The Keep:Custom attributes

The Keep: Index > The Mage's Tower > Custom attributes

Example of custom attributes

Custom attributes are attributes  that can help you keep track of your more specific skills and hobbies. It can also be used to give yourself a little extra, depending on the level of your custom attributes and how useful you're planning to make it.

This system is useful for people who like the task-based allocation of attribute points system, but end up regretting that most of their points were spent on an attribute, which they have no need for. For example, a player could have tasks that mainly focus on CON, but the player does their dailies every day and hardly ever falls into bad habits. It’s also good for people who don’t want to be limited to a maximum of 100 points to spent, and want to have stats that can all surpass level 100 by continuously doing things that would improve that attribute.

Getting started

Example of editing a custom attribute.

First, you’ll need to create these Custom Attributes. Think of what skills or hobbies you want to practice and keep tracking. If you want to practice drawing, you can make a Directionless Habit and call it Art or Drawing. Choose for yourself how specific you want these attributes to be. You can have an attribute called Arm Muscles, focussing solely on your arms, or you can call the attribute Body or Fitness, so that it refers to working out in general. You can always change the names of your attributes later. You can even name it after Habitica's attributes (Strength, Constitution, Perception, and Intelligence), just make sure that it doesn't confuse you.

Once you have an attribute, you can edit it. Add ‘lv 1’ next to the title of your skill, and in the extra notes, write ‘0/150 xp’. This way, you’ll quickly see the levels of each of your skills, and by hovering over it, you’ll see your progression towards the next level. If you prefer, you can always add the level in the extra notes too, or even put the “experience bar” in the title and level in the extra notes. You can also add emoji’s in front of your attributes and every task that has effect on them. This will help you to quickly find the tasks you’ll need to do to improve a certain attribute.

Linking tasks to attributes

A positive habit linked to a custom attribute and the XP it earns for completing it.

Now that we have an attribute, with a level and number of experience points required to level up, let’s create tasks that would improve it. First, check if you don’t already have tasks that match this attribute. If your attribute is Hygiene and you have a daily for showering, change the title and add the emoji from your attribute if you got one. If you can’t change the title (because it's a challenge task), write the name of the matching attribute in the description of the task, along with how much XP you should earn for completing it.

Gaining attribute experience

Once completed, you may add the points to the experience points of your attribute. If the first number (the amount of points you've earned) is greater than the second number (the amount of points needed to level up), you can add 1 level to the attribute, subtract the second number from the first number , and with the remaining points, you can continue working towards your next level. Or you can choose to start with 0 XP when levelling up.

You can keep adding new custom attributes and new tasks for it.

List of custom attributes with the Attribute Header on the top.

Attribute Header

The purpose of the attribute header is to use the extra notes to keep track of valuable information regarding your custom attributes. This can be for things like how you calculate the XP you’ll need for which level, or maybe a link to this wiki page. It also works as a title to quickly find your custom attributes.

Tags

It is highly recommended to create a tag for Custom Attributes, and tag every task that has an influence on one of your attributes. By doing so, you can easily recover all your habits, dailies and to-do’s that will give you XP for a custom attribute.

Experience points

Choosing the amount you’ll get

Just like Custom rewards, you’ll have to decide for yourself how much experience points you should get for every task. If it’s a difficult task, you could give yourself a lot, and if it’s very easy, you should only give yourself a little. Write this number down in the extra notes of the tasks or in the title. Keep in mind that only you can see your custom attributes, so there’s no use in cheating.

You can also choose to give yourself XP depending on how much time you’ve spent doing something. For example, you went jogging for 30 minutes, you get 2 XP for Fitness for every minute  you're jogging, so you’ll get 60 XP in total.

Level up requirements

First you need to know how you want these attributes to progress:

• Should it get harder to reach the next level, or  

• do you always need the same amount of XP to level up?

In the first case, you should try to figure out how much harder it should get. You could take a number (like 50) and add it to the required XP every time you level up. Or use a math equation that works similarly to the one Habitica uses for levelling your character. You can also just use that equation or use the Experience Level Chart to decide your next requirements.
Hint: Write the equation or the link to the chart in the Attribute header.

In the second case, just choose a number that you think is enough to level up. This number will never need to change.

Boosters

Example of a booster.

In case you make it harder to level up an attribute each time you improve it, you may find it difficult to level up again at some point. You want to increase the XP you get, so that it becomes easier, but it feels like cheating. How do you get rid of that feeling? Buy boosters.

Add a custom reward (or multiple) in the Rewards column and give them an appropriate name. Give it a proper price and write in the description what this reward does. Here are some examples of what you can make these boosters do:

• Double XP gain for one (or all) attribute(s) today.

• +5 bonus XP when completing attribute-related tasks. 
• ...

You decide for yourself how you want these boosters to work and what price you need to pay. It is recommended to create these boosters so, that you still need to complete tasks to gain profit. For example, you can create a booster that gives you 100 points directly on a custom attribute for a reasonable amount. However, doing so, you could be at level 100 for fitness, but only gained more pounds since the moment you started using this system.

Additions

Up until now, we’ve discussed how Custom attributes work and how to organize everything, so that we have a lovely chart with our skills. Some players are satisfied with this; others may think there needs to be more to this. In this part, you’ll find some things you can do to make this system useful in Habitica.

Pools

Pools are custom rewards or directionless habits that can store Health, Experience, Mana and Gold for you, depending on the level of your Custom attributes. You can see these pools like a Gold bank. Let's grab an example to explain how this (could) work.

Let's say you have a these attributes: Body (for working out), Mind (for relaxation and stress-reduction), and Wisdom (for brain training). We could try to link these to our Health, Experience and Mana. In the image, you'll see that I've linked Body to Health, Mind to Mana, and Wisdom to Experience.

The idea now is to increase the value in these pools, whenever a certain condition is met. Keep reading for a few examples how to do so. Now, whenever you're low on Health, and have no way to heal yourself, you can use Fix Character Values to give yourself some health from your Blood pool, and subtract the number you've healed yourself for from the Blood pool. 

Here are a few ways of how you can fill these pools, along with an example. Figure out for yourself which one(s) you want to use, how much they fill the pool, and which attribute should fill which pool (HP, XP, Mana, Gold).

Daily filling

You can choose to fill your pools every day. Choose for yourself how much you should get, but try to keep it reasonable. It's recommended to create an equation that fills your pools really slow at low levels. The best thing you could do, is imagine that your stat would be at level 100, and think about a reasonable amount to fill your pool with.

In the above example, you see that my Mind is at level 10. When I log on in the morning, I do $Mind / 10$. In this case, that would $10 / 10 = 1$. So I add 1 mana to my Mana pool.

Fill on task completion

You can choose to fill your pools whenever you finish a task that matches a custom attribute. For example, I've studied for 30 minutes. I receive 50 XP for Wisdom and $Wisdom/100$ for my Wisdom pool. In the above example, that would be $20/100=0.2$ experience for my Wisdom pool every time I finish this task.

Fill on popularity

This is best used for skills that leave you with things you can share and can best be used to make Gold. Let's say you have an attribute called Art, a skill that increases whenever you draw images. When your drawing is finished, you can post it online (for example, on DeviantArt). After a certain time period, take a look at your image and see how many have favorited or liked it, and use these values, along with your Art level, to calculate how much money you've earned for your Gold Bank. You can actually see this as virtually selling your art.

For example, your Art level is 10 and you post your image on DeviantArt. Meanwhile, you ask people in the Artists guild to check it out. After seven days of posting it, you notice that 25 people favorited it. Your equation tells you: $(Favorites/50)*Art$, so you get $(25/50)*10 = 5 gold$ for your gold bank.

Upgrading your tasks

While custom attributes can be used to make your Habitica life easier for your hard work, you can also use it to make it harder. Use the extra notes to write a level goal for an attribute. Whenever your attribute reaches that level, you can upgrade all (or some) tasks, so that they become more challenging (and maybe even more rewarding).

Example: You have a habit to do 10 push ups, and your Fitness is at level 24. You won't get any stronger if you don't try to surpass your limits. Tell yourself that when you reach level 25 fitness, you will edit the 10 push ups habit so that you will now have to do 20 push ups.

Depending on how you like to play Habitica, you can choose for yourself if you should also change the difficulty of the task, or make it give you more or less experience for your attributes.

automating custom attributes

additionally managing all of the custom attributes can be hard work and take up time for other important items. there exists a script for this purpose to help you manage your custom attributes as you see fit you can find it here with instructions on how to use it.