Quest Best Practices

A few guidelines that keep quests engaging for students and manageable for you.

Designing Effective Quests

1. Start with a clear learning goal — What should students know or be able to do by the end of the quest?
2. Keep it manageable — 5-10 objectives per quest is a good starting point. Too many can feel overwhelming.
3. Mix objective types — Alternate between tasks, info nodes, and quizzes to keep things varied
4. Use branching for differentiation — Create easier and harder paths so students can choose their challenge level
5. Add narrative context — Use info nodes and descriptions to tell a story. Even a simple framing ("You're exploring a mysterious forest...") adds engagement.

Reward Strategy

• Prefer Gold over Experience — Keep Experience for rewarding good behavior and use Gold as the main quest reward. This separates behavioral rewards from scholastic achievements.
• Small rewards per objective — Give modest Gold for each objective to provide steady feedback
• Bigger bonus for completion — Use the quest completion bonus to reward students who finish the whole quest
• Match effort to reward — Boss objectives and quizzes should give more than simple info nodes

Managing Quests Over Time

• Create quests for each unit — Map quests to your curriculum units or chapters
• Use Draft status — Prepare quests in advance, then activate them when you're ready
• Build once for parallel groups — Teaching the same subject to several classes? Build the quest once and use it in each class, so a fix or improvement only has to be made in one place
• Clean up old duplicates — Have copies of the same quest lying around in several classes? Use Combine Quests to turn them into one shared quest
• Review progress weekly — Check the progress page to identify students who are stuck or falling behind
• Deactivate completed quests — Switch finished quests back to Draft to keep the student quest list clean