Note: this site is now called  Habitica.com

In Part #1, we began our personal habit quest by setting up our tasks on HabitRPG. Now it’s time to attack those tasks and reap our rewards. But you may be asking yourself: “Will this silly thing actually help me?”

It depends on your personality and how you use the program. Some people have no taste for fantasy or games, or are only motivated by direct competition against another person, and if you’re one of them it’s going fall flat for you. If you enter ‘junk’ tasks or click things you haven’t done just to get points it’s not going to do you any good either. But if none of that sounds like you it’s worth a try!

We created our little avatar figure when we set up our account. (Welcome to Habitica!) Next to it are graphs that show your health and experience. Clicking on a positive Habit, Daily, or To-do earns experience points, keeps you healthy, and earns gold. Negative habits and skipped tasks damage your character.

When you fill up the experience bar, you advance to a new level, and new features are unlocked. At level 2 you can visit Alexander the Merchant, and use your gold to buy weapons, which help you get more experience points with each task, and armor to protect your health if you miss a daily. Your avatar wears your latest purchases. You can replace your training sword with a common soldier’s blade that increases your strength by 3 points. Once you’ve bought the blade, Alexander has a better one on display to tempt you.

At level 10, you can choose a class– Warrior (the default), Mage, Healer, or Rogue. Classes provide different abilities. A Healer has healing skills and high resistance to damage while a Rogue is good at finding gold and other treasure.

Social accountability is another way to stay motivated. Your character can join a guild with special challenges and rewards, or join a party and go on a quest. You can form a party with friends, or visit The Archery to find parties looking for members. There are guilds for writers, musicians, entrepreneurs, and fans of anything you can imagine. In quests you can fight a monster by completing more tasks. If someone in your party isn’t completing their tasks, everyone’s health can suffer. There are also quests to find treasure.

As you make your way, you may find eggs and potions. You can use them to hatch pets, including dragons, foxes, and flying pigs. If you find all the pets you get a Beastmaster award. Pets can be fed or saddled to turn them into mounts that your avatar can ride.

The developers are always looking for ways to increase the fun and build a sense of community. They do seasonal storylines and challenges. The latest was ‘The Abominable Stressbeast of Stoikalm Steppes Attacks!” There were daily descriptions of the rampage, and all the inhabitants of Habitica fought the beast by completing their tasks, until its strength dipped to zero and it disappeared. The grateful Stoikalm citizens rewarded us with wooly mammoth pets and other goodies.

I find Streaks to be one of the most powerful motivators. HabitRPG keeps track of how many days you’ve faithfully completed your Dailies, and gives you a bonus for keeping a streak going. Some evenings I might be inclined to skip something, but the thought of breaking a 80-day streak is enough to get it done. If you’re traveling, sick, or have another legitimate reason you can’t complete your tasks, you can check into The Tavern. It puts all your To-dos on hold until they day you check out. The downside is that you don’t get any benefit from things you do in the intervening days.

The people behind this open source project are always looking for ways to improve it, and come up with fresh ways to combat burnout for long-time users. They’re looking for many types of coders, as well as designers, writers, artists, and sound effects creators. If you’d like to help support the project, you can also donate or subscribe to it, and get Gems and in-game rewards.

That’s HabitRPG– if it sounds like it may help you to get more done, enter a few tasks and give it a try!

(Part #1 of this article is here)

Images are courtesy of the HabitRPG wiki.