Your Basic Guide To Building A Neohome

NEOHOMES - Yes, I know what you're thinking. I never won the Neohome spotlight, as a matter fact, I'm not even close to being completed my Neohome to try to win the trophy. So why of all people am I writing this? Well, I'm not sure. On the bright side, I DO know what I am talking about when building a Neohome and what mistakes people make when building it. So in this article I will give you the basic questions and basic steps to building your rooms and gardens. Unfortunately, at this moment, you can't decorate the outside of your Neohome because no one is able to see it. Well, lets begin:

Why should I build a Neohome?
This is one of the biggest questions asked. A lot of Neopians think it's a waste of Neopoints. They don't do anything, except help you win another trophy. Your pets can't even go in them! So why should you build one? Well, there is various reasons. Some people like the challenge and the race. While others just like to decorate to make something extraordinary. Of course there may be other reasons. Yes, Neohomes can get quite expensive, so that is why you might need a couple of hundred thousand Neopoints to have while building this. If you don't have much Neopoints right now, you should try to wait awhile before starting to build one. It doesn't mean you can't afford it, but you'll run into a few problems later.

I have my Neopoints, what now?
First you need to go here, to begin. There is (currently) 10 places for you to choose from where you can reserve your plot of land to stay at. The cheapest being Neopia Central starting at 1,000 NP, and being the most expensive, Faerieland at a whooping 25,000 NP! Your probably wondering why the prices vary. Well, all of the 'background lands' look different. Neopia Central has simple little flowers, while Faerieland has clouds. My suggestion would be: if you don't want something cheap or expensive either, build it in the Lost Desert or Spooky Woods. But, to me, it doesn't really matter where you build it, but it does help people find your Neohome easier. When you have decided where you should build it, click 'apply for land'. Now this will take 24 hours to process. Come back around that time you clicked apply and move onto the next step...

It finished processing, now what?
Congratulations, the first part of your Neohome is done! Now it's where the challenge really begins. Okay, first off, do NOT build extensions, yet. One of the biggest mistakes a lot of people make when building a Neohome. You first want to get all your rooms together. It is very important to plan where you want your rooms to be before you start building. There is 25 sections on the area of the land and they are all numbered. You need to decide first how much of the plot of land you need for rooms, then maybe the rest for land or gardens. I suggest drawing this out on a piece of paper. Draw a box, and make 5 boxes going across and 5 boxes going vertical. Then just make the five rows. All together there should be 25 boxes. Decide about how you want the layout to be organized. Think of how much rooms you really need and what you will use them for. Is there a specific theme you want? Which rooms should link together? Where will the 'doors' of the rooms be? North, west, east, south or all? These are all questions you need to think of before building.

I'm done organizing, planning and plotting! Tell me what's next.
Good job. Now it's time to build your rooms, but be careful. Once you have built a room, you are unable to change the position of the doors, where it's located and what it is built out of. You will not be refunded. When you want to build a room go to the "Add/Remove Rooms or Gardens" link located at the top. Now look at the layout you had made on your piece of paper. Locate your "center" piece carefully of where it is on the Neohome map. When you click on that area a pop up window will appear. You need to make two choices. First you have to decide of what your room should be made out of. Did you think of a theme while planning? Or just thinking of making a normal Neohome? Rooms range from 150 NP - 14,500 NP! You have to choose carefully of what kind of rooms you would like. Say if in your organization plan, you had thought of making a "storage" room. Well because it's just going to be a plain junk room, make it out of cardboard or straw. Nothing too fancy, but, if you want all rooms to have the same look, you may have to think a bit harder of what type of room you want. Try not to pick anything too cheap, and nothing too expensive (unless you have a lot of extra Neopoints!)

Okay, I started building my room. How long do I have to wait?
You might have to wait up to an hour or two before it's completed. In the meantime, you should start thinking of the furniture you want to put in. You might be thinking of where you can buy furniture at. Well, there is seven places currently: . Fine Furniture ~ located at Neopian Bazaar

. Tyrannian Furniture ~ located in Tyrannia
. Kiko Lake Carpentry ~ located in Kiko Lake
. Spooky Furniture ~ located in Deserted Fairgrounds (Spooky Woods)
. Kreludan Homes ~ located in Kreludor
. Faerie Furniture ~ located in Faerie City (Faerieland)
. Brightvale Glaziers ~ located in Brightvale

The number one place people usually buy their furniture is Fine Furniture. There is chairs, desks, sofas, tables and much more! If you feel you are not good at restocking, you should look at the items that stock at the furniture shops, choose out the furniture you think you might like to be put into your Neohome and search it on the wizard and buy it from peoples shops instead. Be warned though, when you buy some of the furniture and place it into your Neohome, it might not look exactly like you wanted it to look like. This is because the furniture is shot from a "view point" in your Neohome. To try and avoid this you should take a tour from the recent Neohome Spotlights so you can get an idea of what some of the furniture pieces look like.

Before you purchase some of the furniture you should think of what is going to go where, but sometimes that can be hard. Most importantly, you should know what the room is going to be. A bathroom, the living room, kitchen, etc. It'd kind of look weird if you have a bathtub in a middle of a room along with some random oven. Plot, plan and organize. That is the main key to building a Neohome.

My first room is completed!
Yay :) But wait! Before you build your next room, fill this room in with the furniture you had purchased so far FOR the room. This way it won't be confusing later. But, uh, you might be wondering how in the world of Feepits you put the furniture IN your Neohome? Well, you have to go back to your inventory, click on the furniture pieces, then in the drop down menu you will see something along the lines of, "Put this into so and so room". Well, because you only have one room, that is the room it has to go into. Then click the "submit" button. It has now been added. Keep doing that to the rest of the furniture. Go back to your Neohome, view the room and you will see all your furniture stuffed into the corner. Now you can arrange it! Uh, but you might be saying, "Sorry Ms. Kitty! I don't know how to arrange my furniture!" No problemo. All you have to do is put your mouse over the item, click it and drag it to somewhere in the room where you would like it to be. After you have an idea where you want that furniture to be, you can now rotate and raise and lower the item. You will see a yellow control panel "below" your room. Click on the item you just moved and now options will come up. You will see arrows with the word "Rotation" beside it. Below that you will see another two arrows with the word "Depth" beside it. These are the options you will be playing around with. Rotation is self-explanatory, but you might be thinking what is "Depth"?

.Depth is important if you want to move an item on top of another item. This will be good if you wanted to place a lamp on top of a drawer. The drawer should be less depth then the lamp. So anything you want to be "underneath" should be less then the item that is going "on top". The two arrows will either decrease the depth or increase the depth by one. If you hold your shift key down while clicking one of these arrows, the item will decrease or increase by ten instead.

. Some of you may be wondering how people get their furniture in a "diagonal" position. If you hold down the shift button while clicking the rotating button, this will help move it to a diagonal position.

. When you have an item in the position that you want it you will notice a "locked" button on the yellow panel also. When you click this locked button, your item will stay in place without it moving around. So anytime you have your item in place, always click "lock". When you want to move it again, just click the locked button again and it will become unlocked. (0 = unlocked; 1 = locked)

When all your furniture is arranged and you have it the way you want it, click the "save room" button. This saves your room, so when you come back all of the furniture is there the way you had set it up!

What now?
- Click back on the link "Add/Remove Rooms Or Gardens". Click on the room you just made, then name the room. So say if you built a bathroom, just name it "Bathroom", for now. So when you are done your Neohome and maybe you need to fix something you know where to go. Trust me on this one. So basically, just repeat the steps on looking at your layout plan, deciding what to build the room out of, build the room, putting the furniture in it, etc. Then when you have finished building your rooms (remember, there is a top floor too if you need that!) you can now add on some extensions if you like. Well now, I'm going to end this article with a few questions you may have:

1) Do I need extensions? . At the moment, I don't quite see a use for them. Maybe in the future there will be a use for them, like the Pant Devil stealing something. But I don't really see why you should bother with them at this moment.

2) Can I switch my Neohome address? Please? . Oh dear, unfortunately you cannot switch once you have built your Neohome. Maybe Neopets will hopefully switch this in the future where you will be eligible to switch, but that might be a rare chance.

3) What happens if I plan to get rid of one of my rooms? . If you have to remove a room for any reason, make sure you remove ALL furniture from the room. If not, they will be gone with the room. And no, you will not be refunded back your Neopoints :(

4) You never told us what the "Action" button means!! . Whoops. The action button controls items that can turn 'on' and 'off'. Like speakers, lamps and robo-pets. So if you turn the action button on for a speaker it will start playing some music.

Well I hoped you enjoyed reading my article, and yes, I DO plan to write a article on a basic guide on how to to build your Garden :) So stay tuned!