A Guide To Survival On Neopets

by: near_dark


To survive on Neopets you have to learn the basics and follow a few simple rules: Know how to make NP, Know how to keep your NP, and Know how not to get Scammed. This guide is not intended for brand new players, but I'm sure everyone can learn a thing or two from it. :)



Making NP

The Shop Wizard

A good habit to get into when buying items is to re-search your items enough until you find the lowest possible prices on the Shop Wizard (I prefer the Back-Enter button combo, although if you do this enough times in a row, you'll get banned from searching). Always use the Shop Wiz to buy. Never shop at those overpriced "Mall Shops", unless you're extremely generous!

A neat NP making tip:
When you search for common, useful items such as codestones, bottled faeries, map pieces, dubloons, etc. use the "Back-Enter Method", and if you're quick enough, you'll pick up some nice under priced items.

Shops Restocks

Neopets restocks all their shops every 8 minutes or so. There are no set restock times, but you can always assume a restock is coming when a shop is empty. But, it's not as easy as hitting the refresh key a couple of times and grabbing your desired item. You're there, refreshing, along with about a thousand other players, give or take. Those highly coveted items such as rare potions in the Magic Shop or rare, expensive weapons in the weapons shops only restock once in a blue moon and in multiples of 1. If you want to snatch one of these up, you have to have an extraordinarily high connection speed, master reflexes, or super powers (sometimes in the form of cheating programs). Then, there's also that annoying haggling, and the restriction of buying only every 5 seconds.

All's not lost, however. There are a few shops where you can pick up a decent deal.

At the Chocolate Factory the restocks are usually in decent multiples. Some chocolate's cheap, some is expensive. Be sure you're familiar with some of the resale values first. You don't want to hurriedly pick up a chocolate and find it's twice as cheap on the Shop Wiz.

Most of the cures restocked at the Pharmacy can be found for cheaper on the wiz. Once in a while it'll restock a Neck Brace, Onion Balm, or even an unbuyable Sporkle Syrup. All these will show up in the standard multiples of 1 or 2, except for Medicinal Soap. Medicinal Soap restocks roughly 15-25 at a time. Currently, it'll cost you around 600 NP, but the shop wiz price is 16,000 NP! So, if you catch the restock click quickly, and don't haggle! I once bought 3 in a row on one restock.

You might want to try the Happy Icy Fun Snow Shop for some nice restocks as well.

There are some shops you shouldn't waste your time hanging around at. If you're just dying for a Krawk from the Tyrannian Petpets shop, sorry, chances are it's not going to happen. Hoping for a Hand Painted Scarab from Lost Desert's Battle Supplies? Good luck. A Zumagorn from Faerieland PetPets? Probably not.

At the Auctions

Do searches for fairly abundant useful item such as potions or lab map pieces. You should always check the going prices of the items on the Shop Wiz. Keep an eye on the "Last Bid" and "Min Increment" columns. Sometimes the person auctioning the item will set their starting bid and increment improperly, without realizing it in the following way:

Example: Glowing Paint Brush

Last Bid: 20,000 NP
Min Increment: 20,000 NP

You place your bid for 40,000 NP. Here, the increment is 20,000 NP, so the next bid would be for 60,000 NP. But, a Glowing Paint Brush is worth 50,000 NP (at the moment). No one is going to outbid you and overpay. You just made yourself 10,000 NP!

Dailies

Do the daily freebies around Neopets, it doesn't hurt. Sometimes the Tombola guy will feel generous and let you leave with a codestone or two. Coltzan might leave you a dubloon. You've heard the stories about the Fruit Machine making people into millionaires, right? :)

Competitions

There are many contests in Neopia for you to showcase your special talents or abilities. Are you a wiz with words? Enter a poem or write a story or come up with a witty caption for the Caption Contest! Most of the prizes given out are well worth it. And you can always add a shiny new trophy to your User Lookup.

Competitions that give out really nice prizes, like unbuyables, are Mystery Pic, Lenny Conundrum, and Better Than You. There is a cut-off as to how many people can win, so it's best to get in there early enough.

Games

Surely you're pretty good at some Neopian Games. I usually don't recommend playing games. It's mostly frustrating, time consuming, and you don't make much NP. But if you're begging for petty change, play some Pyramids, Meerca Chase, or Defender Trainer.


Wasting NP

Food

Feed your pets a free omelette and jelly and they should be set for a couple of days. If you're really broke, visit the Soup Kitchen in the Marketplace. Unless you're going for gold in the Gourmet Food Club, there's no need to feed your pets anything else. Sell it instead. Well, once in a while, you might want to spoil your pet.

Painting Your Pets

When you decide to paint your pet, or change it, look into all the options available. There are many items out there. Some examples are, a Krawk petpet to make a Krawk pet, a Draik Egg to hatch one, or, if you like surprises and have the patience, invest in a Secret Laboratory Map. You'll have access to the Lab Ray which will occasionally change your pet's species/color. Or, try your luck at the Adoption Pound to see if any nice painted pets have been disowned.

In general though, the most popular items used to change pets are Paint Brushes, Morphing/Transmogrification Potions, and Magical Plushies. Say you have a Wocky, and you want to paint it Fire. Are you going to go spend over 200K NP on a Fire, Fire, Your Pants On Fire Paint Brush, or are you going to spend half that, and get a Fire Wocky Morphing Potion? Also, if you want a Draik, buy a Draik Morphing Potion instead of hatching a Draik Egg. Trust me.

Quests

Don't do quests of any kind unless you know they'll pay off. For random Faerie Quests, check the value of the requested item by asking on the Help Chat (since you can't use the Wiz while on a quest). If it's a cheap item get it, and your reward will most likely be a random increase in your pet's stats. Earth Faerie quests are the only ones you shouldn't do, she rewards you by feeding you pet(s). I'd recommend only doing the Snow Faerie Quests if the value of items she requests is around 2,000 NP to 3,000 NP. She'll often reward you with at least 2,000 NP and a decent item. Illusen and Jhudora's Quests are fun for a while, until they start asking for unbuyables at the higher reward levels (Levels 15+). You also have a time limit, and your chances of finding someone who has the item, fast are slim. You will lose, and you would have invested way more NP than gotten in rewards in return. These quests are for rich Neopians with lots of filthy rich Neofriends to help them out.

Kitchen Quests and Witch's Tower quests aren't worth doing at all.

Neolodge

Why let Cockroach Towers take your hard earned NP? If you won't be able to tend to your pets for a while, they should be fine on their own. Yes, they'll go hungry, maybe even dying, but they won't actually die, or leave you. They will get unhappy and miserable though. It may be cruel, but it's the truth. People who do put their pets in the Neolodge are usually rich and don't mind spending extra NP to put their pets away so that they don't have to bother with taking care of them, or playing with them. Now that's cruel.

Stocks

Don't invest in any stocks unless you know what it's all about. The Stock Market seems to be in a slump lately and there's never a guarantee your stocks will not plummet. Buy low, sell high, but unless you really know what you're doing, skip the stock market.



Safety and Scams

Trading Post

Expensive trades left up are potential hacker targets. It's getting easier and easier to hack into accounts. I recommend you take down all your trades before you log out. Or you might find everything gone when you log back in a couple of days later, or, you won't be able to log in at all.

1) Scammer puts up a trade with a fairly cheap item. "I'm leaving Neopets! The highest bidder on this item gets a Baby PB!" (or) "...gets the [insert expensive item] in my other trade!" In the case of the first one, who knows if they even have a Baby Paint Brush? They'll just run off with your NP. In the second scenario, why won't they just let you offer on the [expensive item] lot instead? This is such a dim-witted scam but a lot of people actually fall for it.

2) This one I actually fell for once. Scammer puts up a trade with a Hypno Helmet, or some similar high-value item. "I need a Magical Tomato and Pepper Omelette! I'm on a quest! Hurry!!!" The value of the requested item is usually much less than the item they are willing to trade for it. The Hypno Helmet is currently worth 850,000 NP. The Omelette is 300,000 NP. You're thinking, wow! What a deal! Not so. The scammer already has the Omelette/Item, and just wants to get rid of it. Once someone bids on their Omelette (which is probably priced at 400K NP), they take the Hypno Helmet trade down. This is one way the scammers will use to get rid of any hard-to-sell items at jacked-up prices.

3) Too many offers: You offer on a nice trade. The scammer neomails you, "I had so many offers! I'll close the lot and re-open it. Whoever re-bids first gets it!" Meanwhile, they've put up some cheaper item and it looks very similar to what you were bidding on before. You'll quickly re-bid on it to be the first, and you won't catch on until it's too late. Popular items used for this scam are Magical Plushies vs. Plain Plushies or Potions which look the same but have different names. Paint Brushes vs. their Plushie Version are used too.

Shops

1) The Fake Login screen. You do a search for a Bottled Faerie and find one in a store on sale for 500 NP! You click to buy, and you are suddenly transported to a Neopets login page. This is only a scam to get you to type in your password and steal your account, nothing else. Don't type in anything and report the shop. Remember, if it doesn't start with http://www.neopets.com/ in the address bar, stay far away, no matter how tempting.

2) Expensive galleries are potential hacker targets as well. If you leave your account inactive for a long time, there's a chance someone might notice all your pretty items and might try to guess your login, or whatever it is that they do to steal accounts.

Outside Links

Be very careful about visiting sites posted by people on Neopets. Posting or neomailing links to sites other than Neopets is not allowed. This is mostly because there are so-called "cookie-stealing" programs out there which take the cookie information stored on your computer when you visit the target site. This way, someone can find your out password/I.P. etc.

If the posted link ends with a picture extension, it's probably safe to visit, but if you come across a link similar to: "http://forlorn.234/77g&dkr" who knows what this could be?

New Guild Contests

This one is fairly new and a lot of Neopians fall victim to it! You'll find a guild leader advertising on the Trading Post or on the Chat Boards that his/her guild is running this contest with amazing prizes! The catch is that the contest ends in the next hour, or ends at 9:00 PM NST!!

I have watched one of these guild scams unfold personally. I joined the guild to warn everyone, but saw the members robbed off 3 Million NP in total! I'm not saying all guilds that offer contests are a scam at all, but there are warning signs to watch for. Most importantly, if the contest only lasts 1 hour, it's a scam. Check to see when the guild was created. If it's brand new, it's a scam. Are the prizes to good to be true? It's a scam. How many members/new members are there? The leader usually posts his donating "leaders" in the guild. In the guild I was warning members in, the leader actually posted I donated 850,000 NP, when I didn't donate a single NP. The reason for this is to keep raising the top donators, so people donate more. Be careful!

User Lookup

Give me an item and I'll tell you the secret to riches! Yeah, right. You've seen the lengthy user lookup paragraphs detailing something like: "...just send me any codestone, faerie, map piece, or dubloon, and I'll tell you the secret to making lots of NP and getting lots of free items! If I don't, report me! But why would I risk my account, I'm telling the truth!" So, say you believe them. You send off your codestone, and they neomail you back: "Put this in your User Lookup." What was the secret? It's like an annoying chain letter. The secret is to put up the same info they have on their User Lookup, on yours.

Neomail

1) No one from Neopets Staff will ever ask you for your login information. If you get an email detailing something like, "This is the Neopets Staff. We are doing regular checkups on inactive accounts. Please send us your username and pass and we will not delete your account. Never fall for such scams. Besides, the filters won't even let you type in your login and send in a neomail. Just proves to show how stupid some scammers are.

2) Email scam. "OMG! Donna from Neopets just gave me 5 Million NP!! Just change your email to: [blahblah@blah.com] and neomail me back! Then log off for 15 minutes, and when you log back in, you're rich!" Don't ever change your email address to anything other than your own. In fact, it's better not to have one listed at all (unless you forget your password often). It's very easy for a scammer to enter your username, click on forgot password, and have an automatic email sent to them at [blahblah@blah.com] containing all your info.

Chats

You see someone post, "Look! If you type in your password here, it'll come out as stars!" Meaning they want you to give post your info so they can steal our account. What you type is what will show, so it won't show up as "*****".

Reporting

Don't bother insulting scammers/hackers etc. or announcing that you reported them. Just go ahead and report quietly. They might get vengeful and do a 180 on you, and report you for something you didn't do and you risk gettin frozen.


Written: May 25, 2003
Submitted to Neopian Times: May 26, 2003

Do not copy or take without permission.