Guilds

Guilds are social groups that allow players to discuss similar interests and are an important part of Habitica culture. The focus of a guild can be anything; for example, it can target a specific group of Habiticans such as writers, students, or people struggling with mental illnesses, while other Guilds are just looking for some extra role-playing or talking.
For an organized overview of the public guilds in Habitica, see the Guilds Guide.
==General==
Guilds are free to join and are an important part of Habitica culture. Joining a guild with like-minded individuals can help you keep your motivation high and focus on your special interest(s). You can be a member of multiple guilds.
Joining a guild is voluntary, and being a member of one does not directly give a player more experience nor does it affect a party quest, though many guilds include challenges that you can join that add items to your task lists, indirectly giving you more ways to earn experience and complete quests.
The first time someone joins a guild, they will receive a non-stacking achievement on their profile.
In a guild, players can talk in a group chat, and start and participate in guild-specific challenges (in the case of a public guild, non-members can also join these challenges). Furthermore, a player can be a member of multiple guilds and can leave any time they want. The list of guilds to which a player belongs is private, so no one will be able to see which guilds you have joined, though if they check a participant list in a guild, they will be able to search for your username and see if you are in the guild.
Every guild, no matter its type, carries four attributions which can be seen, for example, on the Discover Guilds page and your Guild overview:
#The guild name;
#A brief summary of its topic or purpose;
#The number of guild members with a badge;
#Category tags.
One special category tag is "Habitica Official". Guilds with this tag were founded by Habitica staff members, and serve to benefit the Habitica community as a whole. 
The table below gives an indication of the colored badge system used for Guilds.
Logo 	Tier 	Members 	Habitica Official Guilds
Art by Piyo	Gold Tier 	≥ 1000 	
* Party Wanted (Looking for Group)
* Habitica Help: Ask a Question
* Official New Year's Resolution Guild!
* The Bulletin Board
* Aspiring Blacksmiths (Coding For Habitica)
* Use Case Spotlights
* Party Wanted International
* Aspiring Legends: Contributing to Habitica
* Pixels in Progress (Aspiring Artisans)
* Commonwealth of i18n (Aspiring Linguists)
Art by Piyo	Silver Tier	100 ≤ x < 1000	
* Aspiring Socialites
* Aspiring Comrades
* Wizards of the Wiki
* Guild Leaders & Challenge Creators
* Pirate Cove
* Elven Grove
* Testimonials of Habitica
Art by Piyo	Bronze Tier	< 100 	
* Translation Reviewer Application Discussion Board
* Aspiring Zapier Comrades
==Types of Guilds==
Habitica offers two types of guilds which you can join for free: 
*Public Guilds allow anyone to join them by clicking the 'Join' option. There are two ways of joining:
*#The Discover Guilds list shows a green (grey on the Android app) Join button on the right of each guild's name. Click on that button to become a guild member! You will be immediately taken to that guild's page.
*#Joining directly from the guild's page is also possible. You will see another Join button in the top right corner. Only in the Android app, the button appears not to be highlighted green.
*Private Guilds are per definition not always secret guilds. For example, a public productivity guild might have a private guild to give progress updates that would otherwise spam the chat. It requires an invitation from someone of a private guild to join since they do not show up on the Discover Guilds list. If you know of a private guild you want to join, the process is similar to joining a party:
*#Find your Username.
*#Give your Username to a private guild member, so they can send you an invitation.
*#Accept the invitation, which can be found in the Guild tab (if the private guild is a secret guild, you probably only know of its exists by getting an invitation).
*#Go to your guild screen to see the new guild on your list.
====Solo Guilds====
A solo guild is not a standard type Habitica offers but it's rather a way some Habiticans like to use their own created private guild for themselves. There are several uses for solo guilds.
*To create personal challenges that will give you an achievement when completed.
*To create challenges that act as placeholders for future or long-term To Do's when your To Do list is very long and your To Do's are very red. You can join the challenge when you're ready to act on those To Do's and they will automatically add to your list.
*To create monthly challenges using the Monthlies Workaround idea.
*To use the private guild chat as reminder notes or a journal to yourself.
==Accessing Guilds==
===Web===
Players can discover guilds through the Guilds tab (direct link) in the Toolbar, access guilds they've already joined, or head to the Tavern.
===Mobile Apps===
Players can discover guilds through the guild menu option. Tap the Discover tab at the top of the list.
==Looking for a Public Guild==
By default, the main Discover Guilds page shows the 30 largest public guilds in Habitica. To find other public guilds, there are several ways to search. Each search entry will return a maximum of 30 results, in descending order of guild size. As you scroll down more guilds will load.
===Use the Search Box===
Enter your criteria in the search box (For the apps click the magnifying glass in the top right). For example, to find people who are artists, type 'artist' in the search box. As you type, Habitica narrows the list of available guilds using a smart search algorithm. If no guild matches your criteria as you're typing, the list vanishes.
===Apply Filters===
On the website, filters, located on the left side of the Discover page, give you three ways to narrow your search.
*The Category filter allows you to narrow guilds to a specific topic.
*The Role filter shows guilds of which you are a leader or member.
*The Guild Size filter lets you search guilds by size, which is indicated by gold, silver, and bronze tiers. These correspond to the guild sizes listed above.
To apply a filter, check the box to the left of its name. You can combine options from all three filters to refine your search. You may choose as many filters as you wish, though selecting many filters may leave smaller guilds off the results list.
==Previewing a Public Guild==
On the website, you can find a new public guild under the Discover Guilds tab in the Guilds menu.
On the app, click on the Guilds tab in the Social menu, and select the Discover tab at the top of the page.
Clicking on the name of a guild allows you to view the guild without being a member. You are then able to:
* Read the guild's summary, and description
* See who the guild's leader is
* See how many gems the guild has
* Read the chat messages
* Post messages
* Preview / join guild challenges (Web only)
* Invite a friend to the guild
* Join the guild, if not a member.
However, you will not receive notifications when new chat messages appear.
You can quickly access and preview a guild without joining it by clicking on a direct link. For example, these links can appear in chat within Habitica, or in the wiki (e.g., in the Guilds Guide and the Armory). Here is a direct link to Habitica Help: Ask a Question
It is not possible to preview a private guild. You must be invited to be a member and accept the invitation before you can see any content in a private guild.
==Joining a Guild==
===Joining a Public Guild===
You can join a public guild three ways:
* Click the join button from the Discover Guilds List.
* Click the join button when previewing a guild.
* Accepting an invite to the guild.
===Joining a Private Guild===
Private guilds are not always secret guilds. For example, a public productivity guild might have a private guild for people to give progress updates that would otherwise spam the guild chat, and anyone in the productivity guild can ask for an invitation. If you know of a private guild you want to join, the process is similar to joining a party.
#Give your Username to a guild member who will then send you an invitation.
#Accept the invitation, which can be found in the Guild tab.
#Go to your guild screen to see the new guild in your list.
If a private guild is a secret guild, you probably won't know anything about it until someone decides they want to invite you and you get an invitation. If you want to join, follow steps 2 and 3.
==Participation==
The Guilds Area on the App, and My Guilds page on the web contains a list of all guilds you have joined, organized by guild size.
For the website, like the Discover Guilds page, My Guilds can be filtered using the methods described above. Each entry provides the same information as the public guilds page, except that in place of the green "Join" button on the right, there is a gem icon that shows how many gems are in the guild's bank.
===Chat Forum===
Guilds are essentially forums to converse about common topics of interest. The chat forums support a type of formatting called Markdown formatting (see: Markdown Cheat Sheet). This allows you to format your text in a number of ways and also allows you to use emoji within your forum posts. To participate in guild discussions, simply post your message into the chat box and press "Send". There is no edit function, but you can post the corrected message, then delete your old message.
Please see the Chat page for more information on how to use the functions of chat.
Once you are a member, you will receive notifications when new chat messages appear, unless the guild size is larger than 5000 (as to avoid performance issue) or otherwise stated.
===Challenges===
Guilds also host a wide variety of challenges, listed in the right hand side-bar under the guild description. Clicking on the challenge redirects you to the social challenges page. This page enables you to find out more about the challenges and participate in them. Guild leaders can choose to allow anyone to create challenges, or they can elect to allow no one besides themselves to create challenges. If the guild leader allows anyone to create challenges, members will be able to host their own challenges in the guild. Challenges that are created in a guild are semi-private. They are only available and visible to members and previewers of the selected guild.
For more information about challenges and how to host them, please refer to Challenges.
==Guild Creation==
Creating Guilds is currently only a feature of the website.
#Before creating a guild, it's strongly recommended that you read through the page on Guild Creation and Maintenance Tips. In particular, check to ensure that another similar guild doesn't already exist, and understand the difference between guilds and parties.
#On either the "My Guilds" or "Discover Guilds" page, click "Create" in the upper right corner.
#Enter a name for your new guild.
#Choose the privacy settings for joining the guild and creating challenges. The most restrictive options are set by default.
#*The guild is initially set to be private. If you make your guild public, it will appear in the guild directory. Private guilds do not appear in the directory, and new members can only join with an invitation from a current guild member. Choose carefully because you cannot change it yourself later.
#*By default, only the guild leader can create challenges within the guild. Uncheck this to let all members create challenges. In most guilds, challenges created by other members are welcome additions. Though it is usually not necessary to restrict challenge creation, the option is still offered and is entirely up to the guild leader's discretion.
#Summarize the guild's topic and aims in 250 or fewer characters. This summary will appear in the guild directory, serving as an advertisement for your guild when players browse the "Discover Guilds" page.
#Add a description, which will appear only on your guild's page. There is no character limit for this part. If you will be creating a public guild, ensure that your chosen name and description can be found using common search terms.
#Assign categories. Click on the button labeled "None" to open a checklist containing all possible guild categories. Choose the ones that best match the theme of your guild, then click "Close".
#Click on the "Create Guild" button.
#A pop-up asks if you want to spend 4 gems to create a guild. Click on "OK". These gems are transferred to your guild's bank.
Congratulations! You've started your own guild. Learn more about promoting your public guild or promoting your private guild via a paired public guild to increase membership and activity.
===Changing a Guild from Private to Public or Public to Private===
After you have created a guild, if you want its privacy status to be changed, you must ask an administrator to do it. Please do not do this lightly because administrators have many duties; you should decide carefully if you want the guild to be private or public before you create it.
If you do need to have it changed, follow this process:
# Announce in the guild's chat that you want to change the guild's privacy status. Explain to the guild members what this means.
# If the guild is private and you want it changed to a public guild:
## Ask if any guild members object and if they do, carefully consider their concerns. Remember that they joined the guild on the understanding that their conversations in it would remain private. They might have valid reasons for not wanting to lose that privacy.
## Wait one month. This allows members who might be temporarily absent to return and consider your proposal.
## For guilds that are very new or have very few members, an administrator might make an exception to the one-month time frame so you can proceed with the next steps sooner if you wish, but if they ask you to wait a month, please respect their decision. It is unlikely that they'll make an exception for large or old guilds.
## If chat is fast-moving, post a few times within that month to ensure that your message remains easily visible.
## At the end of the month, review the guild's name, description, leader message, and all chat messages to ensure that there are no violations of the Community Guidelines (swear words, religious oaths, violent or offensive material, etc.). If there are, you must remove them before your guild can become public. The administrator can remove chat messages if the person who posted them is not willing to - please ensure that the administrator knows about them; the easiest way to do this is to use the Report tool on each post.
# If the guild is public and you want it changed to private, you do not need to ask the guild members for objections or wait one month, because the guild contains no private conversations. This can be an option if there is a lot of information that you or your members would like to be able to reference when needed and will prevent other members from entering into the guild without a direct invite.
# Invite an administrator to the guild (e.g., Alys, d904bd62-da08-416b-a816-ba797c9ee265).
# Immediate after sending the invitation, send the administrator a personal message so that they know why you invited them. Tip: After the invitation has been sent, their name will appear in the guild's invitation list (you might need to reload the page to see it). You can click on the name to access their profile, at which there will be an icon for sending a personal message.
When the administrator joins the guild, they will check that there is a message in chat from you to tell the guild members that the guild's status is changing. If the guild is to be changed from private to public they will also check that:
* The members were informed a month ago and those reminders were sent, if necessary.
* No members have objected, or their objections have been handled in a suitable fashion.
* The guild does not contain any violations of the Community Guidelines in its name, description, leader message, and chat.
If all looks good, they will change your guild's privacy status. They might choose to remain as a guild member if they are interested in the guild's topic or if they feel that the guild needs to be watched for a period of time (for example, this might be necessary if the guild violated the Community Guidelines).
==Guild Bank==
The four gems the guild leader spent on creating a guild are deposited in the Guild Bank. They can be used for challenge prizes.
When a guild leader creates a challenge with the prize in gems, it is taken first from the Guild Bank by default. The gems from the guild leader's personal account will be used only if the challenge prize exceeds the number of gems in the Guild Bank.
It is not possible to add gems to the Guild Bank after the guild has been created. There is little reason to do this. Gems in the Bank are used only for creating challenges, and a player can use their own gems to create a challenge. If a player wants to pay for another player to create a challenge, they can gift gems directly to the other player.
==Guild Customization==
Once created, you can change a number of settings relating to your guild (these settings can also be changed by staff). It best to complete this on the website as a number of items like categories is not available on the apps.
To modify your guild settings,
* On the website, click the three dots in the upper right corner and select "Edit Guild". This opens a new "Update Guild" window that looks much like the guild creation window, with many of the same options.
* On the app, click "Edit" in the upper right corner. This will take you to a new page where you can edit some of the features of the guild.
Once open and depending your client, you can change the guild name, summary, description, and categories. If you have a logo for your guild, enter the link in the description box using Markdown formatting. The description is a good place for additional information for the guild members, especially temporary information that changes often. Using Markdown, you can also put helpful links there.
You cannot easily change a guild's privacy setting. Refer to Changing a Guild from Private to Public or Public to Private above for details.
If your guild is set to Private, you can upgrade it to a Group Plan. Clicking the three dots in the upper right corner and selecting "Upgrade to Group" will take you to the registration and billing page. This option is available to only the guild's leader.
=== Restriction of Challenge Creation ===
There is also a checkbox labeled "Only group leader can create challenges". This checkbox is unchecked by default because in most guilds, challenges created by other guild members are very welcome additions to the guild. However, the guild leader has the option to stop all other guild members from creating challenges within the guild. (But guilds where this feature is useful are rare.)
=== Assigning a New Guild Leader ===
The guild's leader has the power to assign a new leader, which is useful if you wish to leave and pass the leadership on to another guild member. Once you have changed the leader, it is not possible for you to undo that action; the only way you can become leader again is for the new leader to voluntarily decide to change leadership back to you.
To transfer leadership using the website, click on the "Member List" badge on the guild's page. A modal (a popup screen) will appear showing some of the guild's members. Enter the person's name into the search box at the top left or click the "Load More" button at the bottom of the modal until you see the person who should be the new leader. Click on the three-dots button to the right of that's person's entry and click "Transfer Ownership".
You can also change leader using the Party & Guild Data Tool. Enter your Guild ID, set Max Members Details to the total number of group members, then click "Fetch Group Data". Depending on guild size, this may take a while to load; it will be faster if you tick the "Hide Avatar Images?" option before clicking the Fetch button. Once loaded, the tool will display various information about the guild. Choose "Member List" from the Member Information column. Use the search bar to find the group member you wish to assign. Click the user's name to highlight it, then click "Change Leader" (that option is visible to only the current leader).
If you leave the guild without assigning a new leader, either GuildBot or a random member of the guild will automatically become the new leader.
Read more about transferring leadership and unwanted guilds at Guild Creation and Maintenance Tips > Transferring Guild Leadership.
==Leaving A Guild==
If you decide you want to leave a guild:
#Go to your guilds list.
##On the website, Guilds > My Guilds section.
##On the apps, Guilds section.
#Click on the guild name you wish to leave.
#Click on Leave Guild.
##On the website, click the three dots in the upper right corner to select this.
##On the apps, tap the Details tab and scroll down to the bottom to click this.
#On the apps, choose whether you wish to leave the challenges or keep them. On the website, choose OK; all challenges you will remain a part of.
==Transferring Guild Ownership==
The guild owner can change the guild leader as described in Assigning a New Guild Leader.
If the guild owner leaves without assigning a new leader, either GuildBot or a random group member will be assigned the new leader automatically. 
For a public guild, if the owner has abandoned the guild but has not left it, once the owner has not logged on for more than 6 months GuildBot will inform the pirates. 
Once GuildBot alerts the pirates, the pirates will review the guild to confirm it is best for GuildBot to hail the guild. Normally, this takes less than 1 month. If it is considered best, GuildBot will hail the guild asking for volunteers to be the new leader. Administrators usually prefer long-term guild members as guild leader candidates, however the actual decision is made on a case-by-case basis.
If there are still active guild members in the guild, the leadership change should usually first be discussed in the guild chat. There is no need to directly contact the administrators outside the guild, as the pirates will review the guild chat.
The only exception to this if the guild leader left a message in the guild's description stating the leadership change should occur sooner and who it should be transferred to. If this is the case, please alert the pirates in Pirate Cove the status.
More information about the topic can be found in the wiki page subsection Guild Creation and Maintenance Tips: Transferring Guild Leadership. (That subsection was written for the case of an active guild leader trying to find a new guild leader, but much of the information there is also helpful if the guild leader is inactive.)
==Guild Deletion==
===Private Guilds===
When the last guild member leaves a private guild, the guild is automatically and immediately deleted. This cannot be reversed.
===Public Guilds===
Empty public guilds are not automatically deleted. They continue to exist, stay visible in the list of guilds, and can be joined by any Habitican.
A public guild can be deleted only by a Habitica admin (administrator). If you are the leader of a public guild and want it to be deleted, please follow the process below. However please note that the admin may decide to not delete the guild and may take another action instead (e.g., changing the leader). Admins will consider various factors when deciding whether to delete a guild, including but not limited to how many guild members there are, whether those members are still active in Habitica in general, and what Challenges exist in the guild.
To ask the admins whether they'd be willing to delete a public guild, please write an email to admin@habitica.com (accessible via Help > Report a Bug on the website) and include:
*The name of the guild;
*The guild's URL. You can get this by copying it from your browser's address bar when you are viewing the guild on Habitica's website.
*Your reason for wanting the guild to be deleted.
An alternative to deleting a public guild is for you to leave the guild, which will end your association with it. A process for finding a new leader will then be automatically started and admins will become involved in that. If you wish to, you can choose a new leader yourself before you leave.
de:Gilden
fr:Guildes
ja:ギルド
nl:Gilden
ru:Гильдии
zh:公会
pt-br:Guildas
Category:Social
Category:Mechanics
Category:Newbies
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