We've all been there. It makes your teeth grit, your hands clench, and makes
you wish you could squeeze that Kiko Plushie till it stops squeaking. Somebody
else wins the auction. Somebody else grabs that Money Tree prize. The item you
need is sold out. You can even miss out on your perfect pet.
Two weeks ago, fyrato wrote a good
article about some of the things to stick to when you have a slow system.
It's true that lots of Neopians are rich because they have fast connections.
However, Neopia is for everyone! If you have a slower system or connection,
you do have to scrap a little harder, but you CAN play every part of NeoPets
and be successful. This is part one of some tips I've picked up.
Why does it happen? The slowdown is mostly caused by NeoPets being
a graphics-heavy site. It wouldn't be fun if it weren't, but every user who
isn't able to run Flash has to wait for over a dozen graphics to load on every
page. The number is well over two dozen on most shop pages. The NeoPets Team
helps out by reducing the size of images whenever they can. One way to speed
that load time is to set your browser to cache images. That means it will save
images and load it from your computer instead of from the site. Ask a Neofriend
or your guild if you don't know how to do this.
Know your own computer. Find out what kind of a modem and system you
have, and ask around about its pros and cons. And experiment! For example, I
know that if I defragment my drive and restart my computer, my browser loads
faster. Again, ask around about this (especially the person who owns the computer!)
Know the NeoPets basics. There's lots of freebies out there that don't
require a quick-clicking finger. Even on a slow connection, in fifteen minutes
you can hit them all and still have time to feed and play with your pets. From
north to south, there's the Snowager, the Omelette, Bank interest, Tombola,
Coltzan's Shrine, and the Fruit Machine. I won't cover those in depth, as there
are many other articles about each of these.
How to buy from the slow lane. The recent changes in the way Neopians
buy from official shops has a big impact on us slow-loaders. Here's what the
changes will mean for you, and what you can do about it.
Know your items! With sixteen to twenty item types per shop, the fastest
click wins out over the fastest connection. If you spot it before the person
with the fast connection does, you may still get it. Don't wait for the pictures
to load! Keep an eye on quest items, the Shop Wizard, the Auction Genie, and
even the Trading Post. Not all expensive items are worth reselling, nor are
all rare and in-demand items labeled that way. Ask your Neofriends or your guild
about trends. With the new system of buying, it's more important than ever to
know what the good buys look like and what they're called. Why? Because a mistaken
click-and-enter will lose you more time. (See "the new system" below.) Big hint:
if you missed a restock, look at the items that are left in the shop. Those
are the least desired by shopkeepers.
Where to shop. This goes with knowing your items. Official shops outside
mainland Neopia generally sell out slower. Same with non-food shops in Neopia
Central. Some things are cheaper in the official shops; others are much cheaper
on the Shop Wizard. At the Garage Sale you really have to know your items, because
some are overpriced and none have descriptions. On the other hand, if you're
going to buy items for your pets (as you should), then grab the less popular
items first. Chances are your pets will like them just as much.
Don't overbuy. If you have 20,000 to your name, don't try for that
10,000 Tonu plushie. You likely won't get it and you'll also miss buying the
30 NP Red Yarn Ball that currently goes for 2,000 on the Shop Wizard. Set similar
limits for yourself in games, the Trading Post, and anything that requires you
to part with NP
Restocks and reloads. They're random now, which levels the playing
field a bit more. A very good thing! Fewer autobuyers (i.e. cheaters) is also
great. Restocks work in a certain way: they slowly fill the shop with items.
You can see this if you reload a lot. This is why rare items are often sold
out before the restock is even finished. You'll just have to figure out how
long it takes for your browser to reload. Big hint: if your browser reloads
to the same place on the page, scroll down so you can see three rows of item
names.
Haggling. I'm not the greatest haggler in the world. With practice,
I've figured out that I can push the price down by several hundred if the shopkeeper
asks for 1000 NP, and down by a dozen if he's asking for 100 NP This is where
math comes in. See that inflation figure listed on each shop? That's about how
much every item is marked up. Get a calculator (or drop by the Lost Desert)
and do this: 100 minus percent inflation. Then divide by 100. Then take that
number (it should be a fraction) and multiply by the price. I rarely do this,
because it wastes time; estimating is better. Remember if you bid too low, like
100 on a 5000 item, the shopkeeper will actually go higher than if you'd bid
4000. (They also get really disgusted with you. ^_^;;) So be reasonable. However,
haggling has changed in the past month, which brings me to:
The new system. While restocks are better for slow loaders, the haggling
is not. The Java window took time to load, but it had one small graphic and
a few lines of text. The haggling on the same browser window has the main menu
bar, the menu's ad, the item's picture, and the shopkeeper's picture. (The NeoPets
Team did remove the shop menu bar, thank you!) This does not favour slower systems
which are usually confined to the HTML option (the starry Zafara button at the
bottom of the screen.) Also, if you accidentally go to the haggling page, you
can't click on your correct choice because you're on a different page.
The one BIG plus to the new system is that less common browsers which didn't
support the Java window are now home free to play with the rest of us. This
all means there will be more Neopians, slow-loading and zippy! If it's any consolation,
the people with faster connections will be caught in traffic too. For some items
and stores it's still impossible to buy quickly enough, which brings me to the
trickiest part:
Know your time zones. This is the extreme solution to a slow connection.
Because people from all over the world play NeoPets, there is always someone
online waiting to bid higher or buy faster. However, at the time of this writing,
there are certain places with more Neopians than others. That creates "peak
times"; avoid them when buying, use them when selling.
You can find out when those times are by watching the Battledome Quick Fight
window. In general, more pets waiting to fight means more people on the whole
site. (If your pet doesn't fight, remember to turn off the targeting option
in "preferences".) Big hint: check the times when NeoQuest is open. Next week
I'll cover the time zone issue in more depth.
Last but not least, there is something the NeoPets Team can do about this
problem. There needs to be more items per restock. Why? Let's say one million
Neopians come to the site during peak times, which is less than 4% of all Neopians.
If one-eighth of them go to 55 shops, that's an average of 2273 Neopians going
for about 200 items in total. That means there's about 11 items for every 125
people. Now, I have a pretty good hunch that on any given night, 18:00 NT, there's
ten or twenty times that number of people. Guess which connection speeds win
that battle. Inflation will just make the rich Neopians richer and the poorer
NeoPets hungrier.
The Food Shop (which sells most of the cheap food,) and the Book Shop (which
sells most of books,) sell out in less than 20 seconds in the middle of the
Neopian day. Even 56 K modems cannot compete! Even if it's just a few cheap
and disposable items available in greater quantities, it will make things easier
at the bottom.
Next time, I'll focus on a much rosier picture: How to make NP on Flash games
and have more fun with your pet, and how richer, zippier Neopians can help slow-loaders.
puretigergirl and wrenlet contributed information for this article. shusu_chan
has been on NeoPets for over a year. She hates math. Feel free to Neomail her
with suggestions for the next article. | 
