HP, XP & Death
The stakes that make productivity matter.
How XP Works
XP (Experience Points) is the primary progression currency in MainQuest. You earn XP by completing quests. The amount of XP depends on the quest's difficulty level, with harder quests rewarding more XP.
As XP accumulates, your character levels up — unlocking the sense of progression that keeps you motivated to stay productive day after day.
The Leveling Formula
The XP required to reach the next level follows a simple, predictable formula:
XP Required = 100 + (level - 1) × 10
Examples:
The formula scales linearly, so higher levels take progressively more effort but never become unreachable. At level 50, you need 590 XP to level up — about 6 days of maxed-out XP earning.
Daily XP Cap
By default, you can earn a maximum of 100 XP per day. Once you hit the cap, completing more quests will not award additional XP until the next day — with two exceptions: a Whetstone buff raises the cap itself (to 250 for 24 hours; the Greater version, to 500), and achievement XP bypasses the cap entirely.
Why a Daily Cap?
The cap prevents burnout-driven grinding. MainQuest rewards consistent daily effort over marathon sessions. Someone who earns 100 XP every day for a week will always outpace someone who tries to cram a whole week's worth into a single Saturday.
The daily cap resets at 3 AM in your own timezone, not midnight. This means late-night quest completions at 1 AM still count toward the current day's cap.
XP Modifiers
A quest's base XP is 10, scaled by difficulty — Easy pays 8, Medium 10, Hard 15, Epic 20. On top of that, a stack of modifiers can adjust the payout. All of them are computed server-side and apply the same way regardless of which platform you complete the quest on:
Clarity Buff — 1.2x XP
Writing a Dawn Scroll (morning journal entry) activates the Clarity Buff, which multiplies all XP earned by 1.2x for 4 hours. This is one of the strongest reasons to start your day with journaling.
Whetstone — 1.5x XP for 24 hours
The Shop's Whetstone consumable boosts quest XP by 50% and raises your daily XP cap to 250 for 24 hours — the single biggest XP multiplier in the game. A rarer Greater Whetstone pushes both further (+75%, cap 500).
Fatigue Penalty — 0.5x XP
When your character is ≥90% exhausted, all XP earned is halved. This mechanic discourages pushing through extreme fatigue and encourages sustainable productivity.
Age-Based Quest Bonus — 1.0–2.0x XP
A non-daily, non-recurring quest gains +15% XP for every day it's been open, capped at 2.0x after 7 days. This rewards tackling tasks you have been procrastinating on — the longer a quest has been waiting, the bigger the XP bonus when you finally complete it. Daily and recurring quests are excluded — their age never resets, so they'd permanently farm the maximum bonus.
Two more can join the stack: a high-rank Accountability Pact carries a permanent bonus of up to +15%, and an awake pet companion adds its own small XP buff.
Quality rating is separate from all of this — see the Quality Rating callout below. It never touches your XP.
How HP Works
HP (Health Points) represents your character's vitality. It ranges from 0 to 100. Unlike XP, you do not earn HP through quests — you lose it through negative actions.
HP Damage Sources
Missing a deadline on its own, deleting a quest you never started, or simply leaving a quest unfinished costs nothing — even a committed one. The abandoned quest itself also survives the penalty; only your HP takes the hit.
Quality Rating — Embercoin, Not HP or XP
Rating a completed quest 1–5 stars is unrelated to HP or XP entirely. A perfect 5-star rating grants a +10 Embercoin bonus (boosted further by any active coin buffs), capped at 3 per day. Anything below 5 stars grants no bonus.
HP recovery has several paths. The most dramatic is leveling up — every level-up fully restores your HP to 100, regardless of how low it was. Between level-ups, the Shop's Health Potions restore +30 (Medium, 50 Embercoin) or +70 (Greater, 110 Embercoin), and the QuickCast presets Healthy Snack and Sunlight Sync each restore +10 (up to twice a day apiece).
Death
If your HP drops to 0, your character dies. Death is not cosmetic — it has real consequences, identical on mobile and web:
What Happens When You Die
- All gameplay is blocked. You cannot complete quests, check in on habits, or earn XP.
- A death screen appears. You are forced to the death screen and cannot navigate away.
- A Second Chance Scroll brings you back. Spend your own from the Vault, or have a friend spend theirs on you.
This is the same on both platforms — web enforces the identical HP ≤ 0 death gate and blocking death screen as mobile, not a lighter version of it.
Revival: The Second Chance Scroll
When your character dies, you don't need to wait on anyone: spend a Second Chance Scroll from your own Vault and revive on the spot, no friend required. Using it restores your character to 50 HP (half of the 100 HP maximum).
A friend can also spend one of their scrolls on you instead, as a second, social option — same 50 HP result either way. Either way, only a scroll is spent; nobody loses HP by reviving someone else.
Keep at least one scroll in your Vault (they're a shop staple, always available for Embercoin) and death costs you a setback, not a standstill.
Learn more about the friends system in the Friends & Revival guide.
Level-Up Recovery
Every time you level up, your HP is fully restored to 100 — the biggest single heal in the game, and it creates an important strategic consideration:
If your HP is low (say, 20 HP) and you are close to leveling up, it is better to push through and complete one more quest to trigger the level-up — fully restoring your HP — rather than playing it safe. One catch: if you've already hit the daily XP cap, further quests award 0 XP and can't level you — on a capped day, reach for a Health Potion instead. And if you are far from leveling up, think twice before quitting a quest mid-session — that's what actually costs the HP.
