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!
Once you get to level 10, you have the choice of choosing a Class, but many people find themselves stumped when it comes to making a decision. This month’s highlighted article is all about the Healer Class, and all the things that become possible when you have access to the Healer skills! Here’s a quick intro from the Wiki page:
Healers have a high defense against damage and gain experience and mana quickly. Their skills allow them to heal themselves and other players in their party, provide their party with a defense buff, and reduce the redness of tasks to reduce the amount of damage the tasks deal to them. They are valuable allies to have to boost health in battles against strong bosses.
If you’re feeling the itch to help heal your Party members, maybe this is the Class for you. Check out the full article here to learn about the items you get access to you, just what Searing Brightness is, and much more. Don’t forget to keep an eye out for this month’s Use Case Spotlight as well, which will be highlighting other users’ tips and tricks for making the most of the Healer class!
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!
When you start Habitica, you enter our world as a level 1 Warrior, with a Training Sword to brandish at your tasks. As soon as you hit level 10, you can choose a new Class to continue your adventure, but there are lots of benefits to sticking with Warrior. This month’s highlighted Wiki article is all about the Warrior Class, describing the attributes, gear and skills that are important when you buckle on your sword and take up a shield. Here’s a little intro:
Warriors deal high damage to bosses and have more (and more powerful) critical hits on tasks, while also having good defense against task-based damage. Warrior skills can deal extra damage to bosses, increase the warrior’s own defense, and buff party members’ strength and defense. They are powerful allies to have for dealing damage in boss battles.
Habitica has a vibrant community, and new Guilds arise all the time. This year, we’re highlighting some of the newer or smaller Guilds which may not get as much traffic as Guilds that are higher up in the list. All of these Guilds have had recent activity and have a minimum number of members; they’re probably a bit quieter than more established Guilds, but they have the potential to grow. Spot something that sounds right up your alley? You know what to do!
One Day At A Time: This guild is small, but already active, having just got a new leader! The Guild is focused on dealing with addictions — a problem we know many Habiticans struggle with — using some concepts from 12 step programs. There are challenges to help support users in their personal struggles, and the chat is available for discussing your problems, or just posting the reasons you find each day to keep working on your addiction.
Habitica Heroes on Kiva: If you’re a Kiva lender, this Guild is for you! There are monthly challenges for making loans, along with a scavenger hunt to encourage users to hunt around and find new loans in categories they might not have previously considered. Chat about your latest loan choice, your overall philosophy in how you lend, or anything else related to Kiva here!
Forest App Users: If you’re a fan of the Forest app, this is a great place to make more friends, pursue Challenges to plant more trees, and generally talk about how you use the app for your productivity needs!
If any of these Guilds appeals to you, then you can jump straight in, join and post. If not, check out previous Guild Spotlights, or wait for next month’s post with a whole new selection!
Which is the best Class? Well, the Habitica team might be biased, but we love all our children equally. Warrior, Rogue, Healer, Mage — they all have their own advantages, and the choice is down to what suits you best and what you find motivating. Do you want to do massive damage in Quests? Or are you more interested in hoarding all the Gold you possibly can?
To make your choice a little easier, this month’s Use Case Spotlight is going to highlight how other users get the most of the Warrior Class!
Monstershaped extols the virtues of the Warrior class, especially for those who love critical hits!
I’m a lvl 111 Warrior – used to be a Mage but found that as a Mage I was leveling a bit too quickly (and doing too much damage via skills) to keep things interesting for me. I really like the Warrior class because I’m in a solo party and gain a lot of motivation from the grinding necessary to complete quests, which the warrior class is great for! As a Warrior you can do enough damage per hit to see meaningful progress with bosses but not so much that you’re able to do a full quest in a single day, which was a big problem for me as a Mage – if I can decimate a boss in the first few hours of my daily routine there isn’t that feeling of down to the wire excitement that comes when you’re hoping that checking off your nightly dailies will be enough to let you start a new quest before you fall asleep! (I try to use brutal smash as sparingly as I can because as mentioned I’m all about that grind ❤ .) I’d strongly recommend classing into Warrior for people who struggle with habits in particularly – nothing sets up a positive behavior loop more for me than hitting the + on my daily habits and seeing a critical hit land – and the high STR means even if you don’t crit your habits are still really impactful – really really impactful if you’re using skills.
EvergreenCash has a plan for how to use the Warrior Class to deal big damage by maximizing both Strength and Intelligence to make the best use of a unique Warrior Skill:
I have split my stat points evenly between STR and INT and this seems to work well for dealing big damage and leveling up. Before my party grew to 7 members, we had two warriors and each of us could hit for 300 – 800 each day with Brutal Smash.
Rosemara elaborates a bit on how they use the Warrior skills to the best advantage:
Skills: I reserve Brutal Smash for boss fights or when I think a habit is about to change to a more positive color, e.g. from yellow to green. Based on the wiki, I’ve learned that Valorous Presence is useful even outside of boss fights because critical hits also increase the other items awarded. I use defensive stance on myself when I know I might have a less productive day, but don’t want to go into the inn. I have heard that Intimidating gaze is not as useful as the other spells because it doesn’t reduce boss damage, but I have cast it a couple of times if I suspect that my party is about to take damage from their missed dailies or bad habits.
This month’s focus was on Warriors, but if you’re still not sold on them, don’t worry! The next Use Case Spotlight will focus on another Class. If you’re interested in reading everyone’s tips and tricks, not just the edited highlights here, check out the Use Case Spotlights Guild! Don’t forget, if you chip in on the next discussion, you could find your own post highlighted in next month’s Spotlight!
For long-term users of Habitica, there can come a time when you’ve become a Beast Master, then a Mount Master, and you’ve Rebirthed twice, and you’ve done every Quest… and suddenly things aren’t so motivating anymore. That can just mean it’s time to change things up! We asked users to tell us how they keep things interesting in “endgame” (however you define that).
OverWHATHill?! starts us off with their perspective as a Habitican of five years(!) standing:
I have changed class twice now, having hit level 100 in Warrior and something ridiculous (over 300, I think) in Mage. I’m now doing Rogue, and will switch to Healer after hitting 100 here.
Other than that, I am maintaining a not-yet-recognized achievement of having acquired all the non-unique pets and mounts, i.e. those that do not depend on having been there in the very earliest days of HabitRPG. It took me over 2 years of focused effort to do that, BTW. I also collect backgrounds and keep up with the Enchanted Armoire’s special items.
One other thing that helps keep me interested is Beastmasters, the party to which I belong. The older I get, the more interesting I find other people, and I’ve been in this party long enough to know a little about some of the other members.
Little Alpaca had various pieces of advice, but here’s one in particular that stood out:
Try new things in real life : If I’m starting to get bored in Habitica, maybe it’s a sign I’m getting bored in real life. Starting a new sport, a new creative project, or learning a new language are good ways to keep real life, and Habitica, fun and new. Challenge yourself !
WrongHandedGuy has some thoughts on customizing your Habitica experience to keep things interesting:
I’ve been using Habitica since 2016, and I’ve achieved what is “endgame”, I think? Anyway, I was off for a while due to finishing all the quests and most of the medals. I came back since I function better with a list of daily tasks, and I was introduced to the “Hard Mode” guild, where people create their own game modes, in a sense, such as the “You are Poisoned” challenge. I’ve started working on my own recently, where I’ve developed an NPC sparring partner. I’m still polishing the details, but basically, I’ve made a hard level habit where I hit the plus or minus daily depending on if I had a perfect day or not. If I have to hit the minus, I get “mugged” for 10 gold (not the most honorable training buddy, but whatever). If I lose all my money, I have to release all my mounts with the kennel key. With that in mind, I suppose a win condition would be to finish all the mounts without losing them.
And finally, BardoVelho shares how they keep things interesting by linking their in-game events — like hatching Pets — to their day-to-day achievements, like completing tough Dailies:
Hatching pets is now an act for special celebration instead of just a collection thing, because I share them along with special achievements in my Twitter: that is, if I complete a special achievement, I hatch a pet or grow it into a mount. I register my small and big achievements, and even struggles, epiphanies, and any other Habitica personal and game mechanics changes, in my dedicated Twitter account that I use as Diary (I also have a Tumblr account for bigger reports).
That doesn’t cover all the advice people gave by a long chalk, so please do hop into the Guild and check out everyone’s advice! We hope this helps you figure out how to keep things interesting and perhaps add a bit of spice back into your Habitican routine!
If you’re interested in possibly being featured in one of these posts, check out the Use Case Spotlights Guild and let us know what you think on each month’s topic! The theme for next month’s post will be announced soon.
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’s highlighted article is about the Enchanted Armoire! If you haven’t met this charismatic piece of furniture before, you’ve been missing out on the opportunity to get new Equipment and extra food items… and on the chance to wrestle with it (careful, it plays dirty!) for Experience to help you level up. Designed to offer new equipment every month, the Enchanted Armoire is a great way to keep things interesting when you’ve got all your Class gear! The Wiki has all the info:
The Enchanted Armoire is a reward that is permanently available to all players as of October 25, 2016. It costs 100 gold each time to open. (Previously, it only became available to players after they had earned an Ultimate Gear achievement.) Note that using the Armoire will award the player a piece of special equipment, experience, or food; however, the Armoire itself will not appear in players’ inventories.
You can read the full article on the Wiki! There’s even a table with all the items you could earn by using the Enchanted Armoire… and it’s not all serious adventuring gear: we’re big fans of sillier items like the Paper Bag and the Comical Arrow!
Habitica has a vibrant community, and new Guilds arise all the time. This year, we’re highlighting some of the newer or smaller Guilds which may not get as much traffic as Guilds that are higher up in the list. All of these Guilds have had recent activity and have a minimum number of members; they’re probably a bit quieter than more established Guilds, but they have the potential to grow. Spot something that sounds right up your alley? You know what to do!
Society of Old Books: Forever intending to get round to the classics of literature? This Guild is here to do it with you! With new management and a challenge to get reading Gulliver’s Travels, this Guild is all ready to welcome new people in.
Poets: If you have a way with words (or you’d like to have a way with words!), then this might just be the Guild for you. Hang out with other poets, share what you’ve been writing, and maybe even help each other out with constructive critiques.
The Noun-Verb-Adjective Challenge Guild: If you’re learning a new language, you need to practice, right? Using your new skill is the only way to level up. Well, this Guild is a space to share your efforts and practice your wordslinging. Check out the Challenges for inspiration!
If any of these Guilds appeals to you, then you can jump straight in, join and post. If not, check out previous Guild Spotlights, or wait for next month’s post with a whole new selection!
Hello Habiticans! Today we’re going to take a journey into the exciting world of butterfly gardening with Habitica’s resident amateur lepidopterist, Beffymaroo!
How Beffymaroo sees herself!
You may have heard, particularly if you’re in the U.S., that one of the world’s most iconic insects is in trouble. Monarch butterfly populations have dropped a lot in recent years.There are many reasons, but one of the biggest is habitat loss in areas where the butterflies lay their eggs and where the caterpillars feed.
If you’d like to help the Monarch, as well as other pollinators like bees, plus have a lot of fun watching nature unfold at your own home, read on for a basic guide to starting your own butterfly garden.
This will mostly be geared toward Monarch butterflies, which are best known from North America. They make their famous migration across the continent to overwintering grounds in Mexico, the U.S. Gulf coast, and the coast of California. Monarchs and their cousins are also found throughout Central and South America, and significant numbers of Monarchs also overwinter and breed in Puerto Rico, Cuba, New Zealand, Indonesia, Australia, Hawaii, and other Caribbean and Pacific islands where suitable food plants grow (in many places these plants are introduced rather than native- more on that later). The basic concepts of cultivating safe food plants for caterpillars as well as nectar flowers for the adult butterflies should be applicable to many species!
Overwintering butterflies in California- they huddle together to stay warm! Photo from wildlife.ca.gov
First, you need to find a good spot for your plants. If you have a yard or garden space, perfect! If not, many types of milkweed (the monarchs’ food plant) and flowers will also thrive in containers. My garden is a collection of potted plants on a concrete patio- a little urban nature oasis!
Before you purchase any plants or seeds, research what types of milkweed and flowers are native to your area. The most commonly sold milkweed plants in U.S. nurseries and garden stores is Tropical Milkweed, Asclepias curassavica. Some folks will tell you it’s straight-up bad for Monarchs because in warm regions it artificially extends their breeding season, and it can harbor disease since it doesn’t die back in winter. Tropical milkweed grows fast, does well in containers, and has beautiful flowers that butterflies love. If you choose to grow it, especially if you live in a region where it doesn’t dip below freezing, cut it back to a few inches above the ground twice a year. This helps prevent it from spreading invasively, keeps it from causing out-of-season breeding, and will stop it from accumulating pathogens that can hurt the caterpillars and butterflies. It will grow new fresh foliage with a little time!
Native plants will generally grow better in your climate and be easier to care for. While my garden has a lot of tropical milkweed because of availability (and because it seeds like crazy) I also have some natives and they tend to handle the weather and resist pests better than my tropical (I’m trying to clone this type from cuttings so I can eventually replace my tropical). Not sure what type of milkweed or wildflowers are native to your area? The Xerces Society (an organization dedicated to the preservation of invertebrates) has really helpful lists of pollinator garden plants for every region of the United States as well as some other countries- these lists also include native milkweeds. They also have a guide for sourcing seeds, if you’re unable to obtain plants at local nurseries or by getting natives and their seeds from the wild.
A big word of caution: if you choose to buy full-grown plants you should do some research and talk to the nursery or store’s plant buyer to ensure that the plants have not been treated with any kind of pesticide. Even organic or “pollinator safe” pesticides that are supposedly safe for bees and butterflies will kill caterpillars that eat the leaves. I learned this the hard way after buying milkweed from a local organic nursery and watching twenty of my caterpillars pass away as it had been treated with organic pesticide. Not fun, do not recommend.
The best time to start a butterfly garden is before the butterflies arrive! In regions where it freezes, sow native milkweed seed before winter as it requires some time in frozen ground to germinate. If it’s warmer where you live, start your plants in winter or early spring so they’ll be ready for earlier butterfly arrivals. Monarchbutterflygarden.nethas a great guide to planting and caring for many commonly grown varieties of milkweed and nectar flowers. There are also some very helpful groups available on social networks for Monarch enthusiasts and pollinator gardeners, especially on Facebook. They’re great places to ask questions and get answers quickly!
When will the butterflies find you? This depends on where you live on the migration route. To make sure they spot your garden, have lots of flowers to feed the hungry adults and a group of six or more milkweed plants for females to lay their eggs.
The monarch life cycle is fascinating to watch- and lots of fun! I bring a few eggs inside to watch the caterpillars grow and make their chrysalides while safe from the many predators of the milkweed jungle. In the wild, 95-99% of caterpillars don’t survive to the adult stage. That’s not an issue of human intervention or an especially dangerous garden- that’s just how it is! The survival strategy for most insects is “have as many babies as possible so a handful make it”- hence Monarch females lay up to 300 eggs each!
Most researchers say that raising Monarchs indoors like this is something you should do for fun rather than as a conservation effort- it’s possible butterflies raised indoors, once released, may have disadvantages in survival compared to their counterparts that grew up in the wild outdoors. Keep in mind that providing outdoor habitat (along with generally trying to live sustainably) is the most important thing you can do to help their populations.
Recommendations I’ve seen on how many butterflies per household per year scientists say it’s OK to raise indoors without potentially weakening the wild population range from ten to one hundred. As you will read later on, they eat A LOT so definitely start small, especially if your garden is new and you don’t have large stocks of wild milkweed you can get food from.
Every step of the Monarch life cycle is dependent on temperature- the numbers I give here are for warm summer conditions (65 F and up). In the winter, their life cycle can take much longer!
Can I offer you a nice egg in this trying time?
Monarch eggs are very very tiny! They’re about the size of the head of a pin. You’ll often find them on the undersides of leaves (especially new leaves) and on flowers and flower buds.
In 3 to 5 days, the eggs will hatch into tiny caterpillars. At first, the holes they’re chewing in the leaves will be easier to see than the little guys themselves.
Monarch caterpillars, like all invertebrates, have an exoskeleton. It doesn’t grow with them- to get bigger they have to shed their skin. Monarch caterpillars shed their skin five times before they make a chrysalis, and the growth period in between molts is called an “instar.”
On the left, a fourth-instar caterpillar beginning to molt. On the right, his big fifth-instar brother who can’t let him just molt in peace. They are one day apart in age and look at the size difference!
While they shed their skin, the caterpillars will stay still for 12-48 hours. Don’t panic that they’re not moving or eating during this time! Also they definitely look weird while this is happening.
After they shed their skin (which they usually eat later), their old “faceplate” will also pop off.
A macro shot of a discarded face!
By the end of their final instar they’ve increased in size 2000 times! This is why it’s good to try to keep smaller newer caterpillars in a separate raising area from the large ones. Eggs and hatchlings can be accidentally eaten by the big guys.
Image of Monarch instars from monarchconservation.orgThey also produce a lot of… waste to clean up.
This is what I like to refer to as the “they’re eating me out of house and home” stage. You’d really be amazed how much food they can put away. One caterpillar can eat an entire average-sized tropical milkweed plant all by itself! So do keep that in mind when considering taking them inside, where they are more likely to survive to adulthood and need all that food.
Once they’ve gotten to their maximum size, the caterpillars wander around for 24 hours or so, then find a spot to make a button of silk for their chrysalis. After they make the button, they’ll anchor their rear end to it and then hang upside down in a “J” shape for 24-48 hours.
As opposed to a cocoon, which is spun from silk and other materials (and more of a moth thing), Monarchs become a chrysalis- it’s really just another molt! But a really weird one where they turn into a strange green wiggling blob that then hardens into a more recognizable chrysalis. Here’s a YouTube video showing this process in time-lapse(maybe not something to watch if you’re particularly squeamish about bugs).
Inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar has essentially turned into a weird magic soup that’s going to re-assemble into an adult butterfly over the next 8-12 days.
As the time comes for them to emerge, the chrysalis will start to darken – soon you’re be able to see the familiar orange and black pattern of the wings through it!
Within 12-48 hours of the chrysalis darkening, the butterfly will break through the chrysalis (in essence, this is their final molt!). It will spend a few minutes pumping fluid from its abdomen into its wings to inflate them to the proper shape.
It takes a minimum of two hours for the butterfly to be properly “dry” and ready to go. I recommend releasing them as soon as possible after that as they tend to get unhappy pretty quickly when they’re confined. If it’s cold or raining hard, it’s OK to wait a day or so.
The complete life cycle of one of my b-flies.
It’s always a little sad to say goodbye, but it’s an amazing feeling to send a beautiful and beneficial creature out into the world. Especially if you watched their whole journey from tiny egg to hungry caterpillar to weird chrysalis to gorgeous butterfly!
I hope you had fun learning more about one of my favorite hobbies since my childhood! I’m linking a few more favorite resources below. Have fun learning about and helping pollinators. If you’d like to chat in Habitica about your butterfly gardening experience, please check out the Lovers of Lepidopterans Guild!
Other butterflies in the Milkweed butterfly family- a lot of them are based in Asia and Africa and their host plants there include popular ornamental plants such as Crown Flower (Calotropis gigantea): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danaus_(genus)
(Note though you don’t have to to buy all the things this person recommends. Most florists will give you a few bud tubes for free if you explain what you’re doing with them. Egg cartons make great stands for the tubes and an aquarium or converted pop-up hamper is a fine cage. There’s tons of informative guides that can be found on the internet!)
A very well-established Monarch garden in the U.S. can be certified by Monarch Watch as an official Monarch Waystation! You can even get a nifty sign. https://monarchwatch.org/waystations/index.html
You may have heard about tagging butterflies to help scientists learn more about Monarch populations and migration habits. Different U.S. regions have different tagging programs:
I post regular updates on my Monarchs on my Instagram account! Here in southern California, I see them nearly all year round, but mainly in March through October.
It’s all very well to have a meticulously laid out set of Dailies, but that’s no good if you find they’re getting out of date! It’s important to take a step back sometimes and figure out if your tasks are really pointing at your goals, or whether they’ve got a bit stale or even pointless. This Use Case Spotlight is all about how people keep their task lists fresh, evaluating whether Habits are still working and whether that To Do still really needs to be done!
Dagger-13 started us off with some advice from the College Info Geek Podcast, and how they apply it to Habitica:
Martin from the College Info Geek Podcast has spoken a few times about how he only sets daily ‘to dos’ for two weeks at a time. At the end of the two weeks he evaluates his tasks and decides which ones to continue, which to drop and any new ones to introduce. I think this is a good way of keeping the daily task list fresh and relevant while also allowing for a certain level of ‘routine’ to kick in (reducing the brain power required to carry out all of the daily tasks and freeing it up for other things).
Lawmancer has some thoughts on the importance of adapting what you’re doing:
I also have to adapt to what is currently happening in my life. Once something becomes a solid habit that I don’t think about, I can switch it out for something new. I have different things I want to learn (various reasons), which can be either dailies or habits. My exercise goals can change as I work on different things (muscle groups or more cardio and less strength training, that sort of thing.) And I have temporary tasks. For example, being spring, yard work is a focus, but that comes to a dead halt in summer. (I’m from Alaska. I don’t do heat. So yard work will go from daily, to weekly, to none during the winter.)
Kate the Great has a whole system:
I have a different theme (I’m not sure that’s the best word) for each day. Monday is my planning day, so that’s when I evaluate tasks in Habitica (along with other stuff). I started out trying to have a habit for everything because I wanted points for everything. I think, “It counts, so I should get points for it.”
Then, all of the habits and tasks started to overwhelm me, so I decided to get rid of a lot of them and just add a “bonus points” habit so that I still get points for everything.
Now I just try to have one habit that I’m trying to add at a time. When I get good enough, I can add another one.
My dailies are just anything That I can schedule reliably every week/day. They are also a lot more forceful in my mind. I think, “I have to do it because it’s a daily.”
And Dan O’Dea boiled it down to three super simple points:
[T]he bottom line for me in reviewing and evaluating my tasks pretty much boils down to three things.
Combine similar tasks using checklists within a single task.
Eliminate tasks that are no longer relevant.
Challenges add tasks to your own.
That doesn’t cover the whole discussion, so if you’re looking for ideas, do check out the Use Case Spotlights Guild! You could be featured in next month’s Use Case Spotlight if you join the Guild and post something relevant to the current theme, so keep an eye out for the next prompt so you can add your own tips and tricks.
Habitica has a vibrant community, and new Guilds arise all the time. This year, we’re highlighting some of the newer or smaller Guilds which may not get as much traffic as Guilds that are higher up in the list. All of these Guilds have had recent activity and have a minimum number of members; they’re probably a bit quieter than more established Guilds, but they have the potential to grow. Spot something that sounds right up your alley? You know what to do!
Podcasters: Love listening to podcasts? Have one of your own? This Guild is for both listeners and creators, and there’s opportunities to join in with challenges, chat about your favorites, get new recommendations… There’s something for all podcast enthusiasts here!
Cynophiles: If you can’t resist petting every puppy you see, this Guild is a good place to find like-minded people. It’s also a good place to get practical advice and share your frustrations if your pup just won’t learn to sit.
Death and Taxes: If you’re worried about the only sure things in life, this Guild is a good place to hang out and talk about ridiculous official paperwork and getting your taxes filed on time. Everyone has to do it, so why not share tips and support one another!
If any of these Guilds appeals to you, then you can jump straight in, join and post. If not, check out previous Guild Spotlights, or wait for next month’s post with a whole new selection!
