect Day. When you complete the task, you can remove the Daily or re-title it to a new task.

Poisoned![]

You can create one or more Dailies simply named "Poisoned!" that you are never allowed to check off. They will cause daily damage and encourage you to level up. You can also create a Reward called "Antidote" that lets you remove a poisoned Daily in exchange for gold. For a pre-made poison challenge, look for the "You Are Poisoned! +" challenge in the Tavern or the Hard Mode guild.

You are very poisoned!

There isn't much you can do about it except work hard every day. If you finish all other Dailies, you may purchase Cure and take no damage for the day.

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More Damaging Dailies[]

One way to increase the penalty from missed Dailies is to set the difficulty to hard. However, you may find this disproportionately increases the rewards as well, particularly when playing in a party with a lot of buffs. A different approach is to leave the difficulty set to an appropriate level and to create an additional negative Habit called "Missed a Daily" (or some suitably gamified name). This Habit can be set to hard, and clicked for each Daily that you missed on the previous day. This increases the penalty without increasing the reward from completed Dailies.

Deadly Habits[]

Deadly Dailies — One player chose a Daily to be deadly if not checked off. As shown here, that player used Fix Character Values to reduce health very low and will press the - on the Habit to cause character death.

If there is a negative Habit (or Daily) that you particularly want to avoid, such as giving in to an addiction or staying up late, you could classify that Habit as deadly. If you succumb to the Habit, you must navigate to Fix Character Values and set your health to 0.1 before clicking "-" on the Habit. This causes your health to decrease to zero, making your character die. You could also hit the negative Habit repeatedly until you die. However, using the Fix Character Values method allows you to see the color of the task change sooner as you gradually beat the habit.

This method works best if, rather than just thinking of it as a punishment for giving in to the bad habit, you consider how good it will feel if you overcome the temptation to indulge and which real-world custom Rewards you can get if you don't lose your gold. For example, instead of focusing only on the negative consequences of staying up late, think, "If I go to bed now, I'll be able to use this gold to watch a movie tomorrow."

Taxes[]

If you want to stretch out the time it will take you to accumulate all the armor, weapons, or pets, you can create a tax. Use a custom Reward to halve the gold you receive, put a price for a custom Reward, or make a rule that before you can use an egg or potion, you have to sell one of the same type.

You can also charge yourself a set amount for taking certain in-game actions (see screenshot to the right).

For example, hatching an egg costs 10 gold. Feeding a pet costs 2 gold. Using the Inn costs 10. Repurchasing a piece of equipment costs double the price. Each attribution point costs 10 gold.

Health Potion Multiplier[]

At higher levels, earning gold makes the cost of health potions negligible. Create a custom Reward 'Buy Health Potion' that increases based on your level (e.g. 10 x Level) or how many health potions you have already used (e.g. Number of Uses^2) and click that as well whenever you use a health potion.

Adjusted Max Health[]

Create a negative Habit called "Challenge Mode." When you level up, check the Challenge Mode Habit to reduce your starting health. How many times you check it depends on how difficult you wish to make things for yourself.

Another way to reduce your starting health, instead of making a negative Habit, is to use Fix Character Values in the settings area.

Attenuated Adjusted Max Health[]

If the prospect of the Adjusted Max Health catches your interest but the penalty of full death is too much, you can implement a less punishing method. You can change your total health, but instead of reducing your maximum health, you can decrease your minimum health.

For example, death occurs when 0/50 health is remaining, but players can pretend that death occurs at 10/50. This would mean that when your health drops to 10 or less, you should go to the settings area. In the settings area, use Fix Character Values to reduce your level by 1, increase your health back to 50/50 and remove all experience. The difference, as opposed to the unattenuated adjusted max health is the "death." In this case, you lose your experience and one level. But you do not lose a piece of equipment or any gold. (If you prefer to lose gold, you can give yourself a gold penalty as well.)

Survival Mode[]

When you level up, reduce your Health to whatever it was before leveling. Abstain from healing potions and Healer spells. See how long you can last! When you reach a point where you would normally die, heal up and give yourself a reward, punishment, or personal achievement based on how long you lasted. Not recommended if you are in a Boss battle.

Level Up: Reduced Rejuvenation![]

Just before you level up, record how much health you have remaining. Upon leveling up, go to the Fix Character Values section of settings and set your health to the value it was at just before you leveled up. This will result in no health restoration. It makes health potions much more valuable. In addition, if you have excess gold, this serves as a gold sink.

For example: Suppose you have 10 HP remaining but you only need 1 more experience point to level up. You complete a simple To Do and level up, raising your level and bringing your Health to 50/50. You then go to the settings menu and set your Health back to 10/50 and continue the game as usual.

For an easier version of this challenge, you can also choose to restore a certain percentage of the health you would otherwise gain from leveling up. For example, you may wish to regain only half of your lost Health with each level up; in that case, in the scenario above you could set your Health to 30/50.

All of these examples above can be accomplished via this custom script. Upon leveling up, you can set the script so that it automatically heals you only a certain value or a certain percent, or heals you not at all.

Boss Tasks[]

Tasks that players may consider undesirable might not be threatening enough. If the threat of the negative tasks is increased, then perhaps certain players will be more likely to complete these tasks. Players could fight a "mini-boss" task. In terms of Dailies, add the Daily and a corresponding Habit. Each time the Daily is missed, inflict damage from the corresponding Habit. If the Daily is completed, leave the Habit as it is.

Mini-boss example: The mighty wizard Jane Doe is trying to quit smoking. She adds a Daily that says "smoke 5 or fewer cigarettes a day" and adds a negative Habit called "smoked more than 5 :(" On day 1 she smokes 6. She does not click the Daily and on top of that she presses the "-". This gives her more damage than a Daily alone. On day 2, she smokes 4. Great! She clicks the Daily and does not press the Habit.

In terms of Habits, the player could press the "-" multiple times or add multiple Habits and press each "-" once.

If a Daily/Habit/To Do is extremely important, the player could make it into a "boss task". In terms of boss Dailies, if said Daily is not accomplished, the player could punish themselves by going to the settings area and inflicting a fitting punishment.

Boss example: John Doe cannot manage to remember to do his homework. He decides to make a boss Daily called "homework today or the pixelated man gets it!". Day 1, John forgets to do his homework and he uses the setting menu to remove half of his gold and 1 level in addition to missing the Daily. Day 2, John remembers to do his homework and he simply checks the Daily.

(To add icing to the cake, a player could gamify the boss by giving it a menacing name.)

Tracking Personal Goals[]

If you are motivated by public accountability, you can set and track your own personal goals (example). This serves as both an informal achievement board for those goals you have met and a way to keep focused on goals you are completing.

You can make or use your own graphics or icons for goals you have completed. The green check mark is one example.

Challenges that Increase Difficulty[]

Some Challenges in Habitica have been specifically designed to increase the difficulty of the game. The Hard Mode guild hosts several and may have other useful ideas in its chat.

The unofficial Tavern challenge Hardcore challenge : "You Are Poisoned ! +" is excellent if you want to make the game exponentially harder. It adds a whole new level of motivation, and requires a high amount of productivity even to stay alive. As with any challenge, if you don't want to compete for the gem prize, you can leave the challenge and modify your tasks to either raise or lower the difficulty to your liking. It includes things such as poisons, remedies, and antidotes.

Perfect Day Tokens[]

Motivate yourself to get Perfect Days more often and die less often! A combination of these rules make for a uniquely challenging experience:

Every time you get a Perfect Day you get one token (record these in the Rewards column).
Tokens are used to buy health potions or to let you use skills. If you have no tokens, you can't use those things.
Every time you die, you add to your "Death Curse" stack.
Each instance of the curse prevents you from doing/consuming something you enjoy (e.g., video games, caffeine).
If your Death Curse count gets to four, you have to release your stable.
The only way to remove one instance of the curse from your stack is to get a Perfect Day.
If you remove an instance of the curse from your stack, you don't get a token. The only way to get tokens is by getting a Perfect Day while not cursed.

No Class Mode[]

In this mode, you are not to allowed to pick class. At level 10, opt out the class system. This will prevent your avatar from having skills and will not be able to buff yourself, or take advantage of any skill. It is because different classes can either breeze through levels, pile up lots of gold, kill bosses quickly, or heal themselves and prevent death; this mode prohibits all that and increases the game difficulty by a notch.

Low Constitution Mode[]

A player who finds that they need more motivation to avoid bad Habits or complete their Dailies on a given day might use this custom script to set their Constitution to 1, thus taking more damage when they press the - button on their bad Habits or fail to complete their Dailies.

The script creates a button that, when clicked, activates Low-Constitution Mode, setting CON to 1 via a negative buff (meaning that the anti-buff wears off at Cron the next morning). In case that mode proves to be too hard a challenge that day, pressing the button again deactivates Low-Constitution Mode. Players could use that mode regularly if doing so would be a good motivation, or could use it only occasionally on days where certain completion of tasks is especially critical.

Altering Game Mechanics[]

Perma-Death[]

When you die, delete or reset your account.

Stockpile[]

Fines — Rewards used as fines for bad behavior

Rather than spending gold, use it as a way to keep score. Try to get the highest score within a certain time frame or before reaching a certain level. You can also use custom Rewards to subtract GP for negative Habits. This can be a replacement for Health loss if you have altered or removed the death mechanic.

Master Streak[]

An extension of the streak mechanic. Create a Daily called "Master Streak". At the end of the day, check it only if all other Dailies and Habits are in the green or in the blue (depending on how difficult you wish to make it). Variants include "All Dailies have streaks of 3 or greater", "All Habits and Dailies are green (or blue) and have streaks of 3 or greater", and "All Habits/Dailies are green/blue, streaks of 3 or greater, and no items remain on To Do List".

An easier version of this involves creating a Daily called "Determination", which you may tick off once you've completed all your other Dailies for that day.

Determination

Did all the things today!

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For even more motivation, you can add a To Do called "Determination <number>", with the difficulty set to Hard, which you may tick off if your Determination Daily streak reaches the number in your To Do. You can adjust the streak you need to reach to your own liking. After you've completed the To Do, you can make a new one, and aim for a higher streak requirement.

Random Dailies[]

The player sets random values for the "Every X Days" repeat setting. This adds randomness and novelty to Dailies because they don't know what's coming up every day. You wouldn't want to do this for critical Dailies, but if the player wants to stretch themselves by having extra tasks on random days, the element of surprise could help with motivation.

Chance-Based Task Completion Outcomes[]

RNG example — An example of using a six-sided die to determine your fate.

If you are a fan of RPGs that use random number generation for some element of success or failure, you can replicate that experience in Habitica. Get yourself a die (e.g., six sided or D20), or use random.org. Then create a results table (see image on the right for an example). Upon completing a task, roll the die to determine the results. You can use this to give yourself a chance at extra rewards for completing a positive task, or possibly negate the effects of bad Habits or missed Dailies.

To facilitate setup, there is a "Chance-Based Task Completion/Failure Outcomes" challenge in the "📜 Library of Tasks and Challenges" guild, from which you can easily copy tasks to your own lists.

Forget Me Not - Clearing Those Lingering To Do's[]

Make sure those scary tasks get done! The longer you ignore To Do's, the greater the payday when you cash in. This method focuses on prioritization and delivering.

Create a new To Do, i.e., "Backlog", with a checklist. Create a checklist item for each of your lingering To Do's. Delete each To Do once it is added to the Backlog To Do. You should now only have one To Do.
Set a "max in progress" limit, e.g. 5.
Select that number of checklist items from your Backlog To Do, ordered according to your personal priorities, and create To Do's for each of those selected items. Then remove those items from the checklist.
No To Do's can be added until ALL non-Backlog To Do's have been completed.
Once all non-Backlog To Do's have been completed, begin another cycle by repeating Steps 3 and 4.

Tip: If a checklist item from the Backlog has been completed, tick it off. Then, when you finish all of your non-Backlog To Do's, add a new To Do for that completed checklist item, tick it off straight away, and delete the item from your backlog. This can be used in scenarios where a task from your Backlog has become urgent and trumps everything else.

Tip: Create custom Rewards for completing 1, 3, 5, and 10 cycles of your Backlog to help maintain motivation.

Bingo[]

Bingo is a game where you find or hatch all of one type of pet or mount species, or all pets or mounts of a particular hatching type. You can track your own personal achievements and progress (example) if you are motivated by public accountability.

Pets and Mounts[]

You can hatch all ten of one kind of pet. For example, "Dragon Bingo" is when you hatch a dragon pet of each color. Completing this for all the 90 Generation one pets (pets that hatch from eggs that get dropped ordinarily, i.e. non-quest, non-rare) earns you the official Beast Master achievement.

HabitRPG-Pet-Bingo — Example Pet Bingo - all colors of 3 pets

You can also complete this for mounts (raising all 90 Generation one mounts is the official Mount Master), Quest pets, and Quest mounts.

Quest pets[]

You can play bingo with quest pets and mounts as well. For example, "Hedgehog Bingo" could be hatching all colors of hedgehog pets, "Unicorn Mount Bingo" would be collecting all colors of unicorn mounts, and "Gryphon Triad" would be collecting all colors of the gryphon in both mount and pet form. Quest pet bingo can be accomplished by using gems to buy eggs, completing the relevant quest multiple times, or a combination of both strategies.

Colors[]

You can also hatch all nine Generation one pets of one color. For example, "Shade Bingo" is hatching all Shade pets. Again, you can also complete this for mounts, Quest pets, and Quest mounts.

Re-hatching Pets[]

Ordinarily you can only hatch each type of pet two times. One can be raised into a mount after which you can hatch another. The second pet will not be able to grow.

"Triad Bingo" (example, "Dragon Triad Bingo") is when you have hatched all of one type or color of pet, have raised them all to mounts, and re-hatched all the pets. Doing this for all 90 Generation one colors/pets will give you the Triad Bingo achievement.

By using the Key to the Kennels you can stack the Beast Master, Mount Master, and Triad Bingo achievements.