Challenges

Challenges are community events in which players compete and earn prizes by completing a group of related tasks (e.g., "Get Fit Challenge", "Stop Smoking"). Challenges can be found under the Social tab (direct link).

Challenges can be site-wide (under the Tavern group) or exclusive to a guild or party. Party-exclusive challenges are not available to non-party members.

Anyone can create or join a challenge under the Tavern, their parties, and/or the guilds to which they belong. Players can create any type of challenge consisting of whatever tasks best suit their needs. The creator decides when the challenge ends, and must choose a winner upon closing the challenge.

Obvious uses
 * Public competitions
 * Topical guild competitions (reading, writing, health, etc.)

Less obvious uses
 * Syllabus of homework and reading assignments for classrooms
 * Progress-monitoring by leaders of local groups
 * Addiction cessation groups



Finding and Browsing Challenges
Challenges are located under the Social tab, located in the top left corner of the website, beside the User and Inventory tabs. Clicking on "Challenges" will bring up a list of challenges that you can participate in (see image below).

The challenges are ordered so that those created by staff and moderators appear first, sorted by date with the newest at the top; all other challenges appear afterwards, again sorted by date with the newest at the top. While you cannot sort by date directly, you might wish to look at the top of the page first; then, when you start to find challenges that are too old, skip down a bit until you find the set of challenges not created by staff or moderators in order to find the most current challenges from that set.

Filtering Challenges
When you are on the Challenges tab, note the grey box to the left hand side of the list of challenges titled "Filter". The filter box allows you to sort the list in three ways.
 * To see challenges specific to the Tavern, one of your guilds, or your party, select the desired group under the "Groups" filter.
 * Use the "Membership" filter to view all your current challenges, or to find a new challenge you haven't yet joined.
 * The "Ownership" filter will let you display the challenges that you have created or those of which you are not the owner.

The first filter heading is "Groups". Click the "All" button to see all of the available challenges. The Tavern box will be automatically checked. Additionally, the party and guild(s) that you belong to will be listed under "Groups". You can to filter to challenges that are available for a particular group (i.e., the Tavern, meaning the challenge is open to all, or a guild or party, meaning the challenge is only available to members). If a check box is ticked next to a party or guild name, then the challenges from that party or guild will be displayed. If all check boxes are ticked, then the challenges from all those parties and guilds will be displayed, in addition to the Tavern challenges. By clicking "All", you will select all the boxes under Groups, whereby clicking "None" will deselect (or un-tick) all the boxes.

The next heading is "Membership". This section allows you to filter to only the challenges that you are participating in, not participating in, or both. Hence, if you select "Participating", then the list of challenges would only show those challenges that you have already joined. If you have not joined any challenges, you will not see anything listed when "Participating" is selected.

The "Groups" and "Membership" filters work in conjunction with each other. Therefore, if you only want to see Tavern challenges that you have not joined yet, then you would un-tick all other boxes under "Groups" except for "Tavern" and tick the "Not Participating" box under "Membership."

The third filter is "Ownership". This section allows you to see only those challenges that you have created, or only challenges that you have not created. It also works with the other two filters to further refine your search.

Viewing Challenge Details
To see more information about individual challenges, click on the challenge title link. Details about the challenge will appear, including the challenge description; the Habits, Dailies, To-Dos, and Rewards involved; and the Habitica members that have already joined the challenge (under the "How's Everyone Doing?" section).

To collapse the displayed challenge details, click on any challenge title.

Participant Progress
Clicking on a member's username in the "How's Everyone Doing?" section brings up a pop-up box that shows the member's progress on challenge tasks only. None of their personal tasks outside of the challenge will be displayed. In the image to the right, the "Say Hello in Tavern" Daily is greyed out, which means that this member has completed that task.

Note the difference in color of the user-specific tasks in comparison to the main challenge join page. The more orange color of the To-Dos indicates that this member has not completed these tasks for a long time.

This pop-up box can be closed by clicking the grey "x" in the upper right hand corner.

Contacting a Participant
You can contact a challenge participant by clicking on one of the three boxes in the bottom left hand corner of the pop-up box that appears after you click their username.
 * The headshot button will show your their profile, which shows stats and achievements.
 * The email button will let you send them a private message.
 * The giftbox icon will let you send them a gift. This could be useful in the case of a tie, as the challenge creator might like to award additional gems to a participant other than the challenge winner.

Joining and Participating in Challenges
If you decide to join a challenge, click the green "Join" button. The Habits, Dailies, To-Dos, and Rewards of that challenge will be automatically added to your own lists.

Should you accidentally join a challenge, or wish to leave the challenge, return to the challenges page and click the red "Leave" button that has replaced the "Join" button.

Challenge tasks will have a megaphone icon in the upper right corner to distinguish them from your personal tasks, and will be flagged with a specific tag as defined by the creator of the challenge (see challenge tags below).

To participate in the challenges that you have joined, all you have to do is complete the tasks with the megaphone icon.

Editing User Tasks
If a challenge requires participants to add extra notes or checklist items to a task, each participant must edit those tasks in their own Tasks tab. Any edits made to a challenge through the "How's Everyone Doing?" by selecting your username and then opening the task editor will not be saved, despite the presence of a "Save & Close" button. This is to prevent users from editing each other's tasks.

Day of Rest with No Damage
If you need a day of rest and don't want to take damage for unchecked Dailies during a challenge, you can add a checklist to a challenge Daily with one item and tick that item on days when you don't want to do the Daily but don't deserve punishment for it. Streaks are lost, and no XP and GP are gained, but no health is lost.

Challenge Participant's Permissions
When participating in a challenge, a player has a limited amount of options for the tasks in the challenge. A challenge is meant to be accepted "as is" from the creator.

The participant can:
 * Add/edit checklists for a challenge (this only changes that one player's task). The challenge creator cannot see the checklist.
 * Add/edit notes on a challenge task (this only changes that one player's task). The challenge creator can view changes made to the Notes section.
 * Assign personal tags to the challenge tasks (this only makes changes to that one player).

The participant cannot make any other changes.

Communicating with Challenge Creator
A player can communicate with the challenge creator by private message. Go to the Challenges page, find the challenge, and click on the creator's name to view their profile, which will have a private message icon at the bottom.

Public messages can also be sent to the challenge creator in the guild that the challenge is associated with; however it is not guaranteed that the creator will see them.

Creating a Challenge
To create a challenge, click the "Create Challenge" button and then specify which one of your groups can access it. Only members in the specified group will be able to view or join the challenge. Please note that you cannot change this after the challenge is created, so double check that you have selected the correct group.

After selecting the group, enter the challenge title, a tag name (which will be applied to all tasks in the challenge) and a description for your challenge.

Specify how many gems the winner will receive. Tavern challenges require a prize of at least one gem. You must have at least one gem in your inventory to create a Tavern challenge. Prizes for private (Guild or Party) challenges are optional.

'Please note: you won't be able to change the prize after the challenge is posted. The amount of gems you specify as a prize is taken from your account when the challenge is saved and those gems won't be refunded if you decide to close the challenge with no winner. To reclaim the gems if you want to cancel the challenge, you must declare yourself the winner.'

Next, create the Habits, Dailies, To-Dos, and/or Rewards you want to include in your challenge; these will be shared with everyone who joins.

Click "Save" to add your challenge.

If you think many other players would enjoy your challenge, you can advertise it in The Bulletin Board guild.

Cloning a Challenge
If you are the owner of an open challenge, you can copy it using the Clone button. This is extremely useful for creating a recurring challenge. The new, cloned challenge will have the the same information (name, description, prize, tasks) pre-populated, so the challenge creator can adjust only as needed.

Cloning a challenge (and closing the original) is also useful for older challenges: old challenges, especially those with a large number of participants, can encounter the "Entity too large" error. This error makes the challenge difficult to join, leave, edit, or close. Cloning and closing the challenge annually (or more frequently if it has a large number of participants) prevents this error.

Challenge Creator's Permissions
There are certain things that a challenge creator can and can't do.

The creator can:
 * Add the tasks for the challenge
 * Set the title of a task
 * Set the extra notes of a task (the participants can edit this text)
 * Define the difficulty of a task
 * Define a habit as a negative, positive, or negative-positive habit
 * Set the days of the week a daily task is to be active on
 * Define a due date for a To-Do
 * Add and remove tasks at will

The creator cannot:
 * Set/edit the progress of the participant's tasks
 * Add a checklist to a task (however, individual participants can do this)

Tip: When a challenge creator wants there to be a specific checklist on a task, they can create a To-Do that describes the checklist, and then each participant can follow those instructions.

Editing a Challenge
Once you have created a challenge, you may want to change the title, description, tag, or tasks. To edit the challenge, click on its title. Two buttons will appear under the challenge; the white Edit button and the orange End Challenge button.

Clicking the Edit button will open fields where you can change the challenge's title, tag, or description. Type in the new values.

You can also modify any tasks associated with the challenge.

When you're finished with your changes, click the blue Save button. You will need to refresh the page to see your changes. Any modifications you've made to the challenge will propagate through the tags and task lists of the participants. (However, if a task had notes to start with, and the challenge creator removes them, anyone who signed up when the notes existed will still have the notes.)

Staff and Moderators' Permissions
Staff and moderators are able to edit, delete, and close challenges, as well as declare a winner if they so choose. The potential scenarios in which they would use these privileges include (but are not limited to):
 * If a challenge violates the Community Guidelines or Terms of Service, an administrator might edit or delete the challenge, depending on the severity of the infraction.
 * If a challenge contains only minor violations, an administrator will only edit it if the challenge owner does not respond to an edit request within a reasonable timeframe.
 * If a challenge has been open for a long time, appears to be abandoned, and is not useful to other players, an admin will delete or close it. (A challenge that is left open indefinitely for a legitimate reason will not be closed.)

Challenge Tags
Most challenges have a tag specific to that challenge. These challenge tags are purple and include a megaphone icon so you can differentiate between your own tags and those of accepted challenges. By clicking on these challenge tags, you'll see which tasks are related to a particular challenge.

You can also add Habits, Dailies, To-Dos, or Rewards to these challenge tags if you have personal tasks that are related to that challenge's allocated tag. Adding your own tasks to a challenge tag does not make them part of the challenge for others to use or see. For example, if you join the challenge highlighted in the image, you could add an extra task under this challenge tag called "Complete the challenge". However, no one else participating in this challenge would see your added task, nor would this task count as being part of the official challenge.

When a challenge is over, the megaphone icon disappears and the tag will look like a regular tag.

Challenge Tags Remaining after Leaving a Challenge
After a player leaves a challenge, the challenge tag that was associated with it is not deleted and will remain alongside other existing tags. This is deliberately done to allow players who might want to use the challenge tag for their own tasks or who want to leave the challenge tasks in their task lists after they have left the challenge, to be able to do so if they wish. For either case, automatically deleting the challenge tag after leaving a challenge would be inconvenient for the players involved.

If you wish to delete a challenge tag or any other tag, you can do so by clicking "edit" next to your tags and then clicking the trash can icon on the tag.

Sharing a Challenge
Each challenge has a unique identifier that is a string of letters and numbers. The challenge identifier can be found by clicking on the challenge. Then, your browser address bar will contain a URL that looks like this: https://habitica.com/#/options/groups/challenges/c6839e9a-6e2d-419a-b009-f4466c486647. This is the link that can be used to share your challenge. You can post this link in the Tavern or other public places on Habitica to invite other players to join. (If it is a guild challenge, they will need to join your guild first before joining the challenge.)

When a player clicks the challenge link, they will see the description and tasks for that challenge only. If they want to return to view all available challenges, they can click the blue "Back to all challenges" button.

Leaving a Challenge
To leave a challenge, click the red "Leave" button. A pop-up window will open, giving you the options to remove the associated tasks, keep them, or cancel.

You can rejoin the challenge if you so choose.

If you leave a challenge but forget to click the option for removing tasks, or if you did select that option but the tasks remain, rejoin the challenge and then leave it again, being careful to select the desired option.

If, after creating a challenge, you do not want the tasks to remain on your list, but wish to leave the challenge open to others, simply leave the challenge without closing it. The challenge can still be accessed as normal, and you will be able to find it in the "owned" section of the challenge list.

Closing a Challenge
Currently, there is no option to set an end date when creating a challenge. The challenge deadline is at the creator's discretion and a challenge can continue indefinitely. Only the creator can end the challenge.

To end your challenge, click the "End Challenge" button under your challenge's name. You will be given the option to delete the challenge without choosing a winner (if you do this to a challenge that has a gem prize, the gems will be permanently lost). Otherwise, select a winner (which can be yourself) from the drop-down menu. Challenges can have only one winner. If you would like to award a second prize, you can create a second challenge with the same name after the first one closes, invite the second place winner to join, and then end the challenge in favor of that person.

If you are not sure who to select as the winner, consider downloading data from the challenge by clicking the blue "Export to CSV" button at the bottom right hand corner of your challenge. This can help in a few ways: These factors may help you eliminate users from the running.
 * The old HabitRPG app allowed users to delete tasks even if those tasks were a part of a challenge. If a user has deleted a task that was a part of your challenge, it will be apparent on the CSV.
 * If the challenge includes a To-Do that requires more than one day to complete (e.g., "Achieve a 14-day streak on the challenge Daily") and a user has a score of 0 or 1 on that To-Do, it means one of the following: they were resting in the Inn for the duration of the challenge, they checked off that To-Do on their first day participating in the challenge (i.e., they cheated), or they simply have not used Habitica since the day they joined the challenge.
 * Users who have been resting in the Inn without checking off any challenge tasks will have a score on required Dailies that is the same as all their other scores.
 * Users who have not completed a required Daily very often (but have not been resting in the Inn) will have a negative score on that Daily.

If you are still not sure who to select as the winner, consider counting how many users remain in the running (again, the CSV is useful for this) and using a random number generator such as the one at random.org to select a random user. If the challenge required completion of certain To-Dos, you may want to click that user's name under the challenge's details to verify that they have checked those off. If the challenge contains any To-Dos that you can personally verify were completed, such as "Post about your experience in the guild chat", you may also want to verify that the user completed these To-Dos before assigning them as the winner.

Once challenges are closed, they are deleted and cannot be retrieved.

Collecting a Challenge Prize
If you are lucky or talented enough to win a challenge, two things will happen. First, if the challenge awards gems as a prize, these will automatically be added to your gem count. Second, even if no gem prize was given, you'll still receive a beautiful achievement badge! All challenge achievements, even those from private guilds or parties, can be proudly displayed on your profile.

Deleting a Challenge Task
To delete tasks from a challenge that has not yet finished, you need to leave the challenge.

To delete tasks when a challenge has finished, click on the broken megaphone that says "Broken Challenge Link" and it will ask you whether you want to keep the task. If you click "Remove Tasks" and the tasks remain, reload the page and they will then disappear.

If the challenge appears to no longer exist but you don't have a broken megaphone yet, try checking off any Habit, Daily, or To-Do that belongs to the challenge, then reload Habitica. That should sync your task list with the server and turn the megaphone into the broken megaphone icon.

In some cases, you might need to repeat those actions a few times, possibly over several hours, before the broken megaphone icon appears (e.g., if your first attempt doesn't work, wait a few hours and try again; then if necessary, try again the next morning, and then a few hours after that).

In the case of To-Dos, which disappear once clicked and may reappear the next day, try going to the Done tab of the To-Dos list and then uncheck (undo) them to make the megaphone appear.

You might find that you can delete challenge tasks using the Mobile app even if you can't delete them on the website.

If the broken megaphone icon has still not appeared after you've tried these suggestions for two days, report the problem by using the "Report a Bug" link from the Habitica website's Help menu.

Spread the Word Challenges
During the Winter Wonderland 2013-2014 event, Habitica released its first official challenge, known as the Spread the Word Challenge. For a first-place prize of 100 gems, and a second-place prize of 80 gems, the challenge included only 1 To-Do: post about Habitica on your blog or social media page. The winner, chosen on January 31, 2014, was determined by who received the highest number of likes, comments, retweets, etc., on each post. A second edition of this challenge, titled Spread the World Challenge 2015, ran from December 31st, 2014 to January 31st, 2015, with the same rules.

Back-to-School Advice Challenge
On September 12, 2014, Habitica launched a second official challenge, the Back-to-School Advice Challenge: use social media to tell how you use Habitica to improve study habits, share stories of scholarly success with the app, or just give your advice on using Habitica to be the best you can be. The contest ended on September 30th, and 20 randomly selected winners each received 60 gems.

A second version of this annual challenge was announced on August 27, 2015, and ended on September 27th. In this case, 10 winners were selected randomly from the set of posts with at least 5 notes/upvotes/likes/etc., with a 30 gem prize for each winner.

Community Costume Challenge
The Community Costume Challenge ran throughout the month of October 2014. In this challenge, any participants who dressed up as their Habitica Avatars in real life and posted a picture on social media received a "2014 Costume Challenge" badge.

The Community Costume Challenge ran again throughout the month of October 2015. In this challenge, any participants who dressed up as their Habitica Avatars in real life and posted a picture on social media received a "Costume Contestant" badge. The participating costumes will be posted on the Habitica blog!

Name the Gryphon
The Name the Gryphon challenge was launched on July 31, 2015, the inaugural Habitica Naming Day. Between then and August 10, over 1600 players submitted names for the Royal Purple Gryphon that appears in Habitica's new logo. A 30 gem prize was awarded to NobleTheSecond, who suggested the winning name "Melior", and a secondary prize was given to TangyDragonBBQ, who independently submitted a slightly different variant of the same name.

Habitica Video Sharing Contest
The video sharing contest was announced on January 8, 2016, when Habitica released its first video commercial, and ended on January 31. To participate in this challenge, players could share the video on social media, then link to their shared posts in the notes of the challenge To-Do. A randomly-selected winner, Baggs98, received 25 gems.

Sticking to Your Resolutions Challenge
The Sticking to Your Resolutions Challenge was a companion challenge to a four-part series on the official Habitica blog on how to use Habitica to stick to your 2016 New Year’s Resolutions after the initial magic may have worn off. The companion challenge allowed participants to follow along with the tips as they were posted and gave them the chance to win 10 gems.

Mobile App Challenge
The Mobile App Challenge ran throughout the month of February 2016. To participate, users had to download and try out either iOS Mobile App or the Android Mobile App. 10 randomly-selected winners received 10 gems each.

Inappropriate Challenges
If you see a challenge that you believe contains inappropriate material (e.g., offensive content), please email leslie@habitica.com (Lemoness) to report it to her (rather than mentioning it in the Tavern).

Tasks Created by a Challenge Can't Be Removed after It's Been Closed
If the challenge has too many participants, they may be unable to delete the tasks linked with the challenge after it has ended, as no "broken challenge link" alert is shown.

Solutions: Please see the Deleting a Challenge Task section on this page.

Challenges Sometimes Cannot be Joined/Left/Edited/Finished
Sometimes, if a challenge has too many participants, the challenge cannot be joined, left, edited, or finished.

Solutions: Occasionally, the problem will resolve itself after a few hours. You can also use the Join Challenge Form to join a challenge. If these options fail, comment on for assistance.

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