Neopet Lessons: A Guide to the Fullest Experience Possible

Lesson One: The Value of a Pet's Name

When creating your pets, the name can be everything. Think of something that is unique to you or you find special meaning with, and think hard about whether the name you choose for your pet will be a lasting one, or a name you chose on a whim that you will hate as soon as your pet gets to be a few months or years old. I, for instance, went through intensely obsessive phases where my eighth grade self would spend countless hours swooning over various movie stars. Two of my pets, and my username, in fact, reflected these obsessions. Now they have faded and I find myself laughing at the younger Neopets player that I was, and while reading these pet names allow me to giggle down memory lane, I must also face the brutal truth that I am stuck with names that I no longer appreciate.

The problem with naming your pet a whimsical name lies in the time that you grow up or grow to hate it, for by then your pet is strong, it is painted, it has won a beauty contest or a gourmet food club membership card or has been a site spotlight winner or been featured in a story. By then, despite the "ick" name, you still love your pet and could never think of putting them up for adoption to start all over just for the sake of the name. While you can change any feature you dislike about your pet with a morphing potion, paintbrush, or visit to the lab ray, the name is one attribute that you will be stuck with. If only Neopets had a "change name" feature like their Petpets, right? The lesson here is to spend some time thinking about each and every name for your precious little pets. They have to live with them, too!

Lesson Two: If You Want Something, Get it Now. Period.

For the longest time I yearned for my pet, Mystical_Enchantment (one of the two names out of four that I still appreciate, speaking of pet name value,) to be painted with a Faerie Paint Brush. Stories I had written about her for the Times included her being painted, and I wanted to fulfill them and have a pet who fit in with my favorite aspect of Neopia: the land of the Faeries. At the time, the paintbrushes were about 160,000 Neopoints. This was to me a hefty sum in 2002, but I could have managed it. I decided not to spend the Neopoints at all, and instead saved them up in my bank account with no purpose in mind. For one reason or another, the real world took me away from the site for about two years (but I am ever so glad to be back!) and when I returned, the paintbrush, to my surprise, had been retired, and the price had skyrocketed. Today the brush is bartered through the Island Trading Post or sold at auction for 2 to 3 million Neopoints - that's about fifteen times what it would have cost me if I had just bought it when it was available to me. And had I stocked up? It makes me sadder than the Grey Faerie when I think about all of the Neopoints I could have today. Sometimes a safety deposit box can prove to hold as much precious interest as the Neopian Bank!

The same holds true for the lab ray map pieces, whose prices just keeps on increasing. Since the ray has the potential to paint your pets with random paintbrushes, people are willing to pay this immense sum for the chance that they can get their pets painted with the magical paintbrushes otherwise found in a Neopian Retirement Home somewhere. (For those already owning the Lab Ray, I suggest you do yourselves a favor and buy the Petpet laboratory map pieces as soon as possible, while you can still get them all for about 10,000.)

My advice is to buy the things you desire today - what is the point of saving up your Neopoints for nothing, when you can get your hands on what you desire right now? Saving is a great thing, yes, but not when you sacrifice the things you want the most while you are playing.

Lesson Three: Get Involved!

This seems to be an obvious lesson, but it is something I didn't quite understand when I joined and can be invaluable to your experience on the site. Join a guild! They can supply you with welcome packages (which equal items, which equal Neopoints) as well as a wonderful web of Neofriends who can be an endless help and comfort to you, as well as helping you with the sometimes necessary tasks of getting votes for either the Caption Competition or the Beauty Contest. Some of the people you meet live around the world and interact in this forum, forming lasting friendships and bonds that are above all things helpful.

Another fantastic way to get involved is to take part in the various Plots! After you have significantly worked on, fought in the Battledome as a part of, or solved a plot, you can receive trophies which will forever relax on your user info page. (For information on plots, be checking the 'News,' section of the site, an invaluable resource for not only plot information, but the release or updates of everything Neopets!) The various trophies earned through plots throughout the ages of Neopian time make each user unique and give you something you can be proud of. For instance, if you participate in a plot in your first months on the site and are still playing years down the line, new players can't get these trophies, making them priceless definitions of who you are as a user. Nothing can make you prouder!

The most important part of getting involved relies on asking for help when you need it - the Neoboards and your many Neofriends (have you joined a guild yet?) can be a great help when it comes to finding items you need, getting ideas, or seeking help for quests, games, or plots. There is great joy to be found working with other users while typing on a topic in the Neoboards - other people are more than willing to help you if you've gotten stuck in a plot or can't quite get to a level in a game. It is the users that make the site as grand as it is and keep TNT (otherwise known as the Neopets Team, for the Newbie who was confused by this term as I was for several months as I was) busy - utilize that and work it to your advantage! Just don't forget to reciprocate by helping out when someone else asks for it.

Lesson Four: Play to your Strengths

As a Newbie or even as a Veteran to the site, you may find yourself drooling over other people's lookups and wondering, "How did they get all of those trophies!?" The answer is simple - those people do certain things better than others and give it their all when contests allow them to use what they are good at.

Are you skilled at all as a writer, or at all imaginative? There are so many outlets to your creativity. You are reading the fruits of one, for example, here in the Neopian Times. Whether your forte is to give advice or write fictional stories, the Times can be a great way to earn a trophy for your cabinet. The Storytelling Competition, the Neoadventure Spotlight Competition, Pet and Petpet Spotlight Competitions, and the Poetry Gallery are all other writing-based trophy winners. If you like to write, there alone you have six means to get your voice heard and earn a trophy.

If writing isn't your thing, perhaps you like to draw? Here, again, there are countless possibilities - the Comic section of the Neopian Times, the Picture Competition, and the Beauty Contest. Every creative bone in your body has a home on Neopets.com. For the braniac and the clever individual there are the Lenny Conundrum and the Caption Contest, those with business sense can earn riches or trophies playing Plushie Tycoon or working the Stock Market or Food Club. I strongly urge you, despite what you think your strengths are, to also look at each new contest as it opens every week, because an idea may spring to you. You may think of a hilarious caption, happen to know exactly what the Mystery Pic competition is thumbnailing or what the Lenny Conundrum is asking for, or have another great idea that can win you a contest and earn you a trophy and other cool prizes.

The hardest trophies to win are the individual game trophies themselves. But let me point out that few people have the top scores in every or many games - they may have one trophy as a "Hasee Bounce Champion!!!" but this is because this is the one game they have focused on. So find your favorite games and play them often. You might get lucky! This also comes in handy for the special day that a Better Than You contest comes along featuring your game of choice, for you can earn a trophy here without earning the top scores in the high score table.

There are also so many trophies that you can earn with relative ease if you just dedicate yourself. You don't have to beat anyone but the computer in games like Sakhmet Solitaire or Pyramids, where two games won gives you a trophy, or other games like Go! Go! Go!, Cheat! And Round Table Poker. They take a little time, but are trophies you are guaranteed to win if you just keep at it. Others take a little more time, like the trophy won for beating Punchbag Bob in the Battledome, or the prizes from the epics that are Neoquest I and II, but all three are attainable.

One of the greatest contests on Neopets is the Random Contest. Every week is an opportunity to play to a group's strengths and creativity; the contest features winners who can write poems, make up clever sound bites, sew, draw, and other countless creative projects. This contest is fun and completely original each week: You are bound to find something that interests you or that you are capable of. The idea is to find something you are good at or simply like to do and do it as much as possible - it will bear you Trophies!

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Making your Neopets experience is really in your hands from beginning to end. What you do and the choices you make are all yours alone, and with a little involvement, some help from friends, and some strong pets that you make your own, it can be an experience gleaming from your user lookup and in your own heart. So when asking yourself "What do I do from here?" the answer really is, after all, "Anything you want!"