The reward function provided by TextWorld is as follows: +1 for each action taken that moves the agent closer to finishing the quest; -1 for each action taken that extends the minimum number of steps needed to finish the quest from the current stage; 0 for all other situations.
we hypothesize that it will cut down on the amount of exploration needed during testing time, theoretically allowing it to complete quests faster; one of the challenges of text adventure games is that the quests are puzzles and even after training, execution of the policy requires a significant amount of exploration.