A challenge is a set of goals that players complete at their own pace. Where an event ranks everyone against each other over a fixed window, a challenge asks each player to reach a target, and everyone who reaches it completes it.
That difference decides which one you want. Ranked competition with a winner is an event. "Kill 500 Atrox" is a challenge.
Progress is tracked automatically from globals, so there is nothing to submit and nothing to verify by hand.
The challenge itself
| Field | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Name | yes | Shown everywhere the challenge appears |
| Description | yes | The full write-up |
| Short description | no | One line used in listings |
| Rules | no | Kept separate so entrants can find them |
| Start and end date | no | Leave both empty for an open-ended challenge |
| Repeatable | no | Whether a player can complete it more than once |
| Cover and listing images | no | Header and card artwork |
Dates being optional is the main structural difference from events. A challenge with no dates simply stays open, which suits long-running goals like "reach 1,000 globals" that would be meaningless inside a two-week window.
Completion rewards
Separate from per-tier rewards, a challenge can carry one reward for finishing the whole thing:
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Completion reward description | What the winner gets |
| Completion reward value | The amount |
| Completion reward type | EC Credits, or manual |
| Max completion rewards | Caps how many players can be rewarded |
Set the cap deliberately. Without one, an easy challenge that stays open indefinitely will keep paying out.
Tiers
Tiers are the steps within a challenge. A challenge can be a single tier, or a ladder where each step is harder than the last.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | The tier label, for example Bronze or Stage 1 |
| Description | What this tier asks for |
| Time limit hours | Optional window a player has to complete it once started |
| Retakeable | Whether a player can attempt this tier again |
| Reward description, value and type | Per-tier reward, EC Credits or manual |
| Max rewards | Caps how many players can be rewarded at this tier |
| Conditions | What actually has to happen |
A time limit turns a tier from a long grind into a sprint: "1,000 PED of hunting globals" is a different challenge with a 24 hour limit attached than without one.
Conditions are what get tracked
Each tier holds one or more conditions, matched automatically against incoming globals.
| Condition type | Completes when the player has |
|---|---|
Count |
A number of qualifying globals |
TotalValue |
A cumulative total across qualifying globals |
SingleValue |
One global at or above a value |
UniqueCreatures |
Globals from a number of different creatures |
UniqueDeposits |
Globals from a number of different deposits |
UniqueLandAreas |
Globals from a number of different land areas |
Streak |
Qualifying globals in an unbroken run |
Each condition can be narrowed:
- Global type, so only hunting or only mining counts
- Minimum value, filtering out small globals
- Specific creatures, materials or land areas, chosen from the wiki
- Required count, the target number
- Streak max gap hours, for
Streakonly, defining how long a gap is allowed before the run resets
The unique conditions are the most interesting and the most overlooked. UniqueCreatures with a required count of 25 rewards breadth rather than grinding one spawn, which produces a very different kind of play from Count.
For Streak, the maximum gap matters more than the count. A gap of 1 hour means a continuous session, a gap of 24 hours means playing every day. Set it before you set the target.
Status
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
Draft |
Being built, not visible to players |
Active |
Live and tracking progress |
Completed |
Finished |
Stopped |
Ended early |
Unlike events, which go live automatically on their start date, a challenge starts as a draft. It has to be moved to active deliberately. This is a good thing: it means you can build the tiers, read them back, and fix the numbers before anyone can start working towards them.
Get the conditions right before going active. Players will already have progress against a tier by the time you notice a target was too low, and lowering the bar after the fact is unfair to whoever already cleared it.
Design notes
Make the first tier reachable in one session. A ladder where nobody clears step one is indistinguishable from a broken challenge.
Prefer a value threshold over raw counts for hunting. Without a minimum value, Count conditions are cleared by whoever kills the most cheap mobs, which is rarely what you meant.
Repeatable plus an uncapped reward is the expensive combination. If a challenge is repeatable, cap the rewards.