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The Lockdown Lookback – A Guide


by epode

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Something Has Happened! There’s a strange sort of feeling in the air. All around you, the neoboards are springing to life with old-yet-familiar faces. Questions, Confusion, Excitement. All the emotions are there. Someone posts who you last saw here 3, 5, 8 or more years ago. The auctions are seeing more action than you’ve seen in a while. Guilds are recruiting like crazy. What’s going on? I hear you ask. Ladies and Gentlemen – I give you the Lockdown Lookback.

The world is a strange place right now – let’s not avoid the subject. Let’s embrace it – something magical is happening here online as the world stays indoors. Teenagers and Adults alike are returning to their roots, to the game they once loved but for whatever reason, as life progressed, had moved on to pastures new.

I myself am a returning player. It has been seven years since I last logged on to Neopets – and by chance two weeks ago I thought I’d see if I could remember my old password and well – here we are. It was like a decade of playing Neopets just flashed immediately before my eyes. All the colours, the items, the pets, the games – everything was just like I remembered. Or was it? Suddenly, I noticed older returning players were popping up everywhere with similar stories of long breaks away from the site, and wondering where to start.

Here I present you with my musings, tips, and observations during the last two weeks, to help those of you finding yourselves in a similar position.

The lowdown – some useful links!

Did you know that you are allowed to talk about Jellyneo AND you are allowed to link to it now? For many years Jellyneo was a bit like fight club – everyone knew it existed – but no one really talked about it. Well, for me, Jellyneo has been the ‘Pokedex’ of my return. Full of fantastic information, guides and up to date information about anything you want to know. I will give a specific mention here to the Item Database, found here:

https://items.jellyneo.net/

It is the most comprehensive database of up-to-date pricing on all Neopets items that have ever existed. If you, like me – came back to 23,000 items in your Safety Deposit Box, it’s useful to know if you are sitting on a goldmine, or instead have a larger personal version of the Meridell Rubbish Dump!

I’d also like to highlight this page by somatropin, which was so useful to me in the first couple of days of being back on neo:

//www.neopets.com/~WhatWentOn

It gives a year by year rundown of all the major changes that have happened. This includes new releases of pets, colours, site events, and any useful site updates. It is SO good.

The Economy – It’s different!

Oh my goodness, what big, big changes await the returning restocker and/or reseller! I choose to focus on these for money-making as it was how I earned my fortune as a young pup (and you can’t teach an old dog new tricks ;)). The biggest three changes to mention here all impact the Neopian economy in one way or another.

Clearing of Neopian Shops – Every so often (and quite frequently!) the Neopian shops clear their stock, and generally all at the same time. Many a bug bearer of a restocker back in the day, this allows a much bigger range of item turnover in Neopian shops – this has, however, had its impacts on the economy. There is a greater chance of higher rarity items restocking which has in turn negatively impacted many values.

Maximum amount per item in user shops increased to 999,999np – I can’t even underline the massive impact of this change. It’s brilliant in that it allows for greater competition amongst users in selling items – and it makes items much more readily available to be bought and sold. However, with all good must come bad – it’s so easy to drop the price by a few thousand here and there that it is responsible (so people tell me) for massive deflation on many previously sought-after items.

Trading Post maximum Neopoints increased to 2,000,000np – I cried out for a change like this back in the noughties – and my prayers have been answered! Yes, you can now bid up to 2,000,000 on items instead of the previous maximum of 800,000. From my observations (and who knows if it’s directly related), as more Neopoints have exchanged hands rather than items, the overall ‘pure’ net worth of users has increased. I have never seen so many multi-hundred-millionaires and billionaires in all my time on Neopets. But this may too have been impacted by the changes I have already mentioned above.

The Avatars – There are loads more!

When I last played Neopets, we maybe got two - four new avatars a year, if we were lucky! However – There have been 19 new avatars released since 2018 – that’s right – NINETEEN. Hard to believe. Stamp collectors are rejoicing everywhere with the addition of 10 sparkly new album avatars. However, you better start saving your pennies – the deflation of the economy has done nothing to make these more affordable for the average joe, sorry about that. :(

You can however now get an avatar for logging in every day and spinning the wheel for Trudy’s surprise. Not only will it bag you 100k (Thanks neo for the incentive to come back long term!) but in 25 days you’ll have a shiny new avatar! You can thank me later. :)

The Pets – and plenty of them!

You can now have FIVE active pets, and if you are a premium user – SIX! (As if it wasn’t hard enough to think of names when there were only four). There is so, so much choice when it comes to pets, colour combinations and customisation options. Since I last logged on – there have been seven beautiful new paint brush colours – check some of these out!

What to do now?

When I logged on, I was quite happy to go about my business – re-learning how to restock, finding all my dailies and playing the few games I was actually good at. I didn’t know that I was missing a big chunk of what meant so much to my Neopets existence back in the day – social inclusion! I really recommend finding a guild that piques your interest. Yes, even if you are only here temporarily. I went in search of an account improvement guild and I’m so glad I did. The experience and knowledge of guild members who have been around during your absence will be invaluable to you. I have many questions and like-minded players (many now adults, like me!) are only too happy to help. Get on the Neoboards and find yourself somewhere to call home!

I’m going to finish up here by saying a massive welcome back to all returning players. It’s been a great few weeks reliving my youth here, It’s lovely to see so many familiar faces from years ago. I reckon I might hang around for a while to come!

Oh, and before you go - remember the following…

Stay safe, Stay at home, Play Neopets!

 
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