Lock It Up!

Visit the Bank. Yep, it's that simple. Go to the bank. Open an account if you don't have one already. And there you go! A safe place to store your neopoints. I had about 250,000 neopoints on hand, and I was taxed 10%. With 700,000+ in the bank, it could have been MUCH worse, but still, losing over 20,000 neopoints is something you never want to have happen. Another hidden perk to having something in the bank? Daily interest! Go daily to collect your interest, and you could be gaining thousands, if not millions of neopoints a year by going once a day. Yes, it's free neopoints. FREE. Now how cool is that?

Use your Safety Deposit Box. It's almost a bottomless box. You can continue to dump items into it as much as you want. There's an easy filter to use to find items you want to retrieve. It really couldn't be much more convenient than that. What's that? You still don't think it's safe? No worries young Neopian. Just add a PIN to secure your area even more.

Now that your neopoints are safe and your precious items are tucked away in a secure place, you're good to go. Well, you still have some neopoints on hand and some items in your inventory. After all, you can't really go walking around without any neopoints on you. Inevitably you'll need some cash to pay for something along your journey, even if it's only a few hundred neopoints. Perhaps you're wondering what you should be looking for to avoid being robbed? I'm glad you asked! Let's list off a bunch of ways that you can lose your neopoints or items that are not safely secured.

Random Events. This is something you really can't avoid, because it's random. I was caught completely off guard when the Tax Beast snuck up on me. Of course, there are some absolutely wonderful random events that you can get. But we need to watch out for those pesky negative ones.

• Tax Beast: There are two events that the Tax Beast can show up with. One will take 10% of your neopoints for your unpaid taxes (which really don't exist, but it makes the game more interesting!), and another will snatch up 25% of your neopoints if he's REALLY angry. These events will really sting if you have thousands or millions on hand, so the moral of the story; use your bank account!
• Dr. Sloth: Yes, Dr. Sloth can also pop up unexpectedly and take a large sum of neopoints away. He'll take away 20% of your neopoints to "support his next Neopian invasion effort." That's just dirty. So once again, keep those precious neopoints of yours locked up!
• Ghosts: Luckily, most of the time the ghosts don't take many neopoints from you. Typically they'll smile evilly at you and snatch up a minute amount of neopoints. By minute, I mean that losing 50 neopoints isn't uncommon. Occasionally, a ghost will come and steal a hundred or so neopoints from you to put under the money tree. I guess the only good part about it is that your neopoints are going to a good cause, right?
• Greedy Kadoatie: Ok, now this event is totally uncontrolled. If you receive this random event, it means you're being bothered by a mutant kadoatie to the point where you can't stand it anymore. You "give" 5,000 neopoints to its owner to have him take it away from you. They make it sound like you chose to pay the owner to take it away, but no. You just give it away.
• Biscuit/Cookie: So sometimes we get a little careless. Don't deny it. You've done it before. Walking along and you see something on the ground of interest to you. You stop, bend down to pick it up, and continue on your way. Well, in this random event, when you go to pick that delicious cookie up off of the ground, you can lose some loose change when you bend down! This typically is somewhere between 50 and 200 neopoints, so really, it's not much. But if you're a poor Neopian, that's just not good, at all. At least you get to keep the cookie you picked up!
• Bullies: Neopia can be a mean world sometimes. Especially when the bullies come out and steal your neopoints! They'll come and flip you upside-down, shake the neopoints right out of your pockets, scoop them up, and leave you there. This usually amounts in hundreds of neopoints being lost.
• Icy Skeletons: Just like the bullies, icy skeletons can surround you and steal neopoints from you. However, you'll be more fortunate to get this event, since the average neopoints stolen is only somewhere between 30 and 150. Not too bad.
• The Bug Brothers: Once again, another cruel act. However, when these little bugs jump on you and take your neopoints, they can only carry a very small amount, since they're tiny. If you get this event, just consider yourself lucky. It could have been much worse!
• King Skarl: You don't have to have any marrows on your or be in Meridell, but King Skarl might just come along and ask you for your Marrow Tax. Who does he think he is!? He's King Skarl. He can do what he wants. If he wants your neopoints, he'll take them. Even if it's via a ridiculous Marrow Tax.
• Sloth's Ray Gun: He's back. But this time he's after your items. He'll blast his ray gun at you and turn a random item into a mound of sludge. Yay. Sludge.
• Pant Devil: He's famous for stealing your precious items. And he'll do just that. Whenever he wants. At least if this happens, you'll get the Pant Devil as a battledome challenger!
• Grundo Leader: He'll do the same thing as the Pant Devil. Steal things. Once again, it doesn't matter if it's cheap or expensive. It will be random. Another thing; you don't get a new battledome challenger from this event. Sorry about that.
• Shadow Usul: So mysterious, this Usul will come and go so quickly that you won't even know what happened. Well I'll just tell you what happens. You'll be down an item, since the Shadow Usul will steal it on its way by. You better hide that Stealth paint brush of yours in your safety deposit box. You don't want that to get stolen so easily.
• Meuka: Meuka will always go after food in your inventory. He'll take a food item and turn it into a lump of snot. This is one even you CAN avoid. Don't have any food in your inventory, and Meuka will stay far, far away!

The Wheels of Neopia. Various wheels will have spaces on them to make you lose neopoints, lose items, or have items turned into a less desirable form. I'll list off the possibilities for you:

• The Wheel of Mediocrity: Landing on space 5, or the sludgy looking thing, will result in an item in your inventory being lost in a "tar pit". Out of the 16 spaces on this wheel, you only have one opportunity to lose an item. And you only have to pay 100 neopoints to spin. Oh, and you can spin every 40 minutes. Are there mediocre prizes? Well, obviously. But it's worth a spin, or a few spins per day. You really can't lose more than 100 neopoints!
• The Wheel of Excitement: Exciting news about this wheel? It might cost 500 neopoints to play, but you only have one chance out of 16 to have anything happen to your items or neopoints! So on this wheel, the Pant Devil lurks on space 13. He'll do what he does in random events; steal an item from your inventory. Once again, keep that Royal paint brush of yours tucked away in your safety deposit box if you don't want the Pant Devil to run off with it.
• The Wheel of Misfortune: It would be misfortunate to land on any of the three spaces I'm about to tell you about in this game. Even worse? There are only eight spaces you can land on total. Let's see if you're willing to spend 150 neopoints to spin this wheel. Space 4 is something that you really want to avoid. You can lose an undisclosed amount of neopoints. Yes, that means it's possible to lose ALL of your neopoints on hand. Scary, right? If you land on space 5, a random item in your inventory will be turned to sludge. Also, space 8 is that pesky Pant Devil again. He'll take an item from you, just like he always does!

Of course there are many other ways to lose neopoints and items in the land of Neopia, but these certainly are the most common ways. One point worth mentioning, as I wrap up my guide to saving what's yours, is that during random events, you can end up having a NEGATIVE amount of neopoints. If you have 500 neopoints on hand, and the bullies come along and shake 900 neopoints out of your pockets, your neopoints balance WILL show up as -400 neopoints. So the main point of this article is essentially to protect what is yours! If you earned it, save it! The bank and the safety deposit box are there to serve you and help you have happy adventures through Neopia, without worrying about randomly losing your expensive morphing potion to the Pant Devil, or having the Tax Beast wreak havoc on your day. Don't let YEARS of work to get what you wanted go down the drain in a matter of seconds. I promise, you'll be thankful you protected your stuff. Hopefully this article will save at least one Neopian from losing a large sum of their fortune, newbie or veteran!