The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to Habitarium

Terms

Petpetpets: These are the little creatures in your Habitarium. They are commonly referred to as P3s.

Workers: These P3s gather resources, build structures, and repair damaged ones.

Nesters: This type of P3 lays eggs so you can hatch new workers, nesters, or soldiers. They also gather resources and fight off pests (but only if they're attacked first).

Soldiers: These fight off pests, build new structures, and repair damaged ones. They do not, however, gather resources.

Pests: Pests are blue petpetpets that will try to damage buildings and eat your food. They leave behind a red gem when defeated.

Nests: These are used by nesters to incubate eggs, which in turn will allow you to hatch new workers, soldiers, and nesters.

Resources: These yield the materials you need to purchase things in the Habitarium store. There are six types of resources: mud, wood, stone, pollen, grass, and water.

Houses: Houses are used to heal, feed, and rest your P3s. They can be built with mud, stone, and wood.

Hospitals: These are somewhat a waste of resources because they do the same thing a house does but for a higher price. They are also built with mud, stone, and wood.

Barracks: These are similar to houses, but are exclusive to soldiers. Soldiers will heal a little faster in barracks than in houses or hospitals, but they're still not worth it because of how expensive they tend to be.

The Beginning

First, begin your game and go through the mandatory tutorial steps- this will allow you to become more familiar with your tools. Your primary focus should be to get your nesters and workers harvesting necessary resources like mud, wood, and stone. To do this, simply click on a nester or worker and drag it to a tree, bog, or stone. These three important resources will allow you to create necessary building units like storages, nests, and hospitals which will help you later on in the game. Ignore resources like water, pollen, and grass for now. These are only useful for purchasing food, which you don't need because P3s stay well fed when you toss them in a hospital or home.

Let the game run for a few hours. When you come back, you should have a decent amount of resources to build a nest. To purchase a nest, click on the blue bag. To place it into the Habitarium, click on the inventory button which is the backpack. Click on the nest and place it wherever you want in your Habitarium. Then, drag a soldier and place them on the tile in front of your nest. They'll begin to build your nest. Pretty soon, you'll have a fully functioning nest! These are important; without nests you cannot breed more P3s. The lifespan of your P3s is about one week, so you'll eventually have to hatch the eggs that your nesters have provided you with.

Place a nester into the nest. Creating an egg will take a few hours. Once your nester has finished incubating, pick it up and place it anywhere in the Habitarium. Next, click on the egg. In the bottom center of the screen, there is a little bubble which will tell you which species the petpetpet will be, and what type of job it will have. I would recommend repeating these steps until you have about 13 workers, 3 nesters, and 3 soldiers. By the time you have this many P3s, you should be at about level 11. If your nester didn't produce the type of P3 you wanted, don't worry! Simply place the egg into your inventory. To do this, click on the egg and in the bottom center bubble on your screen you'll have the option of either harvesting it or discarding it. Click harvest if you want to save this egg for later use. Then just breed your nester until you get the P3 you want.

If you head over to the Habitarium board, there are always people willing to gift buildings and such. If you would like an extra nest or storage, ask politely on one of the numerous gifting boards there. This way, you'll get to save some of your resources for future usage.

Dealing with Lag

With so many workers, you've probably noticed that there's a lot of lag as your P3s walk back and forth between resource tiles and storages. This also wastes valuable time that can be used to gather more resources. There are two strategies you can use in this situation- you can box in your storage units, or box in your P3s.

Method 1: The first method, boxing in storage units, will require you to block off access to the storages. Since P3s won't be able to get inside of them, they won't walk the distance to the storages; this will save you time. Any resources they gather will be automatically sent to the storages. To do this, simply purchase some decorations and insert them in front of the opening of the storage units. Remember, P3s can still creep into the storages from the side, so you should try to block off all sides of the storages. I find that putting your storages into a corner works best because you'll need fewer decorations.

Method 2: The second method, boxing in P3s, requires you to surround your P3s with decorations so they stay where you want them to. I find this method better because after each "cycle", P3s don't wander around aimlessly, which would waste valuable time that could be used to harvest more resources.

See which method you prefer, and stick to it. It saves a lot of time, and you'll receive a lot less lag this way.

Upgrading

If you don't do this, it will take a long time to reach level 50 (which is currently the max level). Remember that you'll need to be at least level 17 to do your first upgrade, and level 40 to do your second upgrade. First buy a bunch of nests, or go to the Habitarium boards to see if anyone is gifting them. Build them and upgrade them for experience points. To do this, click on the nest, and then click the up arrow in the center bubble. You will receive 200 experience points for building each nest, and an extra 300 experience points for each upgrade. At level 40, when you can upgrade your nests to level 3, you'll easily make 800 experience points per nest. Discard the nests when you're done so you can create room for new nests.

Purple Gems

Purple gems are obtainable when you reach level 50, and these gems are what bring in the Neopoints that people earn from playing Habitarium. For every 1,000 experience points, you will receive one purple gem, which will reward you with 500 NP. I know you're thinking, "How do people make over 100k a day when the purple gems are only worth 500 NP each?"

The answer to this question is: leave your Habitarium open. You'll get more experience points when your Habitarium is open, as opposed to when it's not running. What you can do is leave Habitarium open in another tab while you browse Neopets and do whatever you usually do on the site.

Hints

1. Make friends for this game. On the bottom panel of the Habitarium screen, you'll see a section that shows your Neofriends. If you click on the hammer icon and help them, you'll receive experience points. This is helpful for leveling up quickly in those earlier stages.

2. Always visit the Habitarium board to see if people are gifting nests, houses, or storages. This will help you save resources and gain experience, and don't forget your manners either!

3. You'll be rewarded 200 experience points for discarding an egg. If you have some spare harvested eggs in your inventory, discard them when you need experience points.

4. Always be on the lookout for pests. They appear randomly, or when you have food lying around. For every pest that your soldiers defeat, you will receive a red gem worth 30 experience points.

5. Remember, you don't need to harvest water, grass, or pollen. These resources are used to purchase food, but you don't need food. When your P3s get hungry, just put them into one of your houses where they'll become full and ready to start working again.

6. Try to stick to houses. Don't use valuable resources to build hospitals and barracks. They're much more expensive than houses, but don't do much different. You can use your additional resources to build nests for experience points.

7. Make sure your resource tiles are always in good condition. Pests can damage these, and sometimes your resource tiles will become worn out by themselves. You can ask your Habitarium friends to repair them for you. This way, they'll get experience points for helping you, and your resource tiles will be as good as new!

8. You'll earn extra experience points when you fix damaged structures, so don't discard them if you seem them looking a bit tattered.

9. It's beneficial to have more workers than soldiers and nesters. While nesters can make 200 experience points each hour, workers can make thousands. Soldiers might not get you as many experience points, so just keep a few lying around so that they can fight off pests.

10. And last but not least, take good care of your P3s! If they're sleepy or hungry, let them rest in a house until they recover. Your P3s will get more done when they're well-rested.

Well, that's all for now! If you have any questions, feel free to Neomail me. Good luck and have fun!