Guild Spotlight: The Scholars

For 2021’s Guild Spotlights, we’ll be highlighting one guild per month which runs useful or fun challenges! If you don’t know yet about challenges, they’re community events which are usually run by other users, and usually feature a group of related tasks which get added to your own task lists. Challenges can offer you a bit of extra accountability, and the feeling of not being alone on your journey… and many challenges offer Gem prizes as well!

It’s one of the biggest guilds in Habitica, but we couldn’t forget to mention this guild in doing a round-up of guilds with useful challenges. The guild is meant for learners of all stripes, and all kinds of posts and people are welcome, whether you’re in high school or doing your postgrad in STEM… or just a lifelong learner getting stuck into your umpteenth MOOC.

That’s right:

Check out The Scholars Guild!

There are all kinds of challenges in this guild, from monthly challenges to help you keep tabs on your school syllabus to a permanent challenge to help you get that paper written… along with long-term challenges to help you get some good study habits put in place.

What’s more, the guild is a supportive place where you can chat about your troubles and share the latest cool thing you’ve learnt.

Not everyone wants to or can stay in school, but don’t worry! If this guild wasn’t for you, there’ll be a new spotlight next month. You can also check out all the past Guild Spotlights on the blog!

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Market

It’s Wiki Wednesday! Once a month we highlight a helpful post from the Wiki with tips about productivity, wellness, and optimizing your use of Habitica!

This month, we thought we’d highlight an article about one of the essential areas of Habitica: the Market! This is where you can buy equipment that doesn’t appear in your rewards tab and all kinds of other items, like eggs and food for your pets… but are you familiar with everything the Market has to offer? The Wizards of the Wiki are!

At the Market, accessible through the Shops tab of the toolbar or through the Shops choice in the menu of the mobile apps for iOS or Android, players can purchase items and class-specific equipment. Tended by Alex the Merchant, the Market sells equipment, eggs, hatching potions (both standard and magic), food, saddles, cards, and special items, such as the Fortify Potion, Orb of Rebirth, Key to the Kennels, and gems. The storefront showcases some of these fine wares in a rotating selection of Featured Items. Players can also sell their unwanted items to the Market in exchange for gold.

Do you need to read up on it? Here’s the full article!

A Stunning Reversal: Inverted Pet Pics from Habitica’s April Fool’s Celebration!

If you’ve been around Habitica for a while (or at least have been around for a couple of weeks!) you know that April Fool’s Day is kind of a big deal. After all, we can hardly hold back from celebrating a day so special to the [in]famous Master of Rogues, our very own April Fool.

This year, the April Fool came to us with the very best of intentions, hoping to summon interdimensional doppelgangers to complete our tasks and give us a day off. However, it seems his meddling with time and space instead had the unintended effect of reversing the colors of our pets!

As is tradition in Habitica, the Fool posted a special Challenge to celebrate. Habiticans had a chance to show off their reversed pets on social media! Today we’re sharing the winning entries and a handful of our favorites.

First up, check our our Challenge winners!

“It’s fishin’ season in 2021 and this inverted dolphin keeps stealing my catch!” says danodea

emilyjeaharmon‘s Gryphon is providing an interesting counterpoint to their colorful palette

whothehungriest and their icy wolf friend brought flowers!

Saiwa brought flowers, and a strangely cheery zombie fox!

Betergeuse_aOri stargazes with their mysteriously transformed bear pet!

Here are a few more of our favorites!

“This April Fool’s trick is as clear as Quartz…” says QuartzFox.

Zelah_Meyer shows us a Starry Night flipped on its head!

“Oh my goodness, why is there a frost jelly in my house?! Go back to the mines, please? Or maybe…are you a friendly junimo? But why are your colors different! No, you must be a slime, but something is off… I’m so confused, what’s going on here?” says Cayst

Gumnos takes the inversion to a very spooky place!

“I kind of really liked the ghostly mood of my inverted pet on Habitica’s April Fools day. It went well with my desert thief persona. ;)” says janey_p.

langerhan notes that the avocado garden pet looks a little… otherwordly

Evil_Overmom takes things in the opposite direction with a cheery Spring look!

Zyshara also shows us inverted colors don’t always mean dark and spooky.

Citrusella reports : “Apparently I am one with the darkness, with my inverted ghost jack-o-lantern and ghost cactus. XD (And also I thought the red cactopus felt more octopus-like than usual? 0_o)
Also, since I was playing around with testing CSS… as I do every year… to keep this alive all year long (and extend it to mounts, which it didn’t officially apply to), I’d be remiss if I didn’t include this bonus not-officially-viewable (and not third-party viewable unless I upload that style) inverted phoenix water phoenix Lapis constructed so she could ride it! XD”

virtexexe shows off different inverted looks from spooky to cute!

What a topsy-turvy assortment of reversed reveries! We hope you had as much fun with the Fool’s failed foray into interdimensional chore completion as we did.

Want to see the April Fool’s past antics? Check out our posts from the social media challenges in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020!

Use Case Spotlight: Making the Most of the Task Types

Illustration by Vampitch

Our Use Case Spotlights post series highlight user stories and tips that can help you as you set up your own tasks, refresh things to add new challenges, or just get more motivated to keep at it! This round, we asked people about how they make the most of the different task types. New users often find themselves puzzling over the best type of task to use for the thing they have in mind so we thought we’d share the expertise of users who’ve got it figured out.

Dewines starts us off by talking about how she uses To-Dos and keeps her list up-to-date and tidy:

Right now I have a lot of dailies, but many of them are set to trivial because they are literally just a reminder to do something very routine, like check the spare mobile phone a couple of times a week to make sure it’s charged. But without the daily, I’d forget to do it. Negative reinforcement never works for me, so if I find that a Daily is turning very red, I’ll find some way to turn it into a To-Do.

Regarding To-Dos, I use checklists on a few To-Dos rather than having a large number of To-Dos that might sit around for weeks. In fact I don’t put things in Habitica as a To-Do until the week they will be done. I have a notebook where I write down “Things That Need To Be Done Sometime But Not Right Now”. This means I don’t really have any red To-Dos (other than ones from challenges that relate to posting a month-end update) as they’re only there for a week at most.

Dailies are a staple for many users, but Ehlyah talks about how they use To-Dos to avoid being punished for being a little forgetful:

I use to-dos instead of dailies since even if they’re overdue or not for that specific day, they won’t go away and they’ll keep reminding me. As someone who is immensely forgetful, that really helps. I also use checklists since it keeps even big tasks from becoming entirely overwhelming!

silverbooksitter makes great use of the due dates on To-Dos to stay ahead of the game:

I like the due-date feature for to-dos. There are some things (like scheduling a doctors appointment, or reaching out to a professor) that I want to get done a specific date, but i don’t want them cluttering my homework calendar, so putting them in as a to-do is great, even if it does turn red cause I put them in as soon as I think of them, sometimes months in advance.

shanaqui‘s been struggling with burnout lately, so they’ve been using Habits and To-Dos as a more forgiving option… and they use Habits to power up To-Dos, as well!

Personally, I’m having a lot more luck with habits and to-dos lately. Since I’m rather burnt out, the fact that they won’t damage me is really helpful — I can still set up things I need to do, but there won’t be negative consequences if I don’t do them. In addition, habits pair really well with any kind of difficult task: I have all the units of my module on statistics listed on a to-do to check off as I go along, but I won’t get any reward from that until the end… so habits jump in there to give me a bit extra motivation: each completed unit gives me a +1 on that habit. So habits + to-dos are my secret weapon right now, while my handful of dailies keep basic self-care tasks ticking over.

Of course, there’s no single correct way to use Habitica, so if you have your own ideas, we’d love to hear those as well! You can share those in comments here, or hop into the Guild to chat with other users.

If you are a member of the Guild, or you join up now, you’ll be able to add your say for our next Use Case Spotlight! Keep an eye out for the announcement of the new theme… and if you’re looking for tips right now, you can also check out all our past Use Case Spotlights for more ideas. We’ve written on all kinds of themes and shared a lot of users’ wisdom there!

Guild Spotlight: Short Term Goal Accountability

For 2021’s Guild Spotlights, we’ll be highlighting one guild per month which runs useful or fun challenges! If you don’t know yet about challenges, they’re community events which are usually run by other users, and usually feature a group of related tasks which get added to your own task lists. Challenges can offer you a bit of extra accountability, and the feeling of not being alone on your journey… and many challenges offer Gem prizes as well!

Sometimes, it’s not enough to know your list of tasks and when you need to get them done… sometimes, you need a little bit more accountability: someone who will check in whether you got things done in time, or whether you’ve completed your whole list before it’s time to log off for the day.

Well, how about a whole Guild set up to provide just that?

Illustration by Katy133

Check out the Short Term Goal Accountability Guild!

There are so many challenges in this Guild, it’s difficult to choose what to highlight! There are Daily, Weekly and Monthly Focus Finders, to help narrow down your tasks to the ones you most need to do… There are also challenges for all kinds of good habits, from doing the dishes to general self-care, and Pomodoro-based challenges to help you get in that focused productive time!

We’d love to hear if you find the Short Term Goal Accountability Guild useful, but if it’s not quite your thing, keep an eye out for next month’s Spotlight. You can also check out all the past Guild Spotlights on the blog!

Costume Carnival

Cosplays by Habiticans Branderwall, UncommonCriminal, Viccthor and Patrick

It’s Wiki Wednesday! Once a month we highlight a helpful post from the Wiki with tips about productivity, wellness, and optimizing your use of Habitica!

One of the things people regularly mention enjoying about Habitica is the ability to collect a bunch of items and then create wacky costumes for their avatars. That can even provide some of the motivation that gets you ticking things off: “gotta do my tasks so I can earn enough gold to buy this last armor piece I need for my Pirate Kitty outfit!” This month, we wanted to highlight the creativity of users and the joyous chaos a few outfits can produce… and the Wiki does a great job of introducing you to the wild world of Habitican dress-up/cosplay:

In Habitica’s Costume Carnival, you’ll see fantastical creatures such as fairies, angels, mermaids, mad scientists, and more. This avatar costume art is created from the rich imaginations of the artists in the Costume Carnival guild. Each entry of avatar art will also include instructions on how to construct the costume for anyone who wants to make their own.

Itching to pick up some ideas? Check out the full article on the Wiki!

Guild Spotlight: Anxiety Alliance

For 2021’s Guild Spotlights, we’ll be highlighting one guild per month which runs useful or fun challenges! If you don’t know yet about challenges, they’re community events which are usually run by other users, and usually feature a group of related tasks which get added to your own task lists. Challenges can offer you a bit of extra accountability, and the feeling of not being alone on your journey… and many challenges offer Gem prizes as well!

Last month, we highlighted a Guild that adds a bit of fun, but this time we wanted to highlight something a bit more useful. We’ve heard over the years that a lot of people find Habitica very welcoming and helpful for people who are dealing with mental health problems like anxiety and depression, so this month we’re highlighting a Guild that offers a supportive space for people dealing with anxiety.

Illustration by aspiring_advocate

Check out Anxiety Alliance!

The Guild features regular challenges, along with some older challenges which can be useful for reference. Each month, there’s a Conquer the Scary Thing! challenge to help you face the situations that are difficult for you… and celebrate you when you have. There’s also a challenge for taking some time to meditate or do mindfulness, which can be a super helpful habit for anyone who struggles with anxiety, whether that’s in specific situations, or more generally.

We hope you find Anxiety Alliance and the challenges it hosts useful, but if it’s not useful for you, just wait to see what we’ve got in store next month… or check out past Guild Spotlights using the tag!

Contributor Spotlight: gawrone

Welcome back to the Contributor Spotlight Series, where we interview amazing members of the Habitica community! Today we’re chatting with gawrone, one of our Artisans! gawrone has been creating art for Habitica since 2019, including seasonal outfits, backgrounds for your avatar and some of the pets and mounts you can collect!

gawrone, how did you get involved with Habitica?

I typed “list of best organiser apps” or something like that, since this is what I usually do when forced to choose out of options about which I have no understanding. Habitica was somewhere in one of the result links, and immediately grabbed my attention as unique among many overcomplicated calendars, managers and too-do list creators. It offered much more than I was aware I needed, and was more than perfect for a fantasy, RPG and pixel art fan like me.

What’s your proudest contribution to Habitica?

So far I made over 50 pixel art contributions and it is hard to choose, but I could limit myself to winners of 3 categories:

1. Appreciation from above. My Steampunk Airship background was picked by the staff to be turned into an animated version. That was a rewarding surprise to me.
2. Appreciation from around. Whenever I see them used, I’m very glad that I had an opportunity to make Pirate Set Armoire items, to add more options for mixing and matching unique combinations to all the pirates.
3. Appreciation from inside. The idea for a Bell Mage weapon came to my head out of nowhere and I thought it could be something new but probably impossible to make look good. The result is really satifying to me, which doesn’t happen very often.

What are your secret superpowers?

I have a returning dream about me being the only person on earth, that can fly just by waving their arms fast, but only up to one meter above the ground, which probably makes it the most useless superpower ever. It is a secret power, because I haven’t tried yet if I actually have it. But one day I will.

I also have a lot of tiny, ordinary powers, which brings us to Habitica – helping someone like me to focus on becoming a master of at least one of them, instead of throwing the potential around.

What are your secret weaknesses?

My concentration issues do not only prevent me from working undistracted for longer periods of time, but also makes me forget things to a dangerous and irritating levels for both me and people around me. But this is no secret.

As secret I would have to choose overanalyzing things that often makes me unable to “simply answer the question” (presented here), and incredibly weak skills of reading hidden intentions, mixed or ambivalent messages, sarcastic taunts and such. I tend to automatically interpret people as much more straightforward and sincere than they really are, and I know that most people are much, much more adequate at this reading ability.

What are your favorite Habitican pets/mounts?

Skeleton Whale Pet and Skeleton Fox Mount is my favorite combination. Looks awesome and also barely covers the background. Design-wise I’m amazed by the Wind-Up, Vampire and Sand Sculpture potion versions. If I would have to choose only one to use forever it would be the Base Fox. Just can’t beat this one.

What some things you’re tracking in Habitica?

Stuff to do at work, stuff to do in life, few bad habits. Things that are too private to share or too common to be worth mentioning.

What do you like to do in your free time?

I always equally enjoy interesting and meaningful or fun and silly conversations with my wife, but when I do have free time for myself I like CRPG, fantasy novels or books about animals and evolution, and rubbing my dog’s belly.

What are your top Habitica tips and tricks?

I don’t know much and those I know, were already mentioned. But I do have one tip for potential contributors. I’ve always wanted to do pixel art. I joined the Habitica Pixels in Progress (Aspiring Artisans) guild but wasted many months before I actually defeated my insecurity and dared to ask how to contribute, and started pixeling. Now pixel art is my third job (yes I had a day job, and a weekend job and now I also have a night job :D). It couldn’t happen without Habitica the app and Habitica the community. Don’t be like me! Stop waiting. If you have a dream aspiration, a useful skill, a developing talent, that can help Habitica grow, just go for it. It will benefit others but it will also benefit you.

Where do you like to hang out in Habitica?

In case of an introvert like me, the correct answer is: mostly in Inventory and Edit Avatar menus, endlessly combining stuff. I also like to scroll through Pixel Power and Costume Carnival guilds, but I miss days when I was able to be more active.

Want to learn about some of the other contributors who make Habitica such a cool place? Check the Contributor Spotlight and Staff Spotlight tags on our blog!

Extensions, Add-Ons and Customizations

Illustration by Katy133

It’s Wiki Wednesday! Once a month we highlight a helpful post from the Wiki with tips about productivity, wellness, and optimizing your use of Habitica!

Habitica is packed full of options that allow you to take control of your adventure and set things up in whatever way works for you, but that’s not the end of it! If you love customizing your Habitica setup and tweaking things to just the way you like them, then this month’s highlighted Wiki page can really give you a head-start:

There are several official and user-created apps, tools, user styles, userscripts, browser extensions, and bookmarklets that can be used to customize the appearance and functionality of Habitica (formerly known as HabitRPG) and related websites. Below you will find a sortable list with a brief description of each item, as well as a link to its wiki page.

If you’re interested in an integration that tweaks how Habitica’s displayed in your browser, helps you track your pomodoros, or helps you manage your tasks… or other extensions and tweaks of that sort, then check out the full article on the Wiki!

Use Case Spotlight: Impactful Dailies

Illustration by Vampitch

Our Use Case Spotlights post series highlight user stories and tips that can help you as you set up your own tasks, refresh things to add new challenges, or just get more motivated to keep at it! This round, we asked people about their most impactful Dailies — the tasks they’ve added which really help them level up in real life. You can read them all in the Use Case Spotlights Guild, but as usual, we’ve picked out some examples!

juarezmiranda‘s contribution emphasises the importance of a morning routine, which some other users mentioned as well:

I’d say [the most impactful Dailies are] my morning routine tasks. Right now my morning routine consists of waking up at 7 am, make my bed, take quick a look at Habitica and Google Calendar to see what I have for the day, have a cold shower and brush my teeth, and have a heathy breakfast. When I start the day and do these it’s kinda easy to keep going throughout the day with confidence and motivation.

KittyRoid99 has a similar suggestion, noting that self-care tasks are particularly important for them:

Self care. Some examples: Get Up With My Alarms; Take My Pills; Spray Deodorant; Brush My Teeth; Drink at Least Three Glasses of Water; Eat Vegetables With at Least Two Meals; Do My Physical Therapy Exercises (which basically keep my body together); and Bed Before 3am.

moor-rose has a suggestion for a single Daily that has really helped:

I don’t have many longstanding dailies as I’m still figuring out what works for me. The one that I find makes the biggest difference in my day-to-day life is planning the next day’s meals the evening before. I have targets for servings of fruit and veg and variety, but if I don’t have a plan, I tend to just eat toast (or skip meals).

SweetOz talks about using Dailies to help keep them on track with their To-Dos:

I also use daily tasks to keep me on track for my very long “to do” list. I create a calendar “to do” that lists the whole month with the days as check boxes. Each day is filled with whatever is most important for me to get done that day. I use active editing to keep this calendar flexible as my month goes on, adding or moving items as needed. And in my “Daily” tasks, I have a reminder “Do the most important item for the day!” This keeps me on track.

And -Silky- has some ideas for students!

For me personally it’s my study guide. The semester is currently over so I don’t have this daily active until it starts again. But basically I’d assign a subject a day in the check mark box (ex. Cyber Secuirty 101: Monday) then when the study for that class that day I’d check off the whole daily. It clearly outlines my week and what I need to study for that day making the semester so much easier.

There are more contributions over in the Use Case Spotlights guild, and they’re well worth checking out!

Don’t forget, if you’d like to add your say for our next Use Case Spotlight, you can join that guild and keep an eye out for the announcement of the new theme. And in the meantime, if the ideas here have caught your interest, you can also check out all our past Use Case Spotlights for more ideas on how to enrich your Habitica experience!