Required Habits
Some goals - specifically premade goals - declare a list of required habits that you must adopt to complete the goal and fight its dungeon. The habits are thematically chosen by the goal's designer to match the journey's focus.
Why Goals Require Habits
Required habits are the bridge between the real-life goal and the in-game dungeon:
- The goal's theme (say, "overcome procrastination") defines what kind of daily practice would actually move the needle.
- The designer picks premade habits that embody that practice ("start with a 5-minute timer," "end the workday on time").
- You adopt those habits as part of starting the goal.
- The habits' soldiers become your party in the dungeon at the end.
That's the whole loop - real-life engagement with specific habits literally staffs the fight that celebrates the journey.
How to Adopt a Required Habit
When you adopt a premade goal, the adoption flow offers to add the required habits at the same time. You can:
- Accept all at once - the recommended path.
- Decline and add manually later - you can always adopt missing required habits from the goal detail page.
- Skip some - you'll have an incomplete goal until you add the missing ones.
Once adopted, a required habit is just a regular habit with a template link back to the premade. It shows up in your habits list normally; you can edit its schedule, units, or reminders.
What Happens If a Required Habit Is Missing
If a required habit is missing when you try to complete the goal or enter the dungeon:
- The goal can still progress - missing required habits don't block sub-goal completion or infocard reading.
- The dungeon is locked - you can't enter until every required habit is satisfied.
- The dungeon detail page tells you exactly what's missing and links to re-adopt the template.
Re-adopting a deleted required habit creates a new habit (not the old one with its level and HP) - the template link is all that matters for the gate.
Can You Delete a Required Habit Partway Through?
Yes, but it re-gates the dungeon. The goal's non-dungeon progress keeps going - completing tasks and reading infocards still works. Only the dungeon is affected.
If you delete a required habit, its soldier is gone. If you re-adopt the template later, you'll have a fresh level-1 soldier to rebuild.
Think of required habits as your party
The whole point of required habits is that they're the soldiers you'll bring into the dungeon. Keeping them alive and logging them consistently means your party enters at high HP and high level. A required habit you've been neglecting produces a weak soldier for the fight at the end.
Custom Goals Don't Have Required Habits
The "required habits" mechanic is premade-only. Custom goals can link habits to themselves - and those linked habits appear on the goal detail page - but there's no enforcement. A custom goal doesn't block anything on habit adoption.
See Linked Tasks & Journals for how linking works in general.