Altador Cup Preparation

Dressing for the Occasion

There are many different ways you can choose to customise your pets for the AC and a wide range of both NP and NC wearables available. I tend to use a variety and mix up my themes. While you could give all of your pets matching team gear that'll get a little old really quickly. There are lots of nice team specific items so generally I'll have at least one pet in the full out team gear with the shirt, scarf and of course a trusty vuvuzela, but there are definitely other ways to get your pets styled for the AC.

I often like to have a pet with a general AC themed look, non specific to the team I'm supporting. There's usually a lot of gold wearables and yooyus involved in this one xD And then finally as an alternative to team gear I like having a pet based on the land I'm supporting but without using the actual team gear. Now some lands may be easier than others (I definitely found Kiko Lake a bit of a struggle last year, but the wearables are out there!) but it makes for a slightly more unique Cup customisation.

Styling your Pages

Of course your Altador Cup themed looks don't have to be limited to your pets and there are plenty of other things you can customise. The main one is probably a user lookup which is a fantastic way of showing off your team spirit. There are many pre-made AC lookups out there but if you don't want to completely change your current look you can just make small colour changes or add some smaller graphics such as banners, icons or AC themed mini adoptables.

Creative Entries

If you like to show your team spirit through creativity then the Neopian contests and spotlights are a fantastic opportunity to do this and possibly earn some new trophies and prizes at the same time. The obvious choices are probably the Art Gallery and Neopian Times, and they're fantastic places to start, but how about considering some less obvious alternatives as well? Altador Cup themed poetry, a page dedicated to the Cup for the Site Spotlight or how about a user lookup? You could even base a Storytelling contest entry on the Cup. And there's almost always an AC themed Random Contest at some point in June, so make sure you keep your eyes open for that!

Meeting your Fellow ACers

The Altador Cup is probably the most community involved event in Neopia and is a fantastic chance to get to meet new people. If you're joining a different team this year then you definitely want to go find some fellow team mates on the Altador Cup Boards and introduce yourself. And if you're joining the same team as last year there will still be plenty of new team mates to get to know, along with some your may not have spoken to since last year. You're all going to be supporting the same team and possibly spending a lot of time working towards the same goals, so it's a lovely chance to get to know each other before the Cup starts.

And of course you're not limited to chatting just with those on the same team. There are 18 teams out there and so many more AC enthusiasts to get to know, pop on to the other team boards and get to know them, or create your own boards for general AC talk. Getting to know people on other teams is especially fun on the days you are playing against each other and can often give you that extra motivational push if you have a competitive side!

Making and Reading Predictions

Another pre-AC pastime is making predictions, either on a board, or for more in-depth predictions you can add them to a petpage. A lot of people will do both pre-AC predictions and then daily predictions of each of the individual matches and games. These can be a lot of fun to read but making your own predictions can become a hobby throughout the entire Cup, not just before it starts. It may be hard to predict matches early on but as you get to know the different teams and their strengths and weaknesses hopefully you begin to see your accuracy each day improve.

Creating a Page and Keeping Track

Of course, this is a lot of AC themed stuff you can get on with before the Cup even starts and it can be quite easy to lose track, so how about getting everything together on one page? When it comes to pet pages the only limit is your own creativity and there are so many different ways you could put together your AC page, and what you could include on it.

When you were customising your pets maybe you came up with more than one outfit for the same pet? How about an AC themed look book? Or if you've submitted multiple AC themed creative entries this could be the perfect place to keep track of them and display them for other people to see if they don't get published (but fingers crossed they will!). And how about adding a section of your AC achievements from last year as a bit of motivation to see if you can match them or even surpass them then year?

And when the AC comes around a lot of us are so excited by it we can forget our every day neo tasks like dailies, so how about including a quick links section on your page so you can make sure you're not missing out on a chance to earn a random avatar? And while you're at it maybe some important AC themed links like the boards and the different games? It's definitely a fun task to keep your occupied in the time before the AC starts and with a bit of luck will help you out during the AC as well.

So that's what I'll be doing in the run up to the AC, how about you?