A Guide To All Things Neopets: 25 Years Later

          Starting from the beginning, one of the first questions on your mind must be “How do I earn Neopoints these days?”. Those goals can't afford themselves, after all! Well worry not, making Neopoints is easier than ever as long as you have a few minutes to explore these different avenues:

     Trudy’s Surprise: Automatically enabled in site settings is the Trudy’s Surprise daily, a quick simple slot spin that awards you from 1,500 up to 20k Neopoints for visiting every day for 25 days. At the end of those 25 days is a 100k bonus prize before it resets, so 2 months of continuous spins will get you close to 1 million Neopoints! That’s not bad for a simple, free daily. But be careful, missing a day will break your streak and start you off at the lowest reward... But hey, it’s still free change!

     Quest Log: This feature is new as of late October and wow it definitely has been a game changer! Located next to the notification button in the top right of the header toolbar is a little notepad, this is the location of the daily quest feature. Completing these simple tasks every day will grant you a minimum of 20k Neopoints a day for 7 days. For hitting a 7-day streak you will be granted the randomly chosen item listed at the end of the “weekly” tab, so depending on what it is you might be able to get rare items to keep or sell in addition to the daily prizes you’ve redeemed.

     Battledome: Located under the ‘Games’ tab is the Battledome. Now this daily might require you to train your Pets so that they’re strong enough to take on opponents that grant better rewards, but every battledome challenger rewards a different set of items that you can definitely sell for a quick change if you so choose. One of the most popular ways to make money from daily activity is exclusive to those who pay for Premium and have access to the challenger Jetsam Ace, who often awards higher-selling items like Codestones and Nerkmids for victories against him. For those that don’t pay for the Premium service, consider fighting against the Giant Spectral Mutant Walein opponent who often awards Codestones as well. Now all battledome opponents typically need to be unlocked, but once you have, it’s permanently accessible for your battle-ready Pet to fight from then on. Every Battledome battle does award a small amount of Neopoints based on difficulty, but it can be negligible compared to other features on the site that award higher in the modern era.

     Stock market: Yes, Neopets boasts its own Stock Market as part of its elaborate economy.. And thankfully it’s not too complicated if you want to start building a portfolio. The common advice is to visit the Bargain Stocks page and buy 1000 stocks of whatever company is listed at the very minimum value of 15 Neopoints per share. You can buy up to 1000 shares a day, so you might as well start buying once per day now to slowly build up a diverse portfolio.. And then, eventually, some of these companies will climb to higher values. The golden rule is to sell once they reach a minimum of 60 NP per share, but you can certainly gamble and hold in the case they climb even higher!

     Food Club: This feature mostly benefits those users that might have an older account, as your bid amount is directly tied to how many days you’ve been playing Neopets (for some of us, this transcends 20 years! That’s a lot of days). It can be a little complicated to learn as it is a betting game based on odds, so if that doesn’t sound fun to you, you can always copy the bets of more knowledgeable users who make their daily bets publicly accessible on their personal Petpages. The key is to bet your daily maximum amount and ensure you’ve covered a wide, or likely, spread of possibilities over your maximum of 10 bets to ensure you at least gain some profit.

     Games: Both flash and browser-based games tend to offer Neopoint rewards, though these also might be negligible next to Trudy’s and Daily Quests who award a minimum of 20k. But if you have the time to send a maximum of 3 scores per game across several games on the site, those small amounts can definitely add up to a suitable amount of daily change. In fact, Jellyneo boasts a guide for making 50k a day from playing games, check it out!

     Bank Interest: As long as you store your Neopoints in the bank, you can check in once per day and collect interest. Now unlike the real world, this interest only benefits you. It’s quite literally free Neopoints that increase with the amount that you've stored in your savings account, so be sure to check back and earn your yearly maximum!

          Dailies: Neopets boasts a broad array of general dailies that are sometimes as quick and easy as a button click. Now these dailies can award Neopoints, items, or sometimes in rare occasions an avatar or trophy. To see the full list of dailies, I recommend checking the daily list on the fansite Jellyneo. Under Neopets’ renovated layout you may be able to “favourite” some of these dailies for easier access, while the premium toolbar on the old layout also provides an opportunity to make a quick select for most converted and non-converted pages as well.

     Restocking: This is the age-old method of earning Neopoints quickly, but it does involve a bit of patience and quite a lot of speed. Restocking refers to the process of sitting in one of Neopia's many shops and refreshing in hopes of catching the moment the shop restocks with an array of items. Not all items turn a profit, so researching the rarity and variety of items in each shop will definitely help you identify what to buy if your intent is to resell or catch a deal. But you will have to be quick, it really is the survival of the fittest out there. Keep in mind not to upset the Shopkeeper by refreshing the page too many times too quickly! You can be “Restock Banned” for 12-24 hours.

     Selling: Almost all items you encounter on Neopets will be something that you can sell. You can check approximate item values by searching other user’s listings, or check their approximate value via Jellyneo’s item database. For items less than 1 million Neopoints in value, you can utilize the shop wizard and your own shop. The trading post can be used for direct item trades as well as purchases under 2 million Neopoints in value, or any combination of up to 10 items and under 2m of Neopoints. The auction house however can handle sales of over 2m, so it’s not uncommon to see high-value sales reserved for that medium.

          Games are an essential part of Neopets, and thanks to the recent Ruffle integration we’ve recently regained the ability to play close to 80 of the flash games that were previously inaccessible due to the retirement of Flash. But those aren't the only games you can play here on Neopets. There are an array of charming and unique browser-based games that are not only fun to play, but sometimes award items, trophies, and avatars of their own.

          HTML5/Flash Games: Upon visiting the games room, you will be presented with the option to play the newly converted HTML5 games or view the ‘Classic Games’ library that boasts a larger selection of ruffle-enabled flash games. Playing classic games puts you in the running for the illustrious High Score Table featured on the right side of the screen. It's important to note that even if that same game is included as one of the HTML5-converted games, only the classic version typically qualifies for the table and thus trophy contention for the highest scores. All games award some degree of Neopoints, but be careful because only your first 3 sent scores will be counted for each game that you play. A couple of games have an additional incentive of an avatar for those who meet the required score requirements, so there's plenty to play for! Now we can only hope to see the return of events like the Games Master Challenge now that many of these games are once again operational.

     Games of Chance: Nestled amongst the classic game section, there is a variety of card and slot games with a Neopets twist. Some of the most popular are Cheat!, Pyramids, Solitaire, Scarab 21 and Scorchy Slots. We already mentioned the gambling nature of Food Club, but risk aficionados may also enjoy trying their luck with Vending Machine or perhaps cheaper games such as Double or Nothing, Dice-a-roo, Cheeseroller or Kiss the Mortog.

     Browser Games: Also listed within the Classic Games section are several older Neopets classics that are still absolutely worth your time. Neoquest I and II are dungeon-crawler games with compelling stories and challenges, perfect for any RPG fan with plenty of patience. A couple of other Neopian favourites are: Cellblock, a game where you try to outsmart a CPU by connecting tiles in a row. Shapeshifter, where you have to anticipate several turns ahead in making a uniform shape. And Sewage Surfer, which presents many puzzles to construct a consecutive pipe flow between. You might find a gem or two just by looking around because although many of these are relics in terms of age, they definitely hold strong in terms of fun!

          Neopets is at its core a virtual Pet site, so it just makes sense that there are plenty of ways to interact and cater to Pet lovers of all types! Let’s break down several features you can explore and develop Pet goals.

     Painting your Pets: Perhaps one of the more obvious features, but every Neopet can be painted a variety of colours that you can explore by visiting the Rainbow Pool in Neopia Central. Most of these Pets are paintable via Paintbrushes, Morphing potions, or Transmogrification potions, but a couple of rare colours can only be obtained via the Lab Ray or the Fountain Faerie. There’s some fun in chasing these elusive colour goals beyond simply saving up to buy an item!

     Customisation: All Pets have the ability to be customised, though only converted Pets can fully take advantage of the thousands of body wearables out there for our Pets to adorn. There are both NP and NC wearables, so it’s a feature that anyone can enjoy even if they opt not to pay for the thousands of NC-mall exclusive items. Though many of these are now retired from the in-game stores, almost all can be obtained through trading with other users. I greatly recommend the sponsored fansite Dress to Impress (DTI) for trying on customisations for your Pets before buying and trading for those items, it's a great service for creating and saving outfit options even if it’s just dreaming up ideas for the future. DTI also allows the ability to manually track your inventory of wearables and create a wishlist or trade list and compare those to that of other users for trading purposes.

     Training: You can train your Pet for stats so that they can compete against an array of opponents in the Battledome. If your Pet is under level 40, you can go to the Swashbuckling academy to train using dubloons as currency. While any Pets above level 40 will need to visit the Mystery Island Training School that simply utilizes codestones as payment. The stronger your Pet, the more difficult opponents you can fight for both items, Neopoints, and often for progress in any plots that involve a battle element including the regularly occurring Battleground of the Obelisk. So there’s definitely still merit to involving yourself in this feature. I recommend checking Jellyneo’s Battlepedia for advice about weapon loadouts and strategy if you’re new to this feature. Don’t forget you can challenge your friends and battle their Neopets directly as well!

     UC Pets: Also known as Unconverted Pets, UC Pets are the Pets that boast the old, pre-conversion style of art. Only a few of these Pets were spared from the great art conversion in 2007, which means that only a lucky few have had access to these Pets for the last 15 years. However, TNT has announced that this long-adored feature will soon be accessible to the masses again through a NC Mall item that will operate like a reusable toggle between converted and unconverted art of eligible Pets. So once again you can look forward to including UC Pets as part of your goals as TNT slowly rolls out which colours will regain this feature. Do not miss your chance to finally find your UC dream Neopet!

     Pet trading: Pet trading is an essential part of Neopets. The Neopian Pound grants you the ability to adopt, abandon, trade with other Neopians, and transfer Pets to other accounts. This means no Pets are off limits as long as you have the time and patience to invest in the trading scene! Some users trade for colours, some trade for names, and some trade for things such as Battledome stats, retired petpets, age, or other characteristics you may seek. It really is whatever you’d like it to be!

     Petpets/Petpetpets:

     For those of you who can't get enough of your Pets, there are Pets for your Pets called Petpets that come in an even bigger variety of species and colours! You can give your Pet a friend for any reason at all, whether you like how it pairs aesthetically with your Pet's colour or you simply want to boast one that you enjoy. And for those of you who want a Pet for your Petpet… They have those as well, called Petpetpets! These can be a bit rarer and no longer come in paintable colours, but they will stick to your Petpet as long as that Petpet remains attached to your Pet.

          Now that you know how to earn some Neopoints, surely you’re just itching to know what you can spend it on. In my personal opinion, collecting on Neopets is one of the most fun activities you can do. There are SO many different goals you can have with this that span everything from items to games to avatars that you can show off to other players on the NeoBoards. Let’s break these down into several categories:

     Galleries: Neopets grants you the ability to open a gallery to display your item collections, whether they be Neopoint or Neocash items. A gallery is simply a showcase of any subject or theme that you desire, whether it be something as simple as plushies or as specific as any item that contains the word ‘Cheese’. You can even separate and sort your gallery into several different categories in the case that you want to boast separate collections as well. Possibilities are endless as long as you can afford to continue expanding the size of your gallery!

     Avatars: Avatars refer to the icons that you can use on the Neoboards that also contribute to the Secret Avatar count that is displayed on your User Lookup. There are just over 400 secret avatars that you can earn on the site through various methods, often requiring solutions such as visiting a page, participating in a one time event, owning an item, or beating a certain score in a game. If you earn a high enough total, you might even find yourself competing for the High Score table to earn yourself a trophy!

     Trophies: Speaking of trophies, there are a variety of features that award a trophy on Neopets. Almost every flash and browser based game awards a trophy for either finding yourself on the high score table for that respective game, or by reaching a specific qualification in the cases of games like Cellblock or Sakhmet Solitaire. There are some quests and dailies that can also award a trophy on rare occasions, such as Brain Tree or Test Your Strength. Most high score tables reset on the first of the month, so playing at the beginning of the month is your best shot at making it on a table before the scores get too high. Many site contests and competitions also award a trophy whether it be for your Pet or your user lookup, examples of these include the Site Spotlight, User lookup of the Week, Caption Competition and the Beauty Contest. Site Event trophies can be earned simply by participating in a Site Event as it occurs and can never be earned after that point, so be sure to involve yourself each time a new Event takes place. Typically visiting daily and taking advantage of every aspect of the event earn you a nicer trophy and prizes, so it’s definitely worth the time and effort.

     Albums: For avid collectors who can afford a higher quest cap, try albuming. The stamp album includes coins, charms, shells and stamps and can be quite the expensive hobby if you're chasing the end goal of avatars and the trophy, but boasting a complete page will certainly feel worth the bragging rights. The neodeck is for collectible cards and thankfully, unlike stamps, they are not consumable despite equally resulting in a trophy for top collectors.

     Site Events: This isn’t a collection so to say, but participating in Site Events do typically earn you a retired trophy and avatar for participating. It’s important that you participate in these events as they happen, as aside from the Altador Plot they are one-time-only events that award participation in the moment. These events are not re-released and each annual event will award its own unique rewards for participating throughout its duration. There are recurring events that occur nearly every year, such as the Festival of Neggs, Faerie Festival, Altador Cup (Go Krawk Island!), and the Advent Calendar (we’ll have to see if events like Daily Dare or Charity Corner return soon!), and then there are plots. Plots are typically story driven events that incorporate puzzles, comics, a battle element, and a lot of fun characters and lore. It’s been quite a long time since our last plot or war, but ever since the New Era announcement, TNT has recently teased an upcoming plot to look forward to in 2024: The Void Within. Participating in plots is something that you won’t regret taking part in, it is a highly anticipated feature for many Neopians. You can read about past plots, events, lore, characters and even re-read comics on Jellyneo’s Book of Ages.

     Creative Competitions: As mentioned in the trophy section, there are different types of creative competitions that you can partake in. Writers can look forward to the Neopian Times, the Storytelling competition, and the Poetry contest. Jokesters have the Caption Competition, while puzzle solvers might enjoy the Mystery Pic. Those with coding or graphic design skills might try their luck in creating a page for the Site Spotlight or Userlookup of the Week, while other artists have the Art Gallery and Beauty Contest to look forward to. There’s even a competition for those with the oldest Petpets (PPL), or the Customization Spotlight that lets you submit your Pets customisations for judging by the masses. While it’s so nice that Neopets allows the opportunity to compete for all of these creative endeavors, if that’s not your strong suit that's completely OK. Some are more or less competitive or inclusive than others, so I encourage you to try even if you’re unsure about your personal skills in the matter.

     Customizable pages:

     Whether you enjoy coding yourself or you want to utilize someone else's pre-made layout, Neopets offers the ability to customize your userlookup, Pet lookup, and Pet homepage to whatever theme you desire. Perhaps you want to show off your avatar collection, or your Pet trading list.. perhaps even a tutorial of your own! The possibilities are endless, and these homepages are your sandbox for creativity. Quick recommendation: the easiest way to access your Neopet's homepage and Pet page is via the dropdown on the old quick reference page which is accessible by clicking on your Pet's image on any page using the old layout. Userlookup editing is simply found within the edit profile option under settings on both new and old versions of the site layout.

     Last but not least, something has not been mentioned in this article: Friends. Neopets provides an amazing opportunity to reconnect with old friends and nostalgia. Even after all these years, Neopets still maintains the same means of communication, offering excellent options to reconnect with those old friends of yours or find new ones who share the same affinities, hobbies and goals as you!

     Neofriends: Found a friend? Just send a friendly request!

     Neomails: This email-lookalike means of communication, despite having much room for improvement, represents an easy way to contact your Neofriends or other people with direct messages. It is like having a personalized mailbox in the Neopian World. Remember to check on your friends regularly!

          Guilds: Many Neopians have created guilds, gathering people who share their goals, hobbies and personalities. Guilds give you the opportunity to participate in privately organized contests among members and offer private chats, polls, and various other possibilities depending on the creativity of the Guild Leader. Explore all the different active guilds and join the fun!

     Neoboards: Found in the community tab, there are thousands of players actively posting and talking about thousands of other topics. Site Events, Help, Quests, Site Games, Battledome, Customisation, Neopian Writers, Avatars, etc… These are just a few of the different boards where you can find answers to your questions or simply join a friendly conversation with other Neopians that share your game mood of the day. You can see the Neoboards as bustling marketplaces, where you can find and dive into discussions on a huge variety of subjects and get to know the diverse Neopian Community.