Celebrating the 650th with New Trophies!

What is Reset Night?

Reset night is the 1st of every month at 12.10am NST where the high score tables of every game are reset. This means that when the trophies are awarded out later in the day (approximately 10:50pm NST), the scores are nowhere near as high compared to the rest of the month. As a result, getting trophies on reset night is easier than on any other day of the month.

Introducing the Games

I have chosen six games in which I had a relatively easy time at getting the trophy. For convenience I have listed the average minimum trophy score (Bronze) for each game, but bear in mind these are a guide as some months scores may be significantly lower or higher than what is listed.

1. Petpet Battles

Need at least: 10 points

This game is unpopular and not well known as it is not a Flash game. As a result it is possible to score a trophy in this game simply by submitting a score. Petpet Battles also has a maximum score of 38, which basically guarantees Gold on the 1st.

Petpet Battles is a Battledome arena for your Petpets, so to play this your active Neopet needs a Petpet attached. The arena itself is nowhere near as complicated as the regular Battledome. There are only 3 options you can use in battle to attack the enemy Petpet: Body Blow, Shield, and Head Shot. You will also notice that both Petpets have a blue health bar, and that you have a green shield bar that will get smaller whenever you press Shield. Choosing any of the three options may or may not do damage to your opponent and it is mostly down to luck how much damage you do.

You register a score in Petpet Battles when you have 10 more wins than losses. At this stage your Petpet will also gain a level. For example, you level up at 10 wins, 0 losses, but not at 10 wins, 2 losses. In the second case, you need to have a total of 12 wins, assuming you don't lose again, to level up. Getting a win is pretty self-explanatory; you just need to reduce your enemy's health to 0%.

Use Shield until you run out, then alternate between Head Shot and Body Blow until some Shield regenerates, and repeat. It is perfectly normal to have attacked five times and not do any damage - you cannot control this, so do not worry about it. And that is all to it - just keep battling until you level up and you should have scored some points in Petpet Battles that will get you a nice new trophy!

2. Techo Says

Need at least: 200 points

You can quite easily get Gold on this first try if you are very good at keeping track of things. However, just be aware many players tend to get the same score, so submitting your score earlier in the day will mean the difference between a Gold and a Silver trophy.

Quick Definitions

Round: In each round you will need to recreate the sequence in which six Neopets will appear. For each round you complete, the sequence in the next round will increase by one.

Difficulty: There are a total of 10 difficulties in the game, each with an increasing number of rounds. Difficulty 1 starts out with 5 rounds; Difficulty 2 has 10 rounds and so on.

Gameplay

In the first two difficulties it is not too complicated to remember the order that the Neopets appear in. However, by the end of Difficulty 3, you are required to remember the order in which 15 Neopets appear on screen. For most of us, this simply is not possible and this is where paper and pen comes in useful.

Allocate each of the six Neopets a number from 1-6 to represent them. Do not use letters, as you will get Mynci and Moehog confused.

Clockwise from top left:

Chia – 1

Blumaroo – 2

Mynci – 3

Quiggle – 4

Kacheek – 5

Moehog - 6

As each round progresses, write down the number of the particular Neopet that appeared and follow the numbers you wrote down when recreating the sequence. As a tip, I find it helps to say the numbers out loud as you go through them, just so you don't lose track of which Neopet that you need to click next. Also, when sequences start to get long, it is easiest to just ignore the whole sequence until the very last Neopet so you do not miss writing that down.

3. Legends of Pinball

Need at least: 1500 points

All you need to play this game is time and patience. This game is just like a normal game of pinball, with the arrow keys controlling the flippers and space bar launching the ball. In every level you have five balls to try and finish the level with and it is game over if you lose all five.

Strategy

For Level 1-1 to Level 2-1, your goal is to get to the next level as quickly as possible. Once you reach Level 2-2, the time consuming aspect of this game begins, so be careful not to finish the level before you have achieved the score that you want.

Level 1-1: Progress to Level 1-2 by hitting the tunnel at the top left of the screen with the flashing arrow.

Level 1-2: Hit both Cylara and Gorix at the top of the screen to move to Level 2-1.

Level 2-1: Complete Level 2-1 by hitting the torch near the sleeping Draik guard.

Level 2-2: You should have at around 600 points by this stage. If you look towards the bottom flippers, you can see a small torch in the gap between the flippers that makes it very difficult to accidentally lose a ball there. Launch one ball and let it fall to the bottom and rest near the torch. Once it is still, click on the ball until it disappears to the black hole towards the top right of the game. A few seconds after the ball reappears in the black hole it will fall and again, let it rest near the torch. Every time you click on the ball and it reappears in the black hole you get 5 points. If the ball happens to hit a few bumpers on the way down you also get points for these hits. Repeat until you get the score you want. If you find doing this a bit slow you can use more than one ball, however doing this increases the chance of accidentally finishing the level or losing balls.

4. Fetch!

Need at least: 1000 points

This game is similar to Petpet Battles in that it is not Flash and is unpopular. You play as an unfortunate Blumaroo sent by his master to retrieve an object lost in a maze. You have a particular number of steps to find and take the object to the exit and it is game over if you run out of steps.

There are five difficulties: Easy, Medium, Hard, Fiendish (unlock by beating Hard) and Insane (unlock by beating Fiendish), each with varying rewards for completion. What makes scoring a trophy easy is that scores are cumulative - if you beat a maze on Medium, and then beat one on Hard, the scores are added together. Below you can see the sizes of the mazes, number of steps available as well as the rewards for completion:

Easy - 10 x 10 maze, 65 steps, 100 NP + left over steps

Medium - 15 x 15 maze, 100 steps, 200 NP + left over steps

Hard - 20 x 20, 175 steps, 500 NP + left over steps

Fiendish - 25 x 25, 225 steps, 1500 NP + left over steps

Insane - 30 x 30, 250 steps, 2500 NP + left over steps

If you are aiming for a score over 1000, possible ways of doing this would be either to finish a Fiendish maze once, or finish a Hard maze twice consecutively without losing. Depending on how hard you find particular mazes complete whichever difficulty you feel comfortable with.

Strategy

For every difficulty, you will start out from a random side of the maze, and the object is always at the very centre. For example, if you are playing Hard, the object will be 10 spaces from the side you are currently at. This means you can count your way to the centre and not get lost - once you have reached the approximate middle move up or down depending on where you are to find the very centre of the maze. The exit will always be on the opposite side where you started - if you started on the left hand side, your exit will be on the right. With a bit of luck you can finish the maze and be on your way to another trophy!

5. Piper Panic

Need at least: 5900 points

This game is easy as there are a fixed amount of levels that are the same every time. The main difficulty you will encounter is whilst the layouts of the levels are the same, the ways they appear on screen are not. For example, you may find the same level you played earlier now rotated 90 degrees clockwise. There are also multiple ways to complete each level, but certain ways of finishing will give you more points than others.

In Piper Panic you control a Cobrall, and in each level you need to guide it to every basket. However the Cobrall can only travel in straight lines and will only stop moving if it reaches a basket, otherwise it will crash into a wall and you lose a life. The other way to lose a life is if you run out of time, with time limits starting out as 30 seconds in Level 1 and reaching 15 by Level 10. You get higher scores for collecting baskets with stars consecutively, finishing levels with star baskets and having more time remaining when you finish a level. There are also several power ups available to help you in game:

- Ankh gives you an extra life

- Red gems gives you bonus points, this varies depending on the level that you are on

- Striped mask gives you a multiplier bonus

- Green scarab gives you five extra seconds

An extra tip to score bonus points is to make sure you use up all your lives. For example, if you have all your lives remaining at Level 10, you can collect every basket but one, then lose on purpose and repeat until you are on your last life. As the high score table for this game can get pretty close, those few hundred extra points gained are essential for a trophy. There are many visual walkthroughs available for this game each with different solutions. Some solutions will gain you more points than others. However, you can always find your own solutions that are more efficient than the ones on guides!

6. Dice Escape

Need at least: 1700 points

What's lovely about this game is that you can also get yourself an avatar whilst going in pursuit of the trophy! In this game you control one die and use the arrow keys to navigate the die across the game board to reach the exit tile (which looks like a transparent die). However, to successfully finish the level, the topmost face of the die must match that of the exit tile.

This game is made simple by the fact that each level in the game will be the same every time you play it. The only thing in this game that varies between game plays is the location of the coins in each level. Coins have a 5,10 or 25 point value and will be the difference between a Bronze and a Silver trophy.

The walkthrough here has the best routes to finishing each level. It is important that you do not make ANY wrong moves, as they will cost you points and lives. You will also want to complete every level as quickly as possible to maximise your time bonus and get more points. All you need now is a bit of luck with the coins and you will be good for another trophy!

Conclusion

If the release of the 650th issue of the Neopian Times has not made you excited yet, hopefully this guide has, with the prospect of adding six more shiny trophies to your collection! Good luck!