The Neopian's Guide to Life

by _dragon__lord_

Okay, I'm quite new to NeoPets, but I have picked up many important tips and tricks through my playing, and now have a fair amount of NP, although I usually give in to my temptation to buy new rooms and extensions for my NeoHome before I get to the bank. Not a good idea if you want to save up your NP! Anyway, I've put together all the tips and hints I know to make a basic guide for any Neopian, whether you want to get rich, have the ultimate battling pet, have a solid gold house with all the extensions, or just want a load of trophies. Enjoy!

Starting Off

Well, starting off is always hard. No money to invest in fast selling items, and a huge site to explore. Not to mention offers and sponsors to get your head round. The first thing you should do is to go to your inventory and get your newbie pack. Not worth much, but quite useful. Next, try to sign up for as many sponsors as possible, starting with the ones that give you the best rewards, then going to ones that give you less. From doing this, you can get over 3000 NP, loads of special abilities for your pet, some special items depending on when you do it, and a discount card which should have been upgraded once or twice. Next, you should open a bank account. This will allow safe storage of your NP and items and will give you a bonus 30 NP when you open it. Plus you get interest on the NP you store there. Definitely worth it. Also, it is a good idea to open up a shop, although you probably won't get full benefit from it until later. Stocking this shop with any items you pick up or are given for any reason is a good idea, as you can often find items on the ground. Once you have done this, play games, save up loads of money. I recommend Super Bullseye, as I get over 2000 NP per day from this. Meecra Chase is also quite good. Once you have money, check the Shop Wizard for reasonable expensive items. Battledome items that are over 50,000 NP are good for this purpose. Keep rechecking and every once in a while, somebody will price it about 10,000 NP or more too cheap, then quickly snap it up and resell it at a better price, making you a nice 10,000 or whatever NP. It's investments like this that will really boost your account.

Making NP

Okay, okay, play games, buy stuff, resell it, we've all heard it before... what we need is some more specific tips. Well, one way to riches is owning a big book store. A very good idea. For some reason the price of books seems to have gone up lately. Anyway, buy loads of reasonably cheap books. Put them in your store, about half of them at prices good enough to put 'em at the top of the Shop Wizard, and the other half of them at prices good enough so that they look like they might be around the cheapest you can get them. Try to get the books that are actually cheap to be worth around 100 NP, and the books that look cheap to be worth around 30 NP. Then sell them all for about 99 NP. You may also want to have a few cheaper ones at only about 50 NP, but not too many. The reason for doing this, is that your potential buyer will be somebody looking to improve their pets' intelligence, who has a bit of NP to spare, so once they have one book, what will stop them getting more? There is no reason for them to leave your store until they have spent the full amount of NP that they were willing to spend, and maybe a bit more, and as it is inconvenient and annoying to have to keep going back to the Shop Wizard, when it looks like your store has items as cheap as they'll get them anyway, there's no reason to. That is why bookstores do very well, and make a nice profit.

Making the BIG NP

Okay, you've scraped together 50,000 NP and you want to make a nice big investment that you hope to get a lot more back on. What do you do? Well, when the stock market first came out, people were saying buy shares that cost 1 NP! This is a good idea because it means that the worst you can do is double your investment, and it is unlikely that they will drop to 0 NP. However, there seem to be no stocks at 1 NP any more, the cheapest seems to be at over 25 NP. Obviously a lot of investment going on. However, if any stocks drop under the 10 NP mark, I would highly recommend buying, as the prices to seem to be rising. Until then, however, you should content yourself with investing in a theme park This can bring in huge mounds of NP if you can cover the costs of buying rides, land, and of course advertising. However, if you cannot afford to build huge, expensive rides and only charge 1 NP for somebody to go on them, then you are also able to pay people to put a banner ad in their shops and other Web pages, this is not worth it, as you will find that you rarely have any visitors. Therefore, theme parks can either be a huge waste of money, or a brilliant source of income. Is it a risk you are willing to take?

If not, then what? Well, try the Battlepedia for lists of weapons and defence items, those sell quite well. Then, if you find anything that looks expensive, check with the Shop Wizard. Once you find something, just keep using the Shop Wizard until you find it a bit underpriced, then buy it and resell it. The chances are that there will always be a gap between the cheapest and second cheapest item, so you will always make a bit of a profit.

Getting a Good Pet!

Okay, everyone wants a pet with good stats. But if this is really your target, you have to be willing to pay quite a bit of NP to get to your target. The easiest, but most expensive way to do this, is simply using the training school. However, as you will need to buy large amounts of Codestones at huge prices, as I say, you will need to be willing to pay vast amounts of NP to get the ultimate pet. The harder, but more affordable, way to get ultimate stats is to complete kitchen and time machine quests (only do the cheap ones!) to improve level, Grundo's gym to improve movement (I'm not sure if it only improves movement, or a random stat, as I have only done all 5 levels once), read books to your pet for intelligence, well, you need to do that anyway, and Faerie quests for the rest. If you aren't getting enough Faerie Quests, or you find them too hard without the help of the Shop Wizard, and Grundo's Gym does only improve movement, then I suppose you will have to save up for some codestones. Remember, there will very often be people willing to trade codestones at the trading post! Grundo's Gym is also a great source of income, as you are paid quite large amounts at later levels. If you find it hard, try going really slowly until 20 seconds are left, despite what it says, then really quickly until it tells you that you are going okay, then slow down very slightly, then after that just do what the button tells you to, slow down if it's red or speed up if it's blue! After a few tries you can perfect this so that you can win quite easily.

NeoJobs

Well, the Neojobs are another thing that I have some tips for. Firstly, don't do game jobs! These always require an incredibly high score! If you think that you are up to it, play the game first. Then, if you win, don't send your score, go to the employment agency first. The chances are very high that there will be some game jobs left, so get one that your score is high enough for, then send your score, then go to the job screen and complete it! Isn't that easy? That way, there is no risk of failing the job and having a blotch on your pet's record.

Then, there are item jobs. Most of these that don't require a job coupon are not worth completing. However, as there is a time bonus, completing one worth 250 NP, if the items cost you 260 NP, can still be worth it if you do it in about 10 minutes and you had 60 minutes to do it in, you could still make a profit of about 30 NP and have another successful job on your pet's resume.

What about Super Jobs? Well, they are the easiest way to make, or lose, large amounts of NP. It is not worth using up a green job coupon. What it is worth doing, however, is buying a Pink or Purple job coupon, then using it on the best jobs possible, until you get down to about a red or blue job coupon. Try for ones that need cheap items, but the reward you get is based mainly on the type of job coupon used, for instance, almost all purple jobs are worth around 70,000 NP and almost all greens are worth around 3,000 NP , meaning that there are hardly any purple jobs that you will have to do at a loss, but there are a few greens. ALWAYS CHECK THAT YOU CAN DO THE JOB FOR A GOOD PRICE BEFORE ASKING FOR IT! ESPECIALLY WHEN USING A JOB COUPON! YOU DO NOT WANT TO WASTE THEM! I always have two windows up, one on the job page and one on the Shop Wizard, allowing you to find quickly whether a job is worth doing or not. This is important as only one person gets each job, so others may beat you to it.

Making a profit from jobs in another way is something some people try to do. These are the people who have noticed that some items come up again and again, such as teddy bears, fertilizer, and dolls. What these people have failed to notice is that the ones that come up again and again are the vastly underpaid ones, and therefore stocking your shop full of these items does not always work, as people do not usually take up vastly underpaid jobs, although some newer people may. This is also a reason not to stock up on these items before going to the employment agency in the hope that you will be able to make huge amounts on the time bonus if you take only 3 seconds as you already have the items. This will not work! The time bonus is too small for these jobs to make up the difference and you will find yourself hugely underpaid!

Losing NP

Something nobody wants to do is throw away all their NP, so here's how not to:

1. Don't buy too much food. May seem cruel, but you can very often get your pet's hunger healed at the healing springs, or as a random event. If you really want to be able to make a Battledome fight, however, you may have to feed your pet. If you want to be able to get to a store without it constantly running out of food, try the Mystery Island and space station food stores, as nobody seems to use them any more.

2. Use the Shop Wizard. Don't throw away your cash by buying overpriced items! When using it, try more than once to get the best results if you think the first search went quite badly.

3. Don't build a theme park unless you have vast amounts of NP. As I said earlier, theme parks are always a risk, but the chances of any paying visitors is made incredibly low if the rides are not REALLY enjoyable and REALLY cheap. You also need loads of advertising to get people to your park, so be prepared to spend over 50,000 NP on making it really good, and remember, however much you spend, people may just not come! Don't try unless you have loads of NP to spare. Always price rides at 1 NP.

4. Jobs. Be very very wary of them, as you do not want to end up paying huge amounts for pathetic rewards.

5. Quests. Also be wary, especially the witch quest, which only gives items. This means that you often don't get nearly what you spent. At least with the kitchen and crashed time machine, you get your pet's level increased.

Well, that's about it. Not many more tips, other than click on the spy kids link every day for a nice little 50 NP and save, save, save in the bank! Now, go forth into Neopia and enjoy your newfound wealth! It may take some work to get to the top, but it's worth it to have the ultimate battling pet, or to be able to buy any item!