The Trilobite's Guide to Restocking and Sniping

Many people wonder: What is the best way to earn Neopoints? The truth is, the most stable and guaranteed way to earn Neopoints is probably the games room. However, the games room is never going to earn you amazing items out of the Hidden Tower. The Neopian Stock Market is another way to earn Neopoints, but it's not always reliable. The best way, in my opinion, to earn Neopoints is to Snipe and to Restock.

Sniping is when you take the Shop Wizard or the Super Shop Wizard and you use them to find mispriced items that were either typed in wrong or mistaken for another item. A good example of this is Piece of a Treasure Map. This item is difficult to properly identify, so you will have people who think they are selling map A when it is really map B. Sometimes, malicious users will want to deflate the Neopian economy by taking an item and trying to list as many of this item as they can at a much lower value. You can re-purchase these items and resell them at a higher price, but this is only advisable if the item is going to sell quickly. This is where you need to know the difference between Easy to Sell and Hard to Sell items.

Before I begin, I wanted to make a quick note: Always, always use the Shop Wizard and Super Shop Wizard to price your items. If there are no prices in the Shop Wizard, that means the item is Unbuyable. Instead of pricing the item at 99999 Neopoints, you should put it in the Trading Post and see what other people are selling it for. There are helpful Neopets friendly websites which have prices and item databases which will let you know how much something is worth, so never price your item at 99999 Neopoints (unless it's only worth about One Hundred Thousand Neopoints anyway,) if there are no others of it in the shops.

Also, don't assume just because you don't see it in the Super Shop Wizard that it's Unbuyable, or you don't see it in the Shop Wizard. Some items are not searchable from the super Shop Wizard, and sometimes you have to make multiple attempts in the Shop Wizard in order to see the item's price. Sometimes, an item that looks like it's priced at 99999 Neopoints is actually cheaper. Shops are broken down into sections in the Shop Wizard, and not every section has an accurate price.

ETS and HTS are the big difference when it comes to Sniping (and even Restocking.) Even if you Snipe an Unbuyable item; If you never see Neopoints for it, what's the point? You need to become acquainted with some of the items which you can make a quick profit off of, and items you want to avoid. Interestingly, this is also where Piece of a Treasure Map is an example. IF you see a Piece of a Treasure Map and its value is 5000 or less Neopoints different than the second lowest price, it's best to avoid it. These can be hard to sell, and the person may be purposely mispricing it in order to make some quick Neopoints.

When you go to sell an item, you can also use this tactic. However, it's important to know the difference between changing the price and giving it away. I priced a Purple Negg at Eight Thousand Neopoints, when its value is clearly NIne Thousand and higher. I sold Five Purple Neggs quickly this way, and I only lost Five Thousand Neopoints in doing so. However, if I were to have priced it lower than this; Say, Six Thousand Neopoints; I would have been making a mistake and someone would have Sniped my items. They would have resold it (or kept it, if they needed it,) and they would have made a profit off of me. This is not a smart way to do business on Neopets, and your patience can often net you quick results. The difference in time may be a couple of hours depending on the item, and making yourself the victim of a Snipe is not worth the quick Neopoints.

A quick guide to items which can be easily resold are: Codestones, Neggs, Spooky Food items (for the Brain Tree/Esophagor Quests), Quest items (for the various Quests around Neopia), and low-cost food. A quick note here for newbies: A Mall holds Quest items that you cannot use the Shop Wizard or Super Shop Wizard to find. These are located in the various buildings around the Ship Wizard building in Neopia Central. You can open a Mall and, provided you have a lot of Quest items, can make a profit this way.

A big difference between a HTS and ETS item is its price. If you have an item that's less than Twenty Thousand Neopoints, chances are it will be easier to sell than an Unbuyable item (item that is too expensive for the Shop Wizard.) Some Unbuyables sell rather quickly, too, but usually based on the popularity. Battledome items that are commonly used are a good example of items that are often ETS, yet Unbuyable.

The second best way to sell Unbuyables is to make sure they're R99 (regardless how rare and difficult that is to obtain.) The reason? Jhudoras Bluff and Illusens Glade. They ask for R99 items at random once you get higher in the Quest level, and these will usually cause people to seek out R99 items. If you have any R99 items in the Trading Post, you may want to check your Neomail occasionally to make sure someone doing this Quest isn't begging you for your item. You wouldn't want to lose a sale because you haven't checked up on the site!

The Shop Wizard is equally important to the Super Shop Wizard for one reason: You can look up items the SSW will not look up. Secret Laboratory Map pieces, Nerkmids, Paint Brushes, PetPet Paint Brushes, PetPet Secret Laboratory Map pieces, Transmogrification potions, not to mention the fact that it has a limited amount of searches. Your best bet for seeking these kinds of items would be to do a price only search to see if it's available, and then doing the normal Shop Wizard to seek out the item in question (if, for instance, an Unbuyable is in the shop for 99999 Neopoints or less which does sometimes happen.)

A last note on Sniping: You can Snipe Unbuyable items in the Shop Wizard/Super Shop Wizard when they're at 99999. Sometimes they'll be even lower. You can look up items that normally only sell in the Trading Post/Auction House and then buy them for cheap. An example is a Pirate Krawk Morphing Potion I bought for 99999 Neopoints when it's supposed to be priced higher. It's possible the owner just got tired of waiting, but if you wanted to wait in their place, that's a good way to earn Neopoints as well.

Items such as Berries and Evil Coconuts can be mispriced if a new user wins an item and doesn't know what they're worth. Though, if you're feeling kindly, why not send the item back to them and tell them how much it's worth? You can theoretically make a lot of Neopoints by Sniping people, but when the price difference is over One Hundred Thousand and it doesn't look like they priced it just to move it, is it really worth a couple of hundred thousand Neopoints to rip someone off out of a very important item? Personally, if I make a big Snipe, I bookmark the shop owner and intend to buy items from their shop to make up the difference. I only Snipe when I have less than Five Hundred Thousand Neopoints to Restock with.

Before I get into the Restocking part of this article, here is a handy list I use to Snipe items from the Super Shop Wizard. You can't look for all of these items, obviously, within the same hour: But you can do section by section to see if someone mispriced an item. Unless you intend to keep the item and, say, collect it and put it in your gallery: Why not send it back and explain its real value? No harm in making the game fun for everyone. :)

• Scrap Metal and Stone

• aquaberry

• autumnberry

• Breenutberry

• Brown Broadberry

• Burritoberry

• Dorkleberry

• Orange Graspberry

• Spoogentberry

• Unguberry

• Piece of a Treasure Map

• Negg (do a containing my term search and just seek a bunch of different neggs. There's a ton of them!)

• Negg

• Purple Negg

• Orange Negg

• Green Negg

• Yellow Negg

• Blue Negg

• Zei Codestone

• Main Codestone

• Tai-Kai Codestone

• Orn codestone

• Har codestone

• Mau codestone

• Vo codestone

• Eo codestone

• Bri codestone

• Lu codestone

• Sho codestone

• Mag codestone

• Vux codestone

• Kew codestone

• Cui codestone

• Zed codestone

• Wailing Evil Coconut

• Vicious Evil Coconut

• Ugly Evil Coconut

• Tusked Evil Coconut

• Stitched Evil Coconut

• Sliced Evil Coconut

• Sinister Evil Coconut

• Silent Evil Coconut

• Seasonal Evil Coconut

• Screaming Evil Coconut

• Scorched Evil Coconut

• Painted Evil Coconut

• One Eyed Evil Coconut

• Monstrous Evil Coconut

• Moaning Evil Coconut

• Mini Evil Coconut

• Light Brown Evil Coconut

• Infernal Evil Coconut

• Horned Evil Coconut

• Hairy Evil Coconut

• Golden Evil Coconut

• Ghostly Evil Coconut

• Flaming Evil Coconut

• Damaged Evil Coconut

• Burning Evil Coconut

• Angry Evil Coconut

This is just an example of a list you can make. Copy/Paste the term into the Super Shop Wizard and you can find lots of Unbuyables that may be mispriced due to the new users and the games associated with them, or quick as lightning ETS items such as Codestones and Neggs.

Now, getting onto the Restocking part of this guide.

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Restocking is easily the best way to earn quick Neopoints. It isn't guaranteed, but it is fun. I usually wake up around Six AM to Restock, as no one is usually around at that time and it makes competition for items that are very difficult to find much less frequent. There are people who cheat, though, and sadly there will always be cheaters who find methods of cheating to get their way which I will not list here so people do not attempt to imitate it (I'm trying to make good Restockers, not cheaters! :P) It's best to ignore them and try to enjoy yourself as much as possible.

Back when I went by my other username, Vulpes_Terminus, I managed to Restock a Bag of Healing Dust and I am pretty positive that there were cheaters around at the time I did so. I got it early in the morning, which is usually vital to getting a good Restock. Changing your sleeping habits -- waking up earlier and going to sleep earlier, can be beneficial to your health and the motivations in your life as well. I in fact use Neopets to wake up early in order to have a healthy lifestyle.

You want to use a browser that has tabs. The first mistake many people make with Restocking is dedicating themselves to only one shop. This is never a good idea, because that one shop may not even Restock anything of value for the entire time that you look at it! The best way is to have between Five to Seven (or more) tabs open with different shops and cycle them. What I mean by cycling them is opening the next tab with the mouse, hitting F5, quickly looking for any changes, and then moving to the next tab. If you have a Moltara shop open when doing this, you also have a chance at getting Scrap Metal and Stone which goes for around Fifteen Thousand to Twenty Thousand Neopoints.

I have managed to get a lot of different items doing this. Some of the best items are wearables which stock at rare or higher value, before many people have them. Check the news to see which items are new and try to get those items first. That way, they'll probably stock more frequently than a Very Rare or Super Rare item, but they will also sell for an Unbuyable price. Back when I played a long time ago, I would get items like Evil Twin Goatee, Campfire, Sparkler. They all sold for a very high price, and that's because it was in demand. This forced it to be ETS. I don't know what the value of these items are anymore, but I know I earned over a Million Neopoints in under a month by Restocking them.

The type of shop you Restock is important, because you need to have a certain amount of funds as you Restock them. I usually like to have One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Neopoints to be completely comfortable when I Restock most shops, but if you wanted to stock a shop like Haunted Weaponry looking for a Glowing Cauldron, you would need to have over Three Hundred Thousand Neopoints. That's what I meant by when I said I have Five Hundred Thousand Neopoints dedicated to Restocking. Because that's quite literally how much I have on hand when I Restock. I write this guide before I even made my first Five Hundred Thousand Neopoints on this account! But, that's my goal for Restocking.

A quick rundown of good beginner shops would be:

• Osiri's Pottery : Not many people go there, Anubis Fountain sells for much more than you buy it for, and you can even snag Unbuyable items there. They're HTS, but they're a good investment for any beginner.

• Spooky Food: This shop has been problematic for me lately, but I collect Spooky Food and I Restock it for my own gallery. It used to be that most items in this shop used to sell for Five to Ten thousand Neopoints. Apparently, someone has been giving a lot of them away though and has completely undervalued a lot of once profitable items! *glares at TNT* :P

• Neopian Fresh Foods: You want to look for Neggs here. Lots and lots of Neggs. Avoid Cheese Neggs and most neggs should be profitable here. I do not know the current pricing on items, so I do not even attempt to go after Twenty Five Hundred, Five Thousand, and Ten Thousand Neopoint items here, as I do not know what has been undervalued.

• Mystical Surroundings: This is a good shop, but a lot of the backgrounds have been devalued again *again, glares at TNT* :P Two Thousand Five Hundred and Five Thousand point items should probably be easy to stock here, and when you find one, you can probably resell them for high value. You're looking for individual items which do not Restock in groups, which sell for Twenty Five Hundred and Five Thousand Neopoints in the shop. You can also look at a quick guide to see what items are worth what, as research is very important to Restocking. I am not going to list items here, as looking at the pictures is more important than listing the item names anyway. Look at a guide! :)

• Uni's Clothing: I do not know the value of most of the items here, so it would be best to use a guide. However, its popularity means that it will be Restocking frequently, and you should be able to make a profit here on wearables. Make sure you're buying a wearable, as unwearables (unless they're R99) probably won't matter much here.

• The Arcanium (Moltara): I will add a quick guide of books I found to be profitable here. I add this to the list because it doesn't take too many Neopoints to buy books, but also because while refreshing here, you can get a Scrap Metal and Stone which sells for, as I said, around FIfteen Thousand to Twenty Thousand Neopoints. The guide consists of:

• Cog Jewellery Making

• Controlling Your Fire

• Discovery of the Magma Pool

• Deep Homes

• Gear Box Book Box

• How to Get Past the Guard

• Locating Iron

• Moltara Town Hall Records

• Old Geartooth

• Sculpting with Molten Rock

• Sculpting with Metal

• Steam Containment Manual

• Steam Engineering

• Steam for Fun and Profit

• Steam of Life

• Tangors Autobiography

Some of those, but not all of them, are Unbuyable.

• Neopian Garden Centre: This was my favorite to Restock in the past. I bought some Unbuyable garden items I ended up using in my own Neogarden. Sometimes, Restocking is less a way to earn Neopoints and more a way of not having to spend more than their buying price. It's much better to pay Ten Thousand for an item that you'd end up paying Five Hundred Thousand for in the Trading Post. Items which go in the contemporary Neohome should work well, if you know what you're looking for. I personally like the non-contemporary Neohome, the old version. Garden items for those should sell high as well, especially if they're R99.

Having about Fifty Thousand Neopoints on hand should be good for these shops. If you're new to Restocking, you should be able to earn a profit here. Since Restocking is mostly about being at the right place at the right time and not Restocking too frequently because you'll get Restock Banned (more on that later), you may earn a lot of Neopoints, you may Earn only a few. I personally resell Neggs and get quite a bit, because players who have moved past the Training Schools need Neggs to level up their pets' stats.

Here is a list of shops which should be good to Restock for One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Neopoints:

• Magical Marvels: I got my BoHD here! What more do I need to say? :)

• Tyrannian Petpets: Look for the Pet Rock here, and Krawk. There are other R99 pets too, but due to the wheels in Tyrannia you may want to avoid other Petpets.

• PetPet shops in general: Once you have One Hundred and FIfty Thousand Neopoints (not in all cases though, make sure you research how much an item sells for in the shop before you go. I think Moltenore sells for Three Hundred Thousand in shops, but resells for Millions,) you should be able to Restock many good PetPets. Most people want to just keep them for themselves rather than pay Millions of Neopoints, but you could also resell them for a profit as well.

• Ice Crystal Shop: This is a good shop pretty much only for the R99 items and the Freezing Potion. I saw a Freezing Potion once, but it was in the middle of the day and it was quickly purchased. I don't think I had the Neopoints for it at the time, anyway :( you will have a LOT of moments where you see something, and then it is gone. Seeing an item is only half the battle. I will talk more on this later.

• Merifoods: You could always buy a Pirate Draik Morphing Potion or a Pirate Draik Egg, but those items are very devalued. The fun way to get a Draik, the way I hope to do it, is by Restocking your own Draik Egg. There are a couple of other food items which are profitable here as well, but you're looking for Draik Eggs in general. Having One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Neopoints on hand should be enough to get you most Draik Eggs, but you may want Two Hundred Thousand or around there just to be certain.

If you have One Hundred and Fifty Thousand for these shops, you should be fine. There are many shops around Neopia which have items which Restock for around One Hundred Thousand. I say One Hundred and FIfty Thousand for this reason: In case inflation makes it higher than One Hundred Thousand, and in case (like me) you also Restock easy shops like the Neopian Food Shop in order to get Neggs while Restocking. Neggs are a very good way to increase your income marginally.

Lastly, there are a couple of shops which are for experts. These are the shops which, in fact, most of the experts frequent. Shops like the Royal Potionery in Brightvale, the Brightvale Armoury, the Haunted Weapons shop, and the Magic Shop in Neopia Central. I haven't Restocked these before, as I was only Intermediate when I quit playing before. However, I know that you can make quite a lot of Neopoints if you frequent them and know exactly what you're looking for. There are some great items at those shops such as: In Brightvale Armoury, Crisp Blue Tunic, Royal Potionery, Leaded Elemental Vial, the Haunted Weapons Shop having Glowing Cauldron and Magic Shop having Morphing Potions.

Finally, there are amazing items found in places like Defence Magic such as Thyora's Tear. T-Tear is one of the most expensive and elusive items in the whole game, and they are highly sought after. Don't think you're going to stock a T-Tear on your first day, though. Most players will never even see a Thyora's Tear, let alone stock one.

Let me explain a few important factors in Restocking. The first will be Restock Bans. They are not permanent. You have done nothing wrong when you get them and TNT does not frown on players who have gotten Restock Bans. They are a way of preventing players from stocking shops too frequently, to let other players have a chance. If you Restock for around a couple of hours, you will probably get banned. The more frequently you refresh the page, the quicker you will get banned. If you load the page in the way I taught you to cycle, you probably won't get Restock Banned from over-refreshing.

You can also consider Restocking for an hour, quitting and doing something else (if early in the morning, dailies is a good idea) for thirty minutes, and then Restocking again. This way, you can Restock most of the day. Though I will tell you by experience, only late at night or early in the morning are really worth it. Too many other players. Though, it is just an issue of being at the right place at the right time. You can still Restock great things during the day, and chances are that's when you'll get them. Don't let this guide dissuade you from earning your proper Restocks. However, there is the issue of competition, which brings you to the next problem...

If an item Restocks for 100,000 Neopoints; You don't have to type in 100,000. You can type in 99999. This is how I Restocked my BoHD. However, it is said that there are faster ways. Teaching yourself to move your fingers in a kind of wave, flowing between numbers, may be the fastest. As a video game player of many years, I can attest to the fact there are better ways to hit the buttons than simply mashing them. While you're mashing on 9, another player may have skillfully swept their hand across the keyboard in 123212. In doing so, they have allowed themselves to move faster and if you were both going after the item at the very exact same second: You'd probably lose. It's important to be fast, and you can train yourself to be faster.

Rather than mashing on those buttons, you can let your hands flow. This is why I said it's important to carry One Hundred and FIfty Thousand Neopoints, because chances are you'll be overpaying just to hit the right numbers to out speed your competition. You can, however, overpay or underpay. You have to make sure that the numbers you hit are at the very least somewhat similar to the numbers shown. In doing so, you guarantee the item. Let's say an item Restocks for 120,000 Neopoints. If you type 100,000, the Shopkeeper will complain and tell you 'I want more for the item!' If you overpay, they'll say 'you don't want to pay that much!' In the case of 120,000, you'd want to hit 123321. In a kind of wave motion, rather than simply mashing 122222. However, you'd never want to press 120,000 exactly. Nor do you have to. You just want it to be in the proper threshhold, not the exact amount of Neopoints.

Researching is a good portion of Restocking. If I told you every item of profit in every shop in this guide, you'd have more reference than you'd have guide and you wouldn't learn anything! You'll always want to have around Five Hundred Thousand Neopoints, even if some of it is in the bank (to prevent Random Events which take away your Neopoints.) You'll always want to cycle between Five to Seven (or more) shops, possibly even more shops. You'll always want to look at multiple shops: Just because you want something, doesn't mean that it's going to stock on the day, the hour, the minute, you look for it. You'll always want to make sure you Inventory has enough space for you to Restock. No sense in buying Eight Neggs if you only have Four open spaces.

You'll always want to make sure to do something for Thirty minutes after you started Restocking, as to not incur a ban. You'll always want to research your target items in the shop you hope to Restock before you get them. Also, if you have certain goals (like me), you may be Restocking just to get items. I want a Krawk petpet, but I am not going to pay Eight and a Half Million Neopoints for one. Not when I have to buy Hidden Tower items. No, what I intend to do is Restock one. Then, when I am done, I can leave Tyrannian PetPets behind and open a new PetPet tore. The process continues.

If you see a rare, expensive PetPet you don't plan to want to keep, you can always Restock it and sell it. Someone else probably wants it. Probably. You always run the risk of HTS, Hard to Sell. Don't spend all of your Neopoints on HTS items because you'll have millions and Millions in Neopoints you'll never even see for at least a few months!

An important note before parting: The shops clear themselves automatically now. You're not Restock banned as often as you think. You should Restock for at least twenty minutes (and check the Tiki Tack, which is almost always guaranteed to have unbought items in it,) before deciding you're Restock Banned. Restocking is time consuming! It will involve many hours of fruitless refreshing. You'll get bored, and you may even want to give up. That's how I felt before I got my BoHD, and then I loved Restocking for good pretty much after that. You may also want to buy an item even if it isn't a profit from a shop once in a while, as it lets the shops know people are there and encourages them to Restock. The thrill of getting a great item is worth the wait, worth the patience, worth the effort. It's so fun to get a great item at a great price, that this is why I suggested sending an item back to the user if they mispriced an Unbuyable. Why take that away from them?

My final thought on the issue is that it would probably be best if TNT put up a new form of Captcha for the shops. I don't want them to change Restocking, as the way Restocking currently works is the entire reason I play the game. However, if they added a new Captcha which you had to click to buy an item, similar to the one you have to click when you look up a user, it would prevent a lot of cheating. Just a suggestion, TNT! :)

I probably left some things out of this guide. I probably forgot some of what I was going to share, and some of my tips and tricks. Just stick with it! Try not to be too greedy. If some old woman misprices a Five Hundred Thousand Lab Map piece, unless you're really intending on using it to build your own lab map, why not give it back? If you're really as good at making Neopoints as you believe and you have Millions of Neopoints already, it's better to be a civil member of the Neopian Society than it is to rip off the players who you know are getting ripped off badly.

That's all! Thanks for Reading!