Mr. Cheapo's Guide To Neopian Dining by stoneman3x |  |
I just recently celebrated my two year anniversary on Neopets. You may applaud now if you wish. I'll be back in twenty minutes when the enthusiastic cheering and confetti-tossing stops.
Okay, I'm back. Anyway, this Neo-anniversary of mine got me to thinking. Unfortunately this is a new activity for my cranium and I got a major headache from it, but the good news is that I managed to realize something. I am very good at not spending Neopoints. In fact, I have something close to a complete Neo-phobia about spending Neopoints. And as the prices rise daily in the Shop Wizard for virtually everything, my anxiety increases. I have turned into Mr. Cheapo. I can't even bear to part with even a couple of Neopoints to feed my pets. I'll be back in forty minutes when the booing and hissing stops.
Okay, I'm back. First of all, my Neopets aren't starving. In fact, they are bloated to the max everyday. So you can put the tar and feathers away now. Second of all... ummm... there is no second of all. But the point of this is that I have become very creative about feeding my Neopets as cheaply as possible. Don't get me wrong. I love my Neopets. But quite frankly, the Krawk that cost me over 750,000 Neopoints to call my own doesn't seem to care if I feed him a 50,000 Neopoint Lobster Berry Surprise or a two Neopoint Half-eaten Berry. He'll say "Yum!" for either one.
I know there are people out there who disagree with me. Someone once asked me, "If YOU wouldn't eat a jar of Pickled Leeches, why would you feed it to your pet?" That's a good argument except for one thing. I'm not a Krawk. And I'm definitely not a pirate. Okay, that's two things, but I have a sneaking suspicion that reptiles eat leeches on a routine basis, pickled or not. I'm not sure what pirates eat, but I can't imagine that they are that fussy either. Besides, there are lots of cheap foods out there that aren't gross foods that can feed to your pets.
If you really want to save your Neopoints for that Strawberry Fields Forever Paint Brush for your Gelert, then consider this: If you have three Neopets and feed them each a 100 Neopoint food once a day, at the end of a year you will have spent 109,500 Neopoints. Since a Strawberry Fields Forever Paint Brush is now going for about 110,000 Neopoints in the Trading Post, you COULD have bought one instead of bloating your Neopets on snacks they didn't appreciate. Food for thought, huh?
So where do you go to get these cheap foods, Mr. Cheapo? I'm glad you asked, because if you didn't, I would have to ask myself... which I just did... owww... I gotta stop that thinking. It hurts.
FREE FOOD
The cheapest food you can buy is the food you don't have to buy. You get it for free. You can't beat free food for cheapness. The best place to start our quest for handouts is the Giant Omelette in Tyrannia. You can get free omelette there once a day. The good news is that this eggy delight is good for three meals. When you feed a whole omelette to your pet, a 2/3 omelette shows up in your item box. When you feed the 2/3 omelette to your pet, a 1/3 omelette shows up in your item box. If you feel queasy about feeding your pet something that another pet has drooled on, don't worry about it. Your pets don't mind. In fact, my Meerca won't eat a Plain Omelette until someone else has taken a bite out of it first. Weird but true. Just stay away from the Rotten Omelette. It will give your pet a very nasty, very rare and very expensive disease called Ugga-Ugga. Which is probably why my Meerca wants someone else to take a bite out of his omelette first. I guess he doesn't trust Mr. Cheapo.
Another place to get free food is Jelly World. Of course, Jelly World doesn't actually exist, but if it did you could get free jelly there once a day at the Giant Jelly, if a Giant Jelly existed, which it doesn't. And if you could get free jelly, which you can't, it would be good for two meals. So, if you grab one omelette and one non-existent jelly a day, you already have five meals per day for your Neopets. Even if you have four Neopets, your bases are pretty much covered with just these two things.
There are also a couple of other places to get free food, but unfortunately they are not really a sure bet. The first of these "take your chances at getting free food" places is the Fruit Machine in the Lost Desert. The name alone is a pretty good hint that free food is involved. Most of the time you get zippity-doo-dah, but if you're lucky you could get Neopoints and-- hold onto your Meerca Propeller Hats-- FRUIT.
Another place that dishes out free... ummm... freebies... is the Tiki Tack Tombola on Mystery Island. Of course, like the Fruit Machine, you may get nothing or even a useless item instead of something edible. And the Tombola is just as likely to give you gross foods as normal canned goods, like Maggot Stew or Mustard Ice Cream. But I like said, other than the nasty face your pet makes when you feed these foods to your pet, it still FEEDS YOUR PET. Just beware of a certain item called "Pickled Olives". For some bizarre reason your pet can't eat it. Unless your pet is a Skeith or a Grarrl, that is.
There are other places that give out free food, but they are even less predictable than what the Pet of the Week will be. Yet they are worth a shot anyway: Coltzan's Shrine, the Money Tree and the Meridell Rubbish Dump.
CHEAP FOOD
Cheap food is food you buy but you hardly pay anything for. To me, cheap food is anything that costs less than two Neopoints. In other words, one Neopoint. You have to work a little harder to find foods that are only a couple of Neopoints at most, but the good news is that once you find them you can hoard them in your safety deposit box in case the price shoots up to three Neopoints. At least, that's what I do. In fact, I am so committed to spending virtually nothing on food for my pets that I will refresh the Shop Wizard page at least ten times for every food I am searching for. The foods most likely to be priced at one Neopoint in a private shop are foods people get for free, like the stuff from the Fruit Machine, Tiki Tack Tombola, Money Tree and the Meridell Rubbish Dump. I would love to name all of these foods for you but the last time I checked my personal list, there were about 100 of them. To be fair, here is a small sample:
Bagguss
Box of Trifle Mix
Box of Wheat Flakes
Can of Prune Juice
Cheops Plant
Dried Apricots
Dried Prunes
Glowing Jelly
Grackle Bug
Half-eaten Berry
Meridell Gravy
Old Croutons
Pickled Leeches
Rancid Old Meat
Semolina
Squished Tomato
Tchea Fruit
Tin of Olives
Tin of Sardines
Ummagine
Yellow Growth
BLOATING NON-FOOD FOOD
The final way to feed your pets involves places that don't actually give you food but bloat your pets anyway. Since the aim here is feeding your pets the cheapest way possible, I will list these places too.
There is a really nice Water Faerie in Faerieland that will bloat your pets for free-- sometimes. She is located at the Healing Springs. Most of the time she will just heal them, but 25% of the time she will bloat your active pet while at it. Since you can visit the Healing Springs every half an hour, you can't go wrong popping in as often as you can and hoping for the best.
The next option is a nice faerie called the Soup Faerie who, appropriately enough, runs the Soup Kitchen in Neopia Central. The only drawback is that she will only feed them if you have less than 2,000 Neopoints to your name.
Last, and certainly least, is the Neolodge in Neopia Central. This is the most expensive option of all. But if you are a big spender and have five Neopoints to splurge on your pet, all you have to do is put him in the Neolodge for one night and he will come out bloated.
So there you have it-- Mr. Cheapo's Guide to Neopian Dining. Now all you have to do is figure out what you are going to do with all of those Neopoints you are saving. Me? I plan to buy expensive gourmet foods to feed to my Lupe. Go figure. |
