As you may (or may not) know I quite enjoy my games be it online, offline, console or board games, I find them entertaining and in some of the online cases a nice way to chat and make a few friends. Mostly I stick to RPG types or simulators but one particular website I’ve enjoyed for a good few years is Neopets. I think I first heard of the website when I was in Year Seven at school and I’ve lost and retrieved many an account as it’s always been one I’ve gone back to! When I lost my job and whilst I was looking for work I signed up again to occupy some of my time during the day. I’ve now been a member again for 17 months and recently I’ve enjoyed messing around on the games and gaining daily prizes as well as looking after my cute like Acara pet Chloeleaf.
Neopets – A Little History
Neopets began its online browser gaming takeover way back in 1997 and was launched onto the world wide web in November 1999. Since then it’s grown, updated and is available in a choice of languages. The website provides a way for gamers to keep and look after a virtual pet of their choice by playing games with it, reading it books, getting it jobs, feeding it and creating a home for it. There is so much you can do on neopets other than just caring for your pet – there are games, shops, a bank for you to keep your neopoints in safely – the currency of Neopia, several worlds to explore, forums, guilds to join and chat to other neopians and all sorts of interesting things to collect. Neopets is safe and secure and a website for those of all ages however I believe under 13’s or maybe under 16’s may need parental permission to join – this was the case way back when, although I am well over 16 now so I can’t completely remember...
The Neopets
After signing up players are given the chance to create their very first active neopet. This is the one that will appear on your sidebar and I believe you can have up to four per account. The first thing you need to do is choose the breed of pet you would like. Sometimes Neopets offers a chance for players to have a limited edition pet, although this is quite rare but something to keep an eye out for. Pets can include a Uni – a unicorn style pet, very cute and girly, a Usul – a bunny rabbit look a like, and Elephante or even a cute little Bruce penguin. There is a huge range of pets to choose from as well as there being an adoption agency where you can sometimes adopt some of the rare pets so you don’t have to create all four. In fact I prefer to stick with one pet as I like to use the website for the games more than the pet care.
You are then given a chance to name your neopet – make it original, neopets has hundreds of thousands of daily users and you may have to try a couple of attempts to get the name you want. All the simple names have probably already been used up! You can also choose your neopets habitat, gender and how they greet other neopets as well as their battledome statistics.
After this you will be given several options including taking the chance to view a tutorial on how to use the site.
You will start with £2,500 neopoints to spend in the neopia shops or on items for quests. You can also claim a newbie pack and a neocash item. Neopets is a free website but you can redeem codes and spend money on the neocash site if you want.
Navigating Neopets
Each page has the yellow bar on the top for you to navigate your way around the site. Clicking on the black Neopets logo on the very left will take you to the homepage. The homepage has any news, new items, and the daily notable neohome and neopet. It also has a link to the latest games and the last months competition winners. A good place to start for information.
My Account
Here you will be able to update and maintain your personal details as well as your pets. You can edit your petpage with html – a lot of users use this page to create a guild webbie or portal page. You can also add your neofriends via this page and manage your neocash account if you have one.
Customize
The customize section of the site allows you to customize your neopet with any neocash items you have bought or obtained through the site. It also has a link to your inventory where you can hold up to 50 items. Beware though, these items can be stolen by ghosts and donated to the money tree if you don’t store them in your safety deposit box which can hold many, many more items. I think if you have at least 1,000 unique items in your safety deposit box at any one time you can get an avatar for use on the forums. Things that are wearable can be stored in your neopets closet for dressing up and furniture for your neohome can be stored in your storage shed.
I personally use this to link up to my inventory most rather than customizing my pet. As a player you can open up a shop to sell for any rare or junk items you get, sell them and get those extra neopoints for buying better, rarer items. My advice though would be to save those rare items and then put them all in your shop at once to get the most money, as people will browse.
Games
Neopets have several fun and interactive games to play and earn neopoints and tropheys. They are catogorised into action, adventure, brain busters, card and board, classics, luck and chance, multiplayer, NC mall, puzzles and sports. I’ve got a few favourites including Kookia, Meerca Chase 2, Snow Wars 2, Extreme Herder, Freaky Factory and Turmac Roll. Each of your scores for every game can be sent a maximum of 3 times and can get you a maximum of 1,000neopoints. There is also a daily crossword, daily quiz question and a featured game which can earn you double neopoints per sent score. The games are the easiest and fastest ways of building up your neopoints although some games do cost some to play. Each game is given a rating as to how hard it is, I believe green games are easy.
Explore
This is another one you’ll probably use a fair few times as it gives you the links to all the different and unique worlds within Neopia. The worlds you can visit are
• Altador
• Brightvale
• Faerieland
• Haunted Woods
• Kiko Lake
• Krawk Island
• Kreludor
• Lutari Island
• Maraqua
• Meridell
• Moltara
• Mystery Island
• Neopia Central
• Roo Island
• Terror Mountain
• Shenkuu
• The Lost Desert
• Tyrannia
• Space Station
Each of these worlds has a variety of different activities to do on a daily basis which can lead to you winning rare items, neopoints and completing quests.
I think Faerieland and Terror Mountain are the two places I visit most, mostly to keep checking to see if that Snowager is asleep and for the Job Agency. They also look the prettiest.
News
This bar contains all the latest and upcoming information on Neopets. It also has a link to the daily Neopets Newspaper.
Pet Central
Here you can find the daily quiz question, links to how to draw and information on the other pets in Neopia as well as editing your pet page.
Boards
Here are the forums where you can modify your preferences, find friends and a guild to join. Also handy if you’re on a quest and need help searching for an item as you can’t use the shop wizard when on a faerie quest!
Shop
Here are links to the shops in Neopia, the bank where you can safely store your neopoints and gain a daily interest and locate the shop wizard – very helpful when on a job as you can quickly locate the item although not always for a cheap price!
What Else Can I do?
As Neopets is a gaming site there are certain things you can do on a daily basis that help increase your gaming experience, these include visits to the Snowager who is awake for most of the day but asleep for a few hours. Here you can sneak in and steal something from the pile of treasure he’s sleeping on and these can include some lovely rare items. You can also take a spin on the fruit machine and the tombola for free, visit coltzan’s shrine for a chance to level up your pet, visit the petpet corner to look in the toy chest and get a random item and deposit a scarab for a chance to win items or neopoints although you might get sick in the process!
Some of the lands have a wheel of fortune type game where you can spin the wheel for a price and win some great stuff. The Wheel of Knowledge can get you a Brightvale Job Coupon – a way to earn a massive amount of neopoints whilst completing jobs in the Job Agency located in Faerieland or you could win a cheat for a game. The Wheel of Monotomy can spin for a minimum time of a few seconds up to 24 hours, it doesn’t cost much and you can win some rare items such as paintbrushes. The Wheel of Excitement has a jackpot prize of 25,000neopoints and can be spun every 2 hours. Decemeber is a great time to visit Terror Mountain as you can get a daily prize for free from the Advent Calander.
Quests
There are several quests you can complete each day. A maximum of 10 quests can be completed for the snow faerie and kitchen quests, you can visit Illusen in her glade for a quest every 12 hours or Jhudora, again every 12 hours, for something similar however they don’t like it when you visit the other faerie as they’re not on the best terms with each other. Also, as a random event you may be given the chance to complete a faerie quest – these are rare events and can get some great advancements on your pets, the space faerie, for example will raise your pet’s level by four! Great when it comes to fighting in the battledome.
Job Agency
Each player can complete a maximum of five jobs per day. These are located in the faerieland job agency and give you the chance to make a profit through buying and selling.
The page refreshes every ten minutes but the jobs go very quickly and sometimes the reward isn’t as great as the price you pay for the items. However, getting a job coupon, very expensive, allows you to complete several super jobs until the coupon runs out and gives you a much higher payout. I think I’ve seen some rewarding 90,000neopoints.
Trading Post
If you’re looking for a particular item you could always try the trading post although users often ask for lots of neopoints in exchange for their items. Handy when completing a faerie quest but transactions are not always quick.
Guilds
A place to chat and make friends, guilds often give good advice to newbies in Neopia and a place of friendly chat, contests and competitions for more experienced users. You could even create your own guild – great if you have a creative flare and want to show that off in html. If you’re looking for a guild it’s best to advertise yourself in the forums where people can offer you invitations to guilds that have already been created.
Anything Else?
Neopets is a free gaming website suitable for a variety of age groups and can keep you procrastinating for as long as you want! I love it because of the games mostly, and it’s a cute way of keeping a virtual pet rather than those tamagotchi’s, mainly because Neopets don’t die! There’s so much to do with your pet and around the site, it just makes me wish the neopoints I was earning were real money – I’d be a millionaire by now!
Virtual Pet Fun! 
