Quests

Quests are challenges presented in the game. As of the Christmas Update (December 2014) there are 1800+ quests available to complete. Quests show up on the left hand side of a players home desktop. Quests can be part of a 6-quest sequence to combine a collection, with the first 5 quests asking to find each item belonging to the collection, and the 6th quest asking to combine the collection. Quests may also ask to find items unrelated to any known collections, or ask to investigate pictures in certain modes.

Regular Quests
There are 4 main types of regular quests in the game: General quests, Collection Quests, One Off Item Quests and Advertising Quests

General Quests
Some quests just ask you to perform a general task in return for a reward of experience points. Examples of General Quests are "Explore the five different locations in the 'Morphs' mode" (pictured above) or "Investigate Ghost Town 3 times". These quests are not related to collections, but may be used as part of the game's in-built tutorial so show a player how certain features, such as energy items or talismans, work.

Collection Quests
The vast majority of quests in the game are related to collections. Typically, these quests appear in sequences of 6. The first quest asks the player to find the first item from the collection, the second quest asks the player to find the second item from the collection, etc. until all 5 items needed to combine the collection have been found. The 6th quest in the sequence is to combine the collection. Although uncommon, it is possible for the quests to break this order, and ask for the 5 items out of sequence. It is also possible for the same quest sequences to skip between two different collections. The first couple of quests may be for items in one collection, with the next couple of quests to look for items in another collection, before returning to finish the first collection. Examples of Collection Quests are "The antique coin can be found in Buddha's Square" or "Scatter the anomaly 'Ghostly mirror' out of Japanese House to find an object".

Once Off Item Quests
Some quests ask the player to find items that do not belong to any collection. Some of these items will appear in the 'Different' tab of your Inventory once you win them, but they serve no purpose in the game and cannot be used. Others do not appear in any part of your inventory after you complete the quest. The Once Off Items Quests at the beginning of the game tend to appear at random and come in groups, they are used to progress the storyline of the game. The Once Off Item Quests later in the game are more likely to come after a particular set of Collection Quests, with the item being thematically related to the previous collections. Examples of Once Off Item Quests are "Find the lost Mosaic Pieces by exploring magic pictures" or "Investigate the Mill in Pairs to find the Key to the Lock".

Advertising Quests
At the beginning of a new game, players will be asked to do the developers job for them and advertise the game as part of the quests. These quests are included in the main quests of the game (and count towards your quest total), but do come with an extra incentive of rewarding crystals for completion. Examples include liking the game on Facebook, or following the publisher (G5) on twitter. Clicking on the link in the quest bubble will bring you to your devices web browser, where the log-in page for that particular social networking site will automatically load and you will be re-directed to G5's page to complete the requirement of the quest. Sometimes just following the link a number of times will complete the quest for you, which is useful for people who do not want to have to create accounts for different social networking sites just to progress in a game. This practice of forced advertising being integrated into game progress is becoming increasingly common in free to play games produced by large publishing houses.

Badges of the Order Quests
Of all the quests in the game, only two ask you to physically find and select objects hidden inside the pictures. These are the Badges of the Order Quests. Any other quest that asks you to, for example,  'look in Illusionist's Room for the object'  actually mean  'win a game in Illusionist's Room and you stand a chance of winning this item as a reward', but the Badges of the Order are really hidden inside the pictures themselves, and must be found as extra bonus items within the pictures for the duration of the Badges of the Order Quests.

1st Badges of the Order Quest
There are two Badges of the Order Quests. The first Quest appears very early on in the game, as one of the first big quests a new player will encounter. The Quest first appears as a regular quest with a golden border in a player's quest list on the left hand side of their Home Desktop. Once the quest is activated, the magnifying glass decoration on the top left hand side of the players Home Desktop will be replaced by the Badges of the Order box. The first Badges of the Order Quest requires the player to find 200 silver badges hidden within the different pictures. Once the quest begins, these silver badges can be found hidden within every picture in the game. Players collect them by finding them in the picture and tapping on them. You do not have to find the silver badge in a particular picture in order to win that Picture investigation, and you do not have to find the 200 silver badges in a row. It does not matter which pictures you find the silver badges in.

Once a player has found the 200 silver badges for the first Badges of the Order quest, they can open the the first Badges of the Order Box and collect their reward. To do this, the player must actually select the Box on their home desktop to bring up its info box. In this info box, the player must press the green 'open' button to open the Box and collect their reward. If a player does not do these, then the quest does not complete and the silver badges do not disappear from the Pictures. Instead, the player's badges total will re-set to 199 every time they play a new picture, so that any silver badges they find will count as the 200th silver badge. This will continue indefinitely until the player open's the box on their Home Desktop and collects their reward.

The rewards for completing the first Badges of the Order Quest are:

Once the player opens the 1st Badges of the Order box, then the quest completes, and the magnifying glass decoration returns to the top left corner of the players Home Desktop in place of the Badges of the Order box.

2nd Badges of the Order Quest
The Tavern Update introduced a 2nd Badges of the Order quest into the game. Players downloading the Tavern Update found that the 2nd Badges of the Order quest began automatically after updating if they had already completed the 1st Badges of the Order quest earlier in their game. Players still working on the 1st Badges of the Order Quest needed to complete it before starting the 2nd Badges of the Order Quest.

For new players, starting since the Tavern Update was released, the 2nd Badges of the Order quest does not start automatically after the 1st quest is complete but, depending on the level of the player when completing the first Badges of the Order quest, usually starts within a few experience levels. The 2nd Badges of the Order Quest starts the same as the first, with a new Badges of the Order box appearing in the top left corner of the player's Home Desktop. To complete the second quest, players must find 400 silver badges hidden within the pictures, in the same manner as when they collected 200 silver badges in the first quest. Again, the silver badges can be found in every picture in the game (including pictures added by subsequent updates), and to complete the quest, players must physically open the 2nd Badges of the Order box by tapping on its icon on their Home Desktop and pressing 'open'. Once the player collects their rewards for opening the 2nd Box, it is replaced by the original magnifying glass decoration on their desktop.

The rewards for completing the second Badges of the Order Quest are:

Holiday Events
The Halloween Update was also the first time a set of holiday challenges were introduced: players had a limited time period (a few weeks) in which to complete tasks in the Halloween Holiday Event. The rewards for completing these tasks, such as earning the Sphere of Miracles desktop award, were only available during this time period.

Holiday updates may have their own set of challenges that include quests designed to combine new collections added during the Holiday update into special artefacts. Holiday quests usually have special rewards that are only obtainable by completing the holiday quests in a set time period.

Halloween Holiday Event
The 2013 Halloween holiday event had 3 main challenges:
 * Complete 24 holiday quests to unlock the Sphere of Miracles
 * Combine the 5 Halloween collections to create Witch's Talisman artefact
 * Reach Academician level on Witch's Hut to win Halloween Avatar

Christmas Holiday Event
The Christmas holiday event, introduced by the Christmas Update had 3 main challenges:
 * Reach Academician level in Gem Match to unlock the Pyramid of Wonder
 * Complete 30 holiday quests to win a holiday talisman and combine the 5 Christmas collections to create the Santa Amulet artefact
 * Reach Academician level on Christmas Eve to win Christmas Avatar

Valentines Holiday Event
The Valentines holiday event, introduced by the Valentines Update has 3 main challenges:
 * Complete 30 holiday quests to win a holiday talisman (the Cupid's Medallion) and combine the 5 Valentines collections to create the Valentines Amulet
 * Reach Academician level on Tree of Dates to win Valentines Avatar
 * Receive 400 Valentine's cards from friends to open the Valentines Box to receive a sponge cake food item, a gold weight, and the Lover Letter and Lucky Horseshoe talismans

Halloween 2014 Holiday Event
The 2014 Halloween holiday event had 3 main challenges:
 * Achieve 'Academic' Level in Forest House to either unlock the Sphere of Miracles or upgrade a pre-existing Sphere of Miracles to Level 2.
 * Complete 30 holiday quests to unlock a special Halloween Chest, and receive its rewards
 * Combine the 5 Halloween collections to create Witch's Talisman artefact

Christmas 2014 Holiday Event
The 2014 Christmas holiday event had 3 main challenges:
 * Achieve 'Academic' Level in Winter Street earn a new game avatar.
 * Win 500 Snowflakes by winning games of Gem Match to either unlock the 'Pyramid of Wonder' desktop award or upgrade a pre-existing Pyramid of Wonder to Level 2.
 * Complete 30 holiday quests to win a special Holiday Talisman that increases the rate of energy restoration by 5 times for 24 hours.
 * (optionally: Combine the 5 new Christmas collections to create the updated Amulet of Santa artefact)

Total Number of Unique Quests in the Game
Due to the fact that some quests are tied directly into once off timed challenges, the total number of quests in the game will vary from player to player, depending on when they started their game and if they played during the different timed challenges. It is not possible to get quests that were part of timed challenges after the challenge timer has expired. This means players starting a new game now will not be able to complete as many quests total as players who have played during these expired timed challenges.

As of the Spring 2015 Update, there is potentially 1950 total quests in the game, with 174 of these quests being part of previous timed challenges that are no longer available to new players and 1 additional quest that was only available at the beginning of the game's history and has since been removed from the game. This means there are 175 quests total that new players cannot get, so their maximum possible number of quests is 1775 not 1950.

Quests currently not available in the game include:

Note the months stated in the 'unavailble for..' column are just meant as a guide, and the total quests may slightly differ from player to player. This is due to the fact that although the timed challenges themselves usually start with a 20-30 day timer, many of the challenges had extensions applied to their timers. The extensions varied in length, and some challenges received more than one extension. Additionally, since the updates releases were staggered across platforms, some the timers for some challenges expired on a later date on some platforms than others (typically, Kindle devices received the updates much later than iOS devices, so the timer expired a few weeks later on Kindles than on iOS devices). So,depending on the type of device you use, you may still have had the opportunity to play some of the timed challenges if you started in the month stated in the 'unavailable for..' column.

Additionally, it is possible for players to have completed some of the quests in a particular timed challenge but not complete all of those quests before the timer expired. Those players would not be able to get the remainder of the quests that came with that challenge once the timer expired, and so their total unique quests might be a number in between the totals stated above. For example, a player who started playing before/during the Valentines 2014 timed challenge, but only completed 10 of the 30 possible quests before the timer expired would have 1875 possible maximum unique quests in the game.

Repeat Quests
Some players may encounter repeat quests in the game. Repeat quests are not the general quest type quest, these quests do repeat (you will be asked to 'explore any picture in night mode 3 times' more than once for example) but each of those repeats are considered different unique quests by the game.

However, glitches in the game do cause some collection quests and once off item quests to repeat and these are real repeat quests. Not every player will experience repeat quests, as they are both related to general glitches but also player specific crashes. Some players may never encounter a repeat quest, some will encounter only 6 (replaying a single collection sequence quest of finding 5 items and combining the collection) and other players may have up to a thousand repeat quests if their game crashes and they continue to play the crashed game and need to replay all the quests they had previously completed.

Repeat quests will count towards the Taken To Task desktop award counter, allowing players to have more than 1880 quests according to the counter in the Awards section of the game. However, they will not count towards the finders section of the top 1000 players. Only unique quests completed by the player will appear in this list when other players look at it. However, a glitch in the game means a player will see their position in the top 1000 as if the repeat quests are being counted.

This can be quite confusing, and means that many players will see themselves as number 1 in the top 1000 finders section. However, they will appear much lower down the list in the top 1000 when any other player in the game sees them. For example, if a player started the game after the 2014 Valentines update, and has completed 1795 unique quests, but due to a partial game crash has also replayed 100 of those quests (100 repeat quests), they will see 1895 quests completed in the awards section of the game and will see themselves as number 1 in the top 1000 finders. All 1895 they see in the awards section will count towards them getting the next level of the Taken to Task award (level 7, complete 2000 quests) but the player will only have 1795 quests completed in the top 1000 finders, and all other players in the game will not even see them in the top 1000 finders (the 1000th player currently has 1845 quests completed) and their friends will only see 1795 quests when they sort their top 1000 list by 'friends only'. This means you can never really tell how many quests a players has completed in total (including repeats) by looking at their stats in the top 1000 or your friends list, as you will only see their total unique quests completed not the repeat quests they have also completed.

This is why you will also occassionally see a player in top 1000 list that have the green level 7 Taken to Task award (gained for completing 2000 quests) even though their player info will show that they have less than 2000 quests completed. They have actually completed more than 2000 quests while playing the game, but many of those quests are repeats, probably indicating that the player had a partial game crash at some point and started over without deleting the game and starting a completely new game.

Tips

 * Receiving an item as a gift from a friend that is needed for a quest will complete the quest when you accept the gift. Use your wishlist to enlist your friends help with particularly stubborn quests.
 * If a quest asks for a specific item from a collection and you have 1 or more of each item in that collection, then combining the collection will complete that specific quest. The next quest will still be for the next item in the collection, and you will need to combine the collection again to skip that quest, but the quest to combine the collection will auto-complete once you reach it.

Related

 * SS Home
 * Home Desktop
 * List of Pictures
 * Picture Levels
 * Lists of Puzzles
 * Collections
 * Wishlists
 * Hiring Friends