Neopets Tips and Tricks

So, what can you do with your virtual pet, other than play games? You can feed it, build it a home, read to it, buy it toys, buy it its very own petpet, groom it, clothe it, train it, and battle it against other players' pets. All of these are optional, allowing players to focus on only those aspects of the Neopets site they enjoy.

Your pet will become unhappy if it's not played with or fed, but it will never die or disappear.

Occasionally a pet will become sick. A visit to the hospital will help you diagnose what's wrong and show you what cure you need. Cures can be bought at the pharmacy or in player shops, auctions, or trades. Some are rare and expensive, though. A free way to cure your pet is to get the random completely cured result from the fairy at the healing springs.

To feed your pet, play with it using a purchased toy, read to it, give it a pet pet, or anything like this, just click on that item in your inventory. A box will pop up asking you what you want to do with the item, showing the pets you can use it on and other available options like putting the item in storage or your shop.

From a parent's perspective:

My oldest daughter, now eight, has been playing on the Neopets site since she was about three. Navigation of the site is a bit of a pain, especially for a non-reader or beginning reader, but she learned quickly where the games were and the few other things she needed to know to feed and care for her pets, and enjoys playing with little help. The only hesitation I have about the site, as a parent, is the blatant advertising, which they use in sponsor games and events. Those aren't the only types of games they have, but it is an ongoing and significant part of the site.

Although they have a cash shop, which children can wander into and add items to a shopping cart without really knowing what they're doing, the check out process requires their site password and Neocash. Neocash is a different currency than Neopoints, requiring real world money to obtain, either through credit card, paypal, or prepaid Neocash card (bought from a retailer like Amazon or a local store). They have to be 18 to use any method other than the prepaid Neocash card. No Neocash in the account, no purchase.

Play games

Neopets has a large game room with many different games to play. Most of these allow you to submit your score three times a day to receive neopoints. In this way, a casual player can make enough neopoints to keep their pets comfortable and happy with just a couple of games they're fairly good at, or a few they aren't.

Sell virtual Neopets items

Neopets has a wide variety of virtual items for your pets. These can be worn by your pet, played with, used in battle, decorate your pet's home, etc. They're obtained by shopping in the virtual stores and auction, trading, or through freebies and giveaways. You can sell these virtual items in your own shop, by trade, or in auction, which can be an addiction all its own.

Their auction system is automated so all you have to do is set your price and time limit and it does the rest, it's very easy to use. Shops operate similarly in that you set your prices and don't have to be present to sell, the item/cash exchange operates automatically. Trades, as one would expect, do require your approval to occur.

With trades, I suggest using the shopwizard to get an idea of average pricing, to be sure you aren't cheated. Some users offer a junk item in addition to neopoints as trade, and this junk item is a placeholder only, to allow them to offer for your item. But others will just offer junk and hope you're inexperienced enough to take it.

The shopwizard allows you to enter a search term and it returns a comparison of the lowest prices in Neopia among user shops. Refresh it a few times to be sure you've seen the whole range.

The shop lists displayed by the shopwizard are grouped by the first letter of the owner's username, a few letters together. Which group is shown when someone makes a search is random, so you may notice different ranges among the different letter groups. This is why savvy advice guides recommend refreshing your search a few times for the best idea of what the true average price is for an item. At that point you can choose to price for the entire market (true average price) or your own username letter list. Either way will make you neopoints, though in my opinion, pricing for the entire market is wiser, especially with higher ticket items.

Typically, the best pricing for your item is just slightly below the average price. On most common items, margins as low as just 1-5 points lower will still sell first to the next person looking for that item. Don't worry about a few items you see marked way below the common range, those are usually snapped up so fast they won't keep your item from selling. If you want to really get into reselling, buy up those extremely under-priced items yourself and mark them up in your shop.

If you specialize in a type of item, as I used to specialize in make-up (a common quest item) and Usuki dolls (a collectible), you'll learn the typical range for these, and can actually price above the lowest shopwizard, knowing the price range will flow back up to that point during the day.

Game scores can be sent to earn NP 3 times each. Try a lot of games. With practice, you should be able to find some you enjoy and are good enough at to earn the maximum points daily.

Get your monthly, daily, and seasonal freebies.

Don't pay for cures if your Neopet gets diseased - visit the healing faerie. She'll heal it for free (although this is random and may take a few visits).

Sell the daily freebies you don't need. Sell the rares you get from the daily freebies (codestones, faeries, etc) for market value! Even the junk from the daily freebies has some value.

Use the shopwiz to know what fair market value is.

If you search for something on the shop wiz and nobody else in Neopia seems to have one, it's probably worth over 100K in Neopoints. Search for it at the trading post and auctions to see what its value might be.

Opening your own shop is a good investment, but you can sell through the auction and trading post instead - they're free.

2000np and Free Food
Once a month, each pet can get a free food item here, and your account gets 2000np. Possibilities for the free food items range from very common to rare.

Coltzan's Shrine
Your pet could be gifted with stat boosts, items, food, or NP.

Fruit Machine
One spin a day. You could win pet pets, food, NP, or items.

Giant Jelly
Free jelly in a random flavor, once daily.

Giant Omelette
Get free omelette in a random flavor, once daily. Some flavors are very common, others are rare.

The Soup Faerie
If you have less than 3000np, total, she will feed your pets. You can keep feeding your pets until they're full.

The Tombola
You could win food, items, or NP. One spin a day.

Underwater Cavern
You can sometimes catch edible fish here. Your pet's fishing skill may randomly go up, allowing for better catches. One try for each pet every twelve hours. To take a pet fishing it has to be your active pet, meaning you have to go and change which pet is active in order to take more than one.

More Free Neopoints and Items
You can find more places to find free items and NP for your Neopets on this list.

Seriously, the surest way to make money buying scratch cards is to re-sell them! When you choose to buy a scratch card at a scratch card kiosk, you're given a random card from among that kiosk's offerings. Some are very rare and others are common. Even the most common cards will earn you a few neopoints if you resell them. The rarer cards will earn more; some are worth over 100k Neopoints.

Still want to scratch it anyway? Whether you'll win or lose is determined as soon as you click to scratch it. Where you scratch the card doesn't matter.

The rarest scratchcards are Icetravaganza, Rotting Riches, and Sandtravaganza.

If you've bought a card at auction, trades, or in a player shop and are wondering how to scratch it, you take those to the scratch card kiosk. There you will be offered the option to scratch a card.

You can only catch things every twelve hours or so. Some guides say the time is a random number between 8 - 24 hours. If you try again too soon you catch nothing and it tells you to wait longer.

Your pet's fishing level increases as a random event while fishing.

A higher fishing level is desirable because it enables you to catch better items, but there's really no cheat to it. Just fish daily and it will go up. If you take the time to change your active pets to let multiple pets fish you increase your chances of getting the fishing level increase on some pet, if not your main one, and that adding up to having a higher level pet to fish with.

Grab the daily freebies with any regularity and you're likely to build up an inventory full of virtual junk.

If it's edible, someone will buy it for cheap food, so that's worth stocking in your neopets shop for the lowest common price.

If it's not edible, it has use as a placeholder in offering for an item in the trading post, or as an item to put into your safety deposit box trying to get to the required number to get one of the collectible avatars. Know the average value, even if it's only 1 neopoint, and you can bundle it together in a trade with other junk items and often sell it or trade it away that way. As an example, I'd put 10 of roughly 1 neopoint value each together and offer to swap them for any whole omelet, but be willing to take a handful of neopoints for it if someone offered that instead. I knew that when an omelet was offered, even though the value was basically the same, I could sell it as a quicker sale than listing all that other junk in my shop (and listing a lot of 1 NP items is tedious). When I was a dedicated trader, I'd buy junk bundles myself so I knew there was a market for them.

Just be realistic about the value of the items and be willing to give people a deal, and even junk will trade okay.

Or, you can always donate it to the money tree or just throw it out and be done with it.

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The fire draik in the introduction is my own Neopet as it appeared a few years ago. The Xweetok is another of my neopets, as they look today after their recent changes. All rights reserved by Neopets, used with permission.