The Keep:Poisoned People (You Are Poisoned ! Challenge)

The Keep: Index > The Armory > Poisoned People (You Are Poisoned ! Challenge)

This is a page for all additional information about the You Are Poisoned! Tavern challenge. This challenge is now called Productivity Curse. The easy mode can be found in the Tavern and the class specific versions can be found in the Hard Mode guild

Glossary

Remedy: Any task that allows you to check a poison without actually doing the thing it requires you to do.

Poison: Daily that is included in the challenge.

Antidote: Custom reward that explicitly contains "antidote" in its name. Paying for one allows you to check a poison.

Treatment: Habit (-) that requires that you inflict yourself some damage to check a poison.

Healing Potion: Base item of Habitica. Costs 25 GP and heals 15 HP. Limited to one a day as long as you are doing the challenge.

Heal: Check one of the Poison dailies without doing the miscellaneous task it requires, by using one of the antidotes, treatments, etc. Pure Poison is the only poison you have to heal to check it at all.

Permantly Heal: Use the expensive pill to heal a poison. The description of the poison must then be changed to "HEALED" or "Healed." It is considered healed every day. If you left the official challenge, you can delete that poison.

Special Treatment: Custom reward that doesn't contain "antidote" in it's name. Read their description to know their effect.

FCV: Fix Character Values. In the options, a button that allows you to change some character values, like Gold, Mana, Experience and Level.

YAP: Abreviation of "You Are Poisoned!".

FAQ

General questions

How do I Join the Challenge?

From the Challenges tab, use the browser to search for "Poisoned."  This will list the current You Are Poisoned! challenges, by Lord Vlad. There is one challenge for each class, plus an additional Rewards challenge that anyone can join. You should join the challenge appropriate to your class. 

When do the challenges end?

The challenges all end at the same time, which is at the end of any month that is a multiple of 3. That is not including the challenges that are kept in archive. That means March, June, September and December. Logically, they last 3 months. If the challenge(s) are not ended on time, please don't hesitate to PM me to put a little pressure on. I may have technical difficulties, but it cannot be anything too big.

I am participating in the Poison challenge, but would like to change my class. How do I go about doing that?

Change your class and on the same day, change the challenge. If you do it really near the end of the challenge, you should download the CSV of the challenge before you leave it and send it via PM to me so I can see how you were doing. You don't need to leave and get back in the reward challenge. Also you can transfer streaks from each poison to the corresponding one in the other challenge, and to do so, it is better to use a screenshot, that you can send me as well or that I can ask if I want to make you a winner and the numbers seem odd.

What is healing poisons useful for? Poisons don't even hurt as much as treatments and antidotes cost a lot, why?

There are three reasons for healing poisons:

•  Avoid damage taken to your party. On a hard boss, the damage of every missed poison is added 2.5 times and inflicted to the whole party. It's sacrificing yourself to avoid hurting your comrades.

• Conserve streaks. They are important for some achievement and to some extend, important to win the challenge. Also it's satisfying to see the number go up and you get a little bonus that will help buying antidotes.

•  Make poisons more blue. They will hurt less when you do get hit by them.

Perfect Days aren't really an argument here, because doing what the poisons say is also supposed to lead to a Perfect Day, and healing them most likely won't be what gets you out of Perfect Days, unless you don't want to heal even Pure Poison (which is made for that).

Can my party help me? Can they heal me? Can they boost my stats?

They can, but as a general rule, if you have to frequently ask them for help, being in this challenge or not, you should rather ask them for advice about how being a better player in solo, adjusting difficulty for your purpose and such. Receive but do not ask, or at least do not insist, I would say.

Why do I get so much reward from poisons?

In the current Habitica system, Tasks that do lots of damages also give lots of rewards, and the only way around it is to use negative Habits to inflict damages manually. I could add that, but it would break the intended work flow of the challenge, by adding too much manual input.
Instead, if you think you get too much reward, you should use the Antidotes to get rid of your gold and some special treatments to lose levels, to slow down you progression, while getting something out of it. I'm trying to balance the prices, but tell me if you think they are wrong.
I note that some people actually like the experience and gold bonus it gives... so if my request on Trello is ever implemented and Tasks can hit hard and reward a little, I will put an archive version somewhere.

What about being healed by gaining a level?

Sadly, there is no option to turn that off, as of now, I hope there will be in the future. For now, if you feel that you indulge into using that to heal yourself from the treatments you have just used or anything else that takes advantage of it, I would recommend making a habit of manually restore your health to its previous number after gaining a level.

When is it okay to restore streaks on Poison Dailies?

Streaks should only be restored in case of bugs or mishandling, like a syncing error. If you have been prevented from accessing Habitica at all, or the internet at all, you can also consider restoring your streaks.

What are the rules on resting in the Inn?

There is no special rule for the Inn, use it as you normally would. You are only cheating if you feel that you are.

What do I have to do to win the challenge?

In general: play fair, read, and follow the rules that are set in the various descriptions.
In particular, you can only have one permanently healed poison every challenge (advice: make it the Pure Poison); you cannot use a remedy once it has been restricted.

The challenge was better last time!

Ask me, I keep previous versions in a secret place, I'll clone the one you liked in the Hard Mode guild.

I don't have a To-Do list in Habitica, how do I participate?

Two cases here. If you don't have a to-do list in habitica, but you have one elsewhere, you can still add, finish and mark any to-do as special in that other app, site or even paper and pen list. I don't mind if it's not in Habitica, a to-do list is a to-do list. The only problem is the "reddest" category, by just swap it for one more "oldest" and the result is the same. In the other hand, if you have no to-do list at all, and don't want to start one, then this challenge is not made for you as-is. SpTD for example, cannot be dailies, nor habits, this is already taken account by other poisons. See the next question.

The challenge don't fit me as it is now. What can I do about it?

Ask me, I'm doing my best to accomodate everyone and take the best out of any feedback. Even if there are points I really will never integrate in the normal challenge, you can ask me to make a custom version in the Hard Mode guild, but it won't have a reward, unless you provide it. Also, feel free to join the challenge, then leave it and keep the tasks, it will add the tasks to your list and you will be able to customise them.

Class/task specific questions

Why do I have to cast mana leak so many times? Can't you make it a hard negative Habit instead?

This wouldn't solve the problem, the goal is to lose mana, for those who wish to play with that additional difficulty, and a trivial or hard Habit makes you lose just as much mana per minus. The only way to loose "only" mana using only standard mecanics is to click a trivial Habit a certain number of times. This feature is purely optional, though. If you want to use it any other way, feel free. For example you can use the Fix Character Values to remove a few mana at the end of the day, depending on the number of spells you casted, or each time you cast a spell.

Buddhist cure, feed the poor ETC, is too slow, I need to pay gold quicker.

They are made to be used when you aren't really too rich, so you can pay those amounts in a reasonable time. But if you feel like spending four hundred gold coins on them, feel free to use most of your gold on any other custom reward while not taking the reward from it. As of now, rewards don't have histories anyway.

For Cleptomania am I allowed to substitute Pickpocket for Backstab?

No, you aren't. You can substitute Pickpocket by removing 30 mana and adding the amount of gold you would gain from it. Backstab makes you gain experience, and this is in this challenge, something I am trying to reduce.

About the questing poison, do I count damages I already inflicted to the boss or pending damages I will inflict it? What about items?

It was done at a time where looking up damage wasn't so simple, you had to use the Data Display Tool, so it's meant to be damage already inflicted, but I'd say both are fine, as long as you are consistent, using always the same measurement.

In the case the quest ends before you have inflicted your damages, you will have beaten the boss in the last 3 days, so you can check that poison anyways.

For items on the other hand, I think you should check it preemptively, since in case the quest ends before you find items, it is not counted. I will probably correct this in the next version of the challenge.

SpTD questions

What are SpTD?

It stands for Special To-Do, I asked if the name should be changed from STD to SpTD and the answer was mostly no, but the problems told about by those who wanted it were quite big and the majority of "no" was really not by much. These are a set of to-do tasks the challenge asks you to choose in your existing list (or create if they fit the terms). Basically, you should choose the most fiting for each category in the to-do list excluding your SpTD. You are free to make the list of categories from the 8 given and have up to 10 of them, so there is going to be at least 2 duplicates if you do use 10.

The idea of poisoning todos by making them into dailies is a good one. Losing health, boss damage in quests, losing the perfect day buffs, is a more powerful motivator than, well, nothing happening.
That's the idea behind the Curse of the todo bosses and this whole Special ToDo system in general. Although of course, I can't be too specific since it will be the same for all players. You end up doing the most urgent thing every day, or try your best to end an old one if you can't do the most urgent. However, I feel like having the opportunity to pay gold to escape it defeats the point a bit, even a lot of gold, you'll earn it anyway if you are really active, and you won't spend it much on the other tasks of the challenge.

Most urgent

The most urgent is for a task that you should already have done and are already late in doing, or a task that you should idealy finish as soon as you can. It is bound to change very often and it can be a bit of a burden to even just add the tag to it every time you change. Some find it preferable to have the few most urgent tasks marked in advance so you can choose between them, still in a very focussed manner, compared to choose within you own list.

A recuring complaint is that you end up focusing on doing the most urgent thing every day and neglect other SpTD. First, if you have a task due to the next days and you succeed to end it every day, congrats. If you do this on a regular basis ask yourself if you need the challenge to do so. If not, change your SpTD list to exclude the Most Urgent category, you don't need it. If it goes bad, revert to the previous state.

Reddest & Oldest

Those don't depend on you at all, you do not really choose them, rather they are a consequence of your past actions. Use the Data Display tool to see the lowest negative value and that is your reddest, the oldest creation date and that is your oldest. Very often those will be identical, allowing you to have an easy to spot Ultimate Boss. Very often, you will have lists of to-do with the same value and/or creation date. In the case these are your reddest and oldest, any of these can be a SpTD under those two categories. Those are tasks you have neglected to do for some time, so they are probably quite hard, or you don't want to do them.

Hardest, Longest and Most hated

These three categories are depending on a preference on your part, only what preference makes the difference between them. Basically it is based on the theory that we procrastinate on things that requires time, effort or that we don't like to-do.

The Hardest is the one you think will require the most effort (an effort is what feels like an effort for you) out of all your to-do, it can be long-term daily effort (in which case it will decrease over time and eventually the day you end it, it will be easy) or a huge amount of short-term efforts (ex: getting a piano on top of a building).

The Longest is the one you think will require the greatest time out of all your to-do, but it can only be assessed and thus, you have to choose between tasks that can potentially need more or less time than you think. It can be a really easy thing you have to do during a very long period, or a something that has huge waiting times included. It is advised to make a checklist point for at least that one in the "get closer to a SpTD" poison, reminding you that you have that to work on.

The Most hated could be called "the task you have the least will to do" but that would be too long. It is the tasks, regardeless of the effort or time it takes that you don't want to do, and would rather work on anything else in your to-do list. (ex:calling some person you don't want to speak with anymore. It nor hard neither long, you just don't want to)

Most fulfilling

The Most fulfilling is the To-Do you feel will best make you happier and a better person when it is done. I don't know (yet) if it is a good idea to put something positive as a category. It is not the same as the one you want to do the most, that would be "most wanted" and that will never be added. It is a task that may be hard, take long, etc. but the outcome makes you better or happier.

Ultimate Boss (and "fitting in many categories")

What do you do when there is a task that fits in many categories? (A big project may be long, hard, put off, and fulfilling) You can make it a Ultimate Boss, if it fits two distinct categories or more (including "most urgent"). For example "most urgent" and "most hated" but "most urgent" twice. 

You can only have one Ultimate Boss: what do you do if you have another task that fits in many categories? Choose one of these categories and make it as SpTD in that category, that can replace the Ultimate Boss when you have done it.

When do I change a SpTD, or replace one?

When you have finished one, you should, as soon as you can, replace it. Now that there is a maximum of 10, and a minimum of 5, you can wait a bit and replace them every now and then, the time to go from 10 to 4, at which point you have to set new ones. The moments where you should replace an existing SpTD by another are as you see fit. I would advise doing so if you cannot do any progress toward the task until a certain moment.

If I end a SpTD, does that also count as completing a to-do and getting a step closer to a SpTD?

Yes, you can count completing an SpTD as completing a to-do and also as a step closer to a SpTD. Or not, it's up to you. The more you dissociate them, the harder. This is one little moving part of the challenge that is good to adjust the difficulty a bit.

How do I count using checklists in To-Dos?

Ask yourself that question "Would that checklist point take as much time and effort as one of the To-Do I currently have?" If the answer is yes, consider that this checklist point is a To-Do. If the answer is no, it cannot count as completing a To-Do or completing a SpTD, but it can count as being a step closer to a SpTD.

If I end 2 SpTD in a day, can I check the "To-Do Bosses" poison the current and also the next day?

It's up to you when you tick the task, you may as well keep a "done" To-Do unchecked for a few more hours if it frustrates you when you do more than one the same day. I would allow to keep the benefit of a checked SpTD for the next day, but know that it will make the challenge easier. So if you find it easy enough, I would recommend you don't.

Reward questions

I don't get the "Talented" and "Soooo good" achievements, what are they?

They are sarcastic achievements, about missing every Daily, which will occur mostly if you forget to log in to Habitica. I hope you never get them.

What does restricting remedies mean?

Restricting remedies just means replacing notes of treatments and antidotes, negative habits and custom rewards if you prefer, by the word "RESTRICTED", making you unable to use them. If you restrict them all it's just you and the poisons, you can only avoid damages by doing what they require, so you have to abandon perfect days. It's called hardcore for a reason, but you are free to go after this achievement or not. I think very few people would take their chance with that one.

If I restricted the Blue Antidote, what can I use to heal blue poisons, for example ?

Any treatment, and many special treatments explicitly state that you can heal blue poisons or any poisons with them, but actually, if you don't want to use these, you can also use more expensive antidotes. One Red Antidote can heal a red or a blue poison, and the Dark Antidote can heal a blue, a red or a black poison. It is not explicitly stated in the descriptions because it would make them longer for a very marginal case.

Can you do all achievements at the same time? They seem to contradict each other.

No, you can't get all the achievements in the same time even while playing very well. Some ask you to not get hurt or to not lose streaks, while others force you to get hurt and lose streaks. By playing normally, you should get some in the first category.

The achievement where it says you go several days without using any remedy, healing, etc. Do you have to sacrifice having a Perfect Day?

That particular achievement requires, yes, that you abandon Perfect Days for some time. It's up to you to go after it or not.