Questing For Neopoints

Please keep in mind this is only a guideline; you can adjust the maximum amount you spend on each quest to suit yourself. Everybody has a different threshold. The main purpose of this guide to help Neopians earn extra neopoints through timed quests. Not all days will be profitable; doing these quests does have its risks.

I have spent many hours on these particular quests and have come up with a good guideline to follow on how much to spend and what to expect in return. The idea is to come out ahead, not behind, to receive an item worth more than what you spent. Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, you will get a very rare item. But don’t let that cloud your judgement. Don’t be lured into the trap of spending too much on a quest in hopes of receiving something really good. Your reward is not proportional to the amount you spent on the quest. I throw the items in my shop and every couple weeks, when I have a few pages of items, I will sit down and price them all. It’s a nice little extra income for you. It’s also nice to go snag 15k from your shop till instead of having to take it out of the bank to go buy your daily stocks. ;)

As I stated before, you can do a maximum ten of these quests per day. It is a part of my dailies and perhaps you will make them a part of yours too. Let me reiterate here: if the quest is too expensive, simply let it expire. When you click to accept the quest, you will get anywhere from one to four items to fetch for them and they will give you a specific amount of time. It can be one hour. It can be two hours. The amount of time you have to complete a quest is completely random. There are five quests in total. So let’s get started, shall we?

First off, I would like to recommend keeping two tabs or windows open. You will have your quest in one tab and the shop wizard in another. This is how I do it, since some of them will ask for as many as four items. Copy and paste each item into the shop wizard search box (one at a time, of course), then make sure you choose from the drop down list that the search must be identical to your phrase. This is to ensure he searches for the exact item you are looking for. Price one item at a time by refreshing the results screen until you have the lowest priced one. Do not go into the shop and buy it just yet! Click on the shop wizard link again and do a search on the second item. Continue to do this until all items have been priced. This way you are not buying items you don’t need if you find out that the fourth item is 10,000 NP. Obviously you don’t want to do that quest if it’s that expensive. If the price of all items added together seems reasonable to you, hit your back button and purchase all of the items by clicking on the links in the search results list.

First stop:

Edna’s Tower:

Deep in the shadowed hollows of Haunted Woods, quietly nestled between the graveyard and the haunted house, you will find Edna’s tower. I urge you not to have high expectations for Edna. She is a stingy witch. What you spend on Edna will highly depend on if you are still trying to get the avatar. If you are going for the avatar, what you spend is entirely up to you. For those of you who don’t know, you can be randomly awarded an avatar for completing an Edna quest. But be warned, it is very random. I’ve been trying to get that avatar since the day it was released. I sat down today and figured out I have made approximately 7300 attempts at getting that avatar.

*hint TNT hint hint =P*

Outside of that it is still worth it to give ole Edna a try. I said before she is stingy, but she can also surprise you. Just don’t hold your breath. XD My maximum for Edna is about 200 NP. Maybe as much as 500, that depends on how lucky I feel. Your reward will be around 150 NP and a spooky food item which is usually worth 50 NP or less. She does surprise once in a while, if you’re really nice to her. I have gotten fried worm stew, spider liquorice, large grundo toe with lint side order, and even once got a snorkle snout. And that’s it for Edna.

Esophagor:

While you are in the area, if you haven’t been scared out of the Haunted Woods by the heebie jeebies, you may want to swing by the Esophagor’s digs. He’s just a hop, skip, and a jump away from Edna’s tower, practically right in her backyard! (Hmm, I sense a conspiracy here; what is she really doing in that castle, I wonder?)

I am partial to the Esophagor; I know a lot of people complain about him. He does tend to have VERY expensive, albeit disgusting, taste in cuisine. But hey, it’s the Haunted Woods! What would you expect the shadowed, creeping critters in this place to dine on? Rising out of the ground is a gigantic gelatinous mound of something; it opens its gaping maw and asks for... FOOOOOOOOOOOD!

Ok, the Esophagor will usually ask for one to three items. From my experience, he mostly asks for one or two items. These items tend to be veerrrryyy pricey. My limit for this perpetually hungry whatever-it-is is 2000 to 3000 NP. He does not give out neopoints. He will give you one item. That item can be anything but usually will be a random food item. I have gotten many random items from him but the thing he gives out I like the best is stamps. I am an avatar hunter, as you may have guessed, and am slowly filling up my stamp albums. The best thing he has given to me so far is my precious Super Bright Rainbow Pool Stamp. What did I do with it?... you guessed it!... it went right into my stamp album. =P

The Brain Tree:

Ok, if you’ve made it this far into the Haunted Woods, you are made of stronger stuff than most Neopians. There is an odd and unexplained relationship between the Brain Tree and the Esophagor. You will find him lurking just behind the Esophagor and next to the Stone Battledome.

I do not do these quests anymore, but I will give you as much info as I remember. You need to complete a Brain Tree quest in order to get him as a challenger in the battledome. This quest is the one exception to the ten per day rule. You can only do one quest per day for the Brain Tree.

I really feel this quest is only for people looking to get a trophy and be on the high score board. I only add it in here because he is so closely tied to the Esophagor. If you really want to do a Brain Tree quest, this is how it works. You MUST complete TWO Esophagor quests in order to complete one Brain Tree quest. I highly recommend accepting an Esophagor quest first before going to the Brain Tree. Do not complete the quest... just see if it is affordable. If it’s not, then let it expire and try again. Sometimes you get lucky and can do several Esophagor quests in a row. It is pretty risky trying to get two affordable quests in a row, which makes the Brain Tree quest not worth it to me. Once you have a reasonable Esophagor quest, head over to the Brain Tree and accept a quest for him. He will only give you about an hour which is why I say get at least one affordable quest from the Esophagor first because the other one will expire in the time it takes one Esophagor quest to expire. The Brain Tree will ask for two things: the place and time of death of a random person. Esophagor will give you half of the answer, which is why you need to complete two quests. Let me make this clear... searching the internet for the answer to the Brain Tree question will NOT work. You MUST complete both Esophagor quests first or the Brain Tree will not allow you to complete his quest. I told you there is an odd and unexplained relationship between these two. XD How do you suppose Edna figures into all of this? We may never know...

Be very careful about typing your answers in for the Brain Tree. I recommend copying and pasting the answers. It must be exactly the same as what Esophagor told you including capitalization. Your prize will be a random item and a random amount of neopoints. This is where the high score board comes in. Your score for a Brain Tree quest is the amount of neopoints you received as your reward. The last time I did one of his quests was to receive him as a challenger so I could do the next mission for Defenders of Neopia. Needless to say, it has been a long time. My neopoint reward wasn’t too great. If I remember correctly, my prize was a zaptwig. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong. It was some sort of twig and zaptwig is the only thing I could find in a search and it looks exactly like what I remember it was. Sadly it is a retired item now and very unbuyable. At the time it was worth not very much, less than 1000 NP. I do not know if the Brain Tree is still handing them out as a prize. If he is, it’s probably pretty rare.

I only include him here because he is an important part of the miniature mafia safely ensconced in the dark recesses of Haunted Woods.

The Snow Faerie:

I’ll bet you’re really glad to be getting out of the Haunted Woods. ;)

But don’t get too happy. For this trip, you must be in the best of shape, so I hope you have been training that pet! High up, very high up, at the very top of Terror Mountain is a snow witch called Taelia. She’s constantly working on a spell and no one knows for sure what she does with them. I do know, however, that she is not willing to brave the freezing winds of Terror Mountain to get her spell reagents.

Taelia will usually ask for three to four items. For some odd reason, she needs a lot of cakes to complete her spells. Perhaps this is where the birthday cakes falling out of the sky into my lap have been coming from, hhmmmmm. My limit for her used to be 5000 NP, but I have dropped that down to 3000 NP, because lately her prizes just aren’t too great. You will get three things from completing her quest. A neopoint prize anywhere between 1000 to 2500. A random snowball. I often get sticky and exploding snowballs which I love because I hoard them for upcoming wars. And you will get an item. From my experience, that item will usually be worth around 1000 NP. I often get smoothies but sometimes she gives out neggs. Sometimes she does give out an item that’s worth 5000 to 10,000 NP. I think my best prize from her was a Battle Duck Negg and that was quite a while ago. In order to cut your losses and come out ahead, I don’t recommend spending more than 3000. Or you can learn the hard way, as I did. ;)

There is a rather recent edition to the Taelia saga. You can be randomly awarded an ice cream coupon which you can use at the Ice Cream Cart wayyyyy down below in Happy Valley. If you aren’t brave enough to go rappelling down the slippery slopes of Terror Mountain, feel free to shortcut through the Ice Caves. Please be careful and tiptoe past the Snowager’s cave. He only sleeps three hours a day and tends to be pretty cranky. While you’re there, why not stop at the Neggery to do a little window shopping. =)

Kitchen Quest:

I saved the best for last. This is our last stop. I figured it would be nice to end our journey on the bright sunny shores of Mystery Island. Here you can take a walk around the cool breezy beaches. There is a nice little coconut JubJub offering tiki tours; it may just be the thing to cheer up your neopet. There’s a wonderful assortment of tropical foods to sample and cheerful folks to meet around the island. If you’re really lucky, you can attend the Gadgadsbogen Festival during the Month of Running. If I sound biased, it’s because I am. We have made our home here, so feel free to drop by our humble abode on Harbour Lane and pay us a visit. Please excuse the mess. I do have three little ones running around; the fourth one is visiting a friend. ;)

On the southwest corner of the island, just behind the little Myncies playing volleyball, you will find the royal kitchen. Commonly referred to as Kitchen Quests, this will be the last quest discussed in this guide. There is a rather distressed Flotsam running the kitchen busily making meals for the great Mumbo Pango, one of the gods of Mystery Island. He is very demanding and VERY hungry. Perhaps hungrier even than the legendary Esophagor. I don’t suggest you taking a peek at Mumbo Pango unless you are very brave. Bear in mind that several members of the Neopets Team were sacrificed to Mumbo Pango in a survival game called Sacrificers, so please use extreme caution.

The underwater chef will almost always ask you for four ingredients. Sometimes she will ask for three; I have never seen her ask for less than three but that’s not to say it’s not possible. This quest can be a little tricky; it depends on your reasons for doing these quests. My main reason for doing her quests is to obtain an item to sell in my shop. The prizes vary from neopoints only, furniture, food, and increasing a random stat on a random pet. Many Neopians use Kitchen Quests as another form of training, but I do not recommend this unless your pet is such a high level that it can only receive training at the Secret Ninja Training School. That school asks for red codestones as payment and can be quite pricey, which would make the Kitchen Quests an attractive alternative. In those cases, I suppose a Neopian would be more willing to pay a higher price for a Kitchen Quest. Even for me, my training costs four codestones per session so even if I pay 5k for a quest three times in a row before I get a stat raised on the right pet, it is a good bargain. With the game of Key Quest now in beta testing on the site, this may change as it does give out a fair amount of codestones as prizes. It could take many quests before you even get an increase of stats as your reward and even then you can’t control which pet it goes to.

My suggestion for the Kitchen Quest, if this is just a means of trying to earn extra neopoints, is to limit it to 2000 NP. This is a risky quest, so it doesn’t have to be a daily for you if you don’t feel comfortable with it. Be warned that getting a quest that costs that little will be pretty rare. Do expect her quests to be a little pricey. The rewards are usually a neopoint prize of around 400 to 500 neopoints and an item. Sometimes you will get a stat increased. It could be health points, defense, agility, possibly even a level. It will only be increased by one and will go to a random pet. It doesn’t matter what your active pet is when doing this quest. I noticed that probably at least 30% of the time you will get extra neopoints as your total prize. It usually amounts to 900 NP altogether. That is the frustrating part of doing the Kitchen Quest. I like to visit the kitchen every day, because when she does give an item it can be food, but it can also be furniture. I have received quite a few furniture items from her over the years. One of them was a disco bathtub.

And that concludes my guide for doing quests. I hope some of you newer Neopians may benefit from my experience. I’ve had a lot of fun on Neopets over the years and I especially look forward to doing my dailies. =)