The Neopet Ritual

For me it all starts in the Secret Lab. I just have to zap my lab rat pet before I can do anything else. My husband has to check his stocks in case he's made millions overnight and my daughter heads straight to the games room. My mum heads over to Key Quest in her desperate attempt to secure gold keys and win the ever elusive paintbrush. My mum-in-law collects her bank interest and my nephew checks his shop till.

It seems that most people I have asked head straight to their favourite dailies list and start off on that. There are also a fair amount of selfless Neopian visitors that head straight over to the HC board and see what it is they can do to help, and there are a select few who log into their side accounts and take care of their pets there first. (One of the things I consistently forget to do; those poor neglected side pets must hate me so).

The Main part of my own personal ritual starts before I even log on. It’s the ‘getting things done first’ ritual. Being a slightly older than average Neopet player, this involves doing the housework. Once the washing is put away and the house is tidy, then I log on and away I go. Does your ritual include something like this, a pre-neopet ritual as it were? Do you have to get your homework done or tidy your room first? Considering the wide age group Neopets has, maybe it’s housework for you too or getting the children or even visiting grandchildren off to bed first. Anything we have to do beforehand to let us start playing happily is part of the ritual.

So doesn’t anyone just come on and play for a bit of fun? Why is it we all feel the need to complete certain things first? Is it to make sure we don’t miss out on anything? I have to admit the main things I find myself doing on a daily basis involve getting free things that I only end up selling or donating! Omelettes and jellies are ok to keep, but that yellow Lupe plushie is off to the Money Tree along with the toast sculpture and the cheap stamps from Key Quest. Any codestones or neggs get hidden away in my safety deposit box and if I’m lucky enough to find anything else good on my travels, it goes in there too. I tend to ‘hoard’ my good items, then have a selling spree; it makes me feel so much richer that way! Do you sell as you go or hoard and feel rich? Do you spend half an hour with the shop wizard finding the right price or just guess and see?

Another part of the ritual is playing high scoring games. You go to your favourites first from the games menu and then if you’re in the mood for it trundle off to find a few other games to play. Anything that you can earn a 1000 neopoints a go from is always a good place to start.

All these hard earned neopoints go toward another section of our ritual. The goals. Everyone seems to be saving for something. A faerie or baby paint brush, or a morphing potion to turn your pet into your dream pet? A decent weapon for the Battledome or a nicer background for your active pet? There are some who want to get the millionaire mega-platinum bank account and there are others that will earn enough for what they want and then end up in the Soup Kitchen for their next meal.

The more neopoints we can earn, the better things we can get and we can feel all the more proud of our hard earned pets.

This again is one of the things I’m awful at. I set myself a goal and start to save. I actually made it to my first million before I could wait no longer and spent all but 25k of it! My active pet has a very nice petpet that he’s very proud of now and I have several more of the expensive avatars to my name but that’s pretty much all I have to show for my spent million.

There is always something new to add to the ritual, the odd thing here and there to try out. It could be trying your hand at Kad feeding, trying to wake the Turmaculus or not to wake the Snowager. Trying to dig up buried treasure or roll cheese downhill.

Does your ritual involve the Battledome? Some love nothing more that to train their pets to perfection and beat the snot out of the Space Faerie. Others settle for just trying to beat Punchbag Bob and get themselves a nice trophy.

It seems to me that there is a lot of luck involved in our ritual dailies. There is the hope that we get a good prize from the Fruit Machine, the hope of a lucky spin on one of the wheels or the hope of the elusive Fountain Faerie quest. Sometimes our rituals pay off and sometimes they don’t. There will be a week full of random events and faerie quests and weeks where we get none. Days full of big wins and lucky zaps, or days full of junk prizes and bad stat changes. But whatever fortune favours us with in our journey though Neopia, we take the highs with the lows and continue in our daily Neopet ritual.

Our ritual ends when we have spun the Wheel of Slime for the second time, felt the need to lurk on the boards adding our pearls of wisdom here and there, and decided that it is way past our bedtime.

I hope this may have been of some help to anyone needing to find their own ritual or add to what they might already do, or even to know that you are not alone in your lab ray obsession or your need to save desperately for your goal.

Whatever it is you find your self doing in the world of Neopia, keep true to your ritual and I’m sure you will reach your goals, whatever they maybe. Good luck!