How to Pick a Team for the Obelisk Battles

     The Battleground of the Obelisk is a long-running feature where your Neopet competes against fighters from six different teams over a two-week period in order to win Boons, avatars, and site themes.

     When the event begins, you have three days to make your choice from the three randomly selected teams. Then, for the rest of the week, you battle in the Battledome against opponents from other teams.

     The winning team is then announced at the start of the second week, and everyone who participated in at least 10 battles with their chosen team receives the Boons, avatar, and site theme associated with that team.

     Players can join one of six teams, which are:

     * Awakened

     * Brute Squad

     * Order of the Red Erisim

     * Seekers

     * The Sway

     * Thieves Guild

     Only three of these teams are available to choose from at each skirmish. Each team has its own set of prizes on offer for those who win with that team, and choosing the right one will make all the difference in whether you receive the avatars, site themes, and Boons on offer or if you end up receiving a consolation prize.

     Players who join the winning team will win a unique avatar and site theme for their efforts; however, these rewards can only be won once. Newer users will be chasing each of the six available avatars and site themes.

     Winning players also earn special Boons that last for the whole week. Some of the Boons on offer are considered more valuable or useful than others, so players who have all the avatars and site themes often choose the team that has the best Boons on offer.

     Players on losing teams receive an item as a consolation prize, which is better than nothing, especially if you fought hundreds of battles to try and get your team the win.

     The Boons that are most sought-after by the players that I have spoken to about this are:

     * Bank Bribery

     * Black Market Goods

     * Cartogriphication

     * Refreshed Quest Request

     The Bank Bribery Boon increases the interest you earn at the National Neopian Bank by 3 percentage points, and the Black Market Goods Boon gives you the opportunity to go to Neopian shops and to purchase items that other users cannot see. The Cartogriphication Boon gives you the solution to where in the Faerie Caverns the prize is, and the Refreshed Quest Request Boon lets you replace a faerie quest that you do not want to complete with another quest. All of these Boons have the potential to earn you a large amount of Neopoints, to help train your pet, or even to earn your pet a dip in the Rainbow Fountain.

     Bank Bribery is available to winners who win with The Sway and Seekers; Black Market Goods is available from The Sway; Cartogriphication is available from the Order of the Red Erisim; and Refreshed Quest Request is available from The Sway and the Order of the Red Erisim.

     Neopets Premium users have access to two special Boons that they can pick from if they are on the winning team, regardless of which team that is. These premium Boons are awarded in addition to the Boons that are available to everyone on the winning team.

     The Sway, the Seekers, and the Order of the Red Erisim are the teams considered by other users to have the best selection of Boons to choose from, which helps to explain why these teams tend to win more often than other teams do. While it can make sense to always pick the team with the most popular Boons, teams with less valuable Boons can emerge victorious on occasion.

     The Awakened team has random Boons on offer, and they can be a good choice if you are not a fan of the Boons on offer from the other available teams in a particular round. The remaining teams, the Brute Squad and the Thieves Guild, are the teams that are often considered to have the least valuable Boons, which contributes to their lower win rates.

     A full list of which Boons are available and which teams have access to which Boons is available on fan sites, some of which also keep track of which teams have won previous events.

     Some users publicly share which team they are joining in the NeoBoards, which are often collated in straw polls, while other users take the publicly available data from fan sites to analyse past results and forecast which teams have the best chance of coming out on top. Don’t rely on these too much, as the team with the most users in a poll or the most likely team to win in a forecast is not guaranteed victory. Only a small number of users will be sharing their team choices in any one place, and any forecasts are only estimates.

     There are also a few guilds that try to increase their chances of victory by coordinating their members behind a single team. Some of these guilds operate publicly and share their success rates, while others operate in the shadows. These guilds usually do not publicly reveal which team they are supporting in order to encourage other players to join their guild. Sometimes guild members will leak which team their guild is supporting in a particular round, but leaks are only as reliable as the person telling you the leaked content.

     The choice of which team to choose in the Battleground of the Obelisk is up to you. Whether you are seeking a specific avatar and site theme or hoping to earn the most valuable Boons, there is a team for you to choose from in each round. If you end up on a losing team, you only have one week until the next chance you have to win begins again.