The Almost Abandoned Attic Time System

The Attic is a very different and peculiar shop: Only people with accounts over 3 years can access it, it stocks all variety of items with rarity 80 to 99, you don't need to haggle in order to buy something, you have a limit of 5 items per day and after you buy something you will need to wait at least 15 minutes to buy another thing.

It is considered by a lot of people, the best shop to restock in Neopia. It indeed restocks much more rarer items than any other shop. And in my opinion what makes this shop amazing is that you don't have to simply sit there and refresh non-stop. It has a schedule.

So you can do a variety of things while you are waiting for it to stock (I love spending my time on the the Deserted Fairground that is nearby).

But since the attic changed a couple months ago, some people have difficulty understanding how the time works, so in this article your questions will be cleared up.

# The new time system

Since the attic was launched, it had a very obvious and consistent pattern, in which it could stock every 7 minutes, and exactly on the second 53 (up to 10 seconds later).

The new system consists of small changes about the seconds, that makes things more complicated, since the restocker needs to keep track of the time.

The attic now has the possibility of stocking every 7 minutes AND 1 to 10 seconds from the previous restock, being 7 minutes and 1~5 seconds a more common range, and 7 minutes and 6~10 less frequent. Also, it is possible it can go over 10 seconds, but that is really rare to happen.

So, as example let's say it stocked at 7:02:30 am NST.

The next possible restock will be between 7:09:31 and 7:09:40.

And if it stocks at 7:09:35, the next possible restock will be between 7:16:36 and 7:16:45.

# Working with pendings

The attic does not stock every time it was supposed to. It can be up to 3 hours without restocking. In this case the calculation is a bit different, because although the variation can be between 1 to 10 seconds, the average gain is actually around 2 to 3 seconds every time it pends.

So, following the example that it stocked at 7:02:30 am, the next stocks will be:

7:09, 7:16, 7:23 = These are the 3 next possible stocks after the one we had. So far the seconds will not be much different than it was on minute 02. So what we need to do is to refresh the attic until 15 seconds after that. That is, until about the 45s.

7:30, 7:37, 7:44, 7:51, 7:58 = From there the seconds will definitely have changed more. So what we will do is to add 2 seconds each time it pends, and refresh for 20 seconds after that.

So you will be refreshing the page somewhere around:

7:30:(32~52), 7:37:(34~54), 7:44:(36~56), 7:51:(38~58), 7:58:(40~00).

After 1 hour pending you'll start refreshing after 15 seconds from the time we had. (45+)

After 2 hours pending, it will be 30 seconds. (00+ of the next minute)

If the attic still hasn't restocked for over one hour, it is recommended that you refresh it for about 30 seconds. Because the more it pends, the more we stay in the dark. The times are unstable and can be a little out than planned.

#Why it is so important to follow this schedule?

It would be just perfect if we could just refresh as much as we can without doing any kind of mental math.

But unfortunately, you cannot just update the page like crazy for one whole minute, because after many refreshes, you will be banned. The bans are also a bit fickle, and may only last 15 minutes to 12 hours or more! So following the schedule is the best plan you got.

It may happen that the attic will stock after the seconds you planned, or a little earlier, but that is very rare to happen and it doesn't worth being banned to not risk losing any stock.

A good refreshing rate is 1x per second. Slower than that will make you miss things. Faster than that would lead you to a fast banishment.

#Discovering what is the time now

As you noticed, with these little seconds change, it is impossible to know what the attic time is without asking to somebody who knows or discovering it by yourself. There is not a petpage that will tell you that.

So the first option you got is to ask somebody you know, or on boards, what the current time is. If nobody can answer you that, here are some ways to discover it by yourself.

If you didn't restock on attic in the past 12 hours:

If you are starting out of the blue, the only thing you can possibly do is to refresh the page every 1 minute to catch what minute it is restocking. After that you can refresh every 5 seconds to get the approximate seconds. Then voila, there you have it!

This maybe not be a very pleasant experience though, you may have the "luck" to start refreshing right when it started to pend (a lot).

If you atticed in the past 12 hours:

If you are going out for a few hours and intend to come back later to attic, or if are going to restock there first thing in the morning, remember to always note down the last stock time you saw.

Remember that I said that the average gain is between 2 to 3 seconds?

Well, if you attic a lot you will notice that every 2 hours the minutes will repeat.

So you saw that stock going at 7:02:30. After 2 hours it would be at 9:01:30 IF it didn't have the seconds gain. But because of the 40~60 seconds accumulated, it will also be at the minute 02.

So what I do to discover the approximate time a few hours from now, is consider that every 2 hours the minute will be the same, but I take 10 seconds from that every time.

Here is what it looks like:

7:02:30 am = 9:02:20 am, 11:02:10 am, 1:02:00 pm, 3:01:50 pm, 5:01:40 pm, 7:01:30 pm.

Now that you have these times, you will do the math to find the aproximate time in minutes.

Let's say it is 3:52 pm. So: 3:01:50+7+7+7+7+7+7+7+7= 3:57:50

Having the time in minutes you will refresh every 10 seconds for around 2 minutes, 1 earlier and 1 after.

Chances are that the correct time will be inside this time frame. So instead of refreshing every minute for hours, you can just refresh for two minute out of seven, and you will discover time a lot faster!

#How do I know the exact time the attic stocked?

Of course, you are there to restock amazing items and we all know that in order to do that you have to be very fast and you can't waste not even half a second looking at the clock to check the exact time it stocked.

So to get the right time, you have to be on the page the attic just updated (full stock), and check the source code. You can do that by pressing Ctrl+ U, and pressing Ctrl+F to search for "NST" on that page.

You will see something like this:

7:02:30 am NST

And there it is, the exact time time the attic restocked.

I hope this guide was helpful and I wish you all the best of luck.

Happy atticing!