In-Depth Restocking by noremac9 |  |
MAIN SHOPS - There have been uncountable articles saying, "Restock, you fool,
it will make you rich!" I think that has been established. But now you want to
restock -- so what? Shouldn't someone tell you HOW? Maybe I'm just putting words
into your mouth, but yes, bingo. And look at that -- exactly what I'm writing
about! Coincidence? I say alien Aishas.
Before we get started, I'm afraid I must mention one tiny little catch to
restocking. You have to have a fast connection. In other words, 56K modem (or
ANY kind of dial-up) won't cut it. Sure, there are people who can restock with
dial-up, but frankly, you're better off playing flash and card games. It's just
not feasible. If you have cable or DSL, do a search and find a site where you
can test your speed, then, well, test! If your speed is 300K+ you're good to
go. Below that, well, it's just going to be a rockier road. Many will complain
that restocking isn't fair to anyone without a wicked-fast connection-- they're
right. But let me give you a hint: life isn't fair. It's just the way they designed
the system. Never fear, though, there's still plenty of money in games.
So, let's start with the basics. You need to pick a shop to restock in. Luckily,
there are tons of shops. Unfortunately, there are tons of people in those shops,
doing exactly the same thing you're doing. But that's aside the point. There
are 63 shops at the time of writing this. That's enough for you to pick at least
ONE. Although, there are only so many profitable shops -- many of them are either
totally worthless, or too hard to restock in, due to competition. Okay, so you
saw it coming -- I have some recommendations. For green-as-a-forest-hat newbies,
I recommend the bakery. You know all that food they release on pet days? 81.54%
of it goes to the bakery. Most importantly, the bakery stocks a LOT of gourmet
(read: big profit) food for you to snatch, and stocks lots of stuff every restock.
The biggest drawback is that there are so many items, it may take a long time
to become familiar with what and what not to get. Another drawback is that most
of the food is fairly similar looking, so the rare stuff won't catch your eye
without training. Another good shop to start out in is the Pharmacy. It stocks
valuable items that aren't rare. Does that make no sense? Well, the wheel of
excitement is ALWAYS giving out a disease. This disease ALWAYS has a cure. This
cure ALWAYS stocks at the pharmacy. Many of these cures are quite common, they
just have high demand. Some are just rare. It's a pretty good place for new-folk
to stock, and moderate people, too.
Also, do not stock at the Toy Shop, The Magic Shop, The Battle and Defence
Magic Shops, and many more. These are simply expert shops -- when you get good,
go there and make a fortune. Until then, stay away. Assuming you've picked a
shop, we'll move on. If you haven't, read former paragraph till it's apparent.
Now that you've got a shop, KNOW your shop. You've got to know every item
that stocks there's value, be it high or low. If it's someplace like bakery,
where there are seemingly infinite numbers of different items-- just learn the
general categories. As long as you know "This looks rare!" and "This looks sad
and lonely!", you're doing fine. You'll miss things occasionally that were valuable,
but that's the way the Illusen Cream Cookie crumbles.
Okay, so here comes the doozie, The big one. The really long part of the article
that seems to be nit-picky and boring. Well, it really is the most important
part: form. Technique. Seriously, as crazy as that sounds, it is.
We'll start with refreshing. There are several different options here. Most
people use the F5 hotkey to refresh rapidly, then when they see a restock, quickly
shoot their hand over to the number pad. Personally, I use my mouse to click
the refresh button in my browser window, mainly because my computer doesn't
have that hotkey. The important part of mouse-refreshing is to minimize the
space between the center of the page and the refresh button. In other words,
if there's any room above the top of the items you can see, scroll the page
down till they're at the very top, hence bringing the distance to the smallest
level. This is assuming your browser keeps you at the same place every time
you refresh. If it doesn't-- which is common-- ignore that and just hit the
space bar a lot.
The next important tactic to remember is keep the cursor at the very CENTER
of the shop's item. In other words, assuming there are sixteen items in the
shop, put your cursor in the very middle of the screen. This allows you to go
ANY way you see an item with maximum speed. You can choose top or bottom, but
I prefer all-around. It just has slightly less risk involved, though you might
have a bit slower response time.
Next, there's keypad hand formation. You've got to find what's right for you--
personally, I put my middle finger on 8, my index finger on 4, and my ring finger
on 6, forming a triangle. This forms a formation that can quickly be adapted
to take on any number. If you wish to use copy and paste to do your restocking,
after selecting the proper number, just keep your hand over CTRL/Command + V.
Remember, you have to choose a broad number for copy and paste restocking, and
so number selection is very important. I really, honestly don't recommend it.
It's cheap, and it's hard, so why bother?
Of course, there's no (non-freezable) way to get around the pesky "Do you
want to buy this?" message. This is, to be honest, where I slip up the worst.
I often miss the "okay" button once or twice, losing serious speed getting the
item. If you have a mouse that automatically puts your cursor on the okay button
-- I envy you. You have a big advantage. That'll definitely put you ahead of
the game. For the rest of us, just try to get it where you ship your cursor
right over that baby. I have no advice, it really just takes practice.
Finally, in the category of form, there is mishaggling. Mishaggling is about
as common as a Chia on a Lupe's dinner plate, no joke. It's just the way it
works. While often times, if you're fast enough, you can still get the item,
it's definitely a good way to miss things. One of the best ways to protect against
mishaggling is to get rhythm going with your fingers. In other words, to avoid
typing one digit over/one digit under the desired number, try something like
545 instead of 555. With 555, the rapid pressing causes you to often go one
over (or more, if you're me.). With 545, you can get a good idea of what you're
doing, thus minimizing mishaggling. If you do (and you will!) mishaggle, and
you notice it right away, you might have time to hit the stop button on your
browser and quickly modify the number, then resubmit the bid. This is a much
better idea than re-haggling, though it does have one drawback-- if you hit
stop, and it doesn't register until the next page has come u p, then you will
have a huge delay because that page will not be fully loaded, and, well, you're
in serious trouble.
Okay, enough with all that form stuff. We need to get onto the part about
CATCHING the restocks. See, catching a restock is like catching an ugly Faellie.
I can't think of why, but I know it is. In order to help you catch the hideous
little bugger, there are things called Restock Chats (Or, more commonly, RS
chats). This is a place (usually on AIM) that people get together and alert
each other when they see a restock taking place. In smaller chats, you usually
have a designated alerter, who constantly refreshes, making sure they see the
first item to stock. In larger chats, you can count on SOMEONE seeing it, and
thus don't have to worry about having a certain person.
Many people fear they will be scammed if they go to one of these chat. While
there can be a scammers in the chats, it's very easy to avoid them. Simply don't
give out your password (EVER!), don't establish direct connections, and don't
go to any URLs they give you. If you follow all those rules, you're guaranteed
to be 100% safe. If someone is harassing you, block them. 'Nuff said.
If you don't want a chat, or can't find one, you have to restock alone. This
has some nifty bonuses, but it also has a major drawback: getting banned. When
alone, you have to refresh a LOT to make sure you don't miss the restock. This
causes you to get banned, since every time you refresh, you have a small chance
of getting banned. Do it enough, and you probably will be banned. To avoid banning,
yet still make sure you see every restock, I surf in a separate window, or chat
on instant messenger while I restock. When surfing, every page you go to or
so just go back and refresh. With instant messenger, just go back every 20-30
seconds or more.
Of course, there's still one VERY important matter I haven't even discussed:
the restock tree. This is a little know, but very important, fact about restocking.
The restock tree is the order shops restock in -- just try to imagine it like
a disease. The disease always starts in the main shop. It slowly spreads outwards
to the other worlds' shops, infecting them, too. Eventually, all the shops have
been infected, and everything will DIE! Er, and the restock is over. This gives
you a definite advantage when restocking in shops outside Neopia central-- you
can refresh in, say, the book shop, and when you see it's restocking, go back
to your other window in Haunted Furniture. Now you KNOW a restock's coming,
and you can lie in wait, like a Mutant Puppyblew on steroids. Plus, if you see
it late, it might've still not reached the shop you're restocking in, and all
is not lost. On a side note: make sure an alerter in a chat is never in one
of the outer shops alerting.
Oh yes, and all for you restocking greenies , I threw together a quick lingo
list. It's not much, but it'll save you from the embarrassment of asking the
masters. Because I did. And they WILL laugh you out of town, so remember that.
RS = Restock. If it is unclear what this is, start the article over.
RSO/0 = Restock OVER. This means the restock has ended, and there are no more
items coming into the shops.
RSNO = Restock NOT Over. If someone say "RS0!" and it's not over, then people
say "RSNO", so you know the other person was wrong.
GJ = Good job. When someone gets a good item, and shares it, most people will
say "GJ," meaning nice one, bro.
There's only one other very important piece of advice I can give you. When
you are bad, ADMIT it. When I started restocking, I wasn't just bad. I was SAD.
Not my mood, but my skills were undeniably pathetic. So I didn't deny it. And
people will respect you for that. They might still laugh at you, but as you
get better, they'll say, "Wow, Zimboflartsan, you really are better!" If you
instead say, "I 0wnzers all ya'll!" they will find out you don't, and you will
be the clown of the class. Or the class clown. Or whatever.
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