The complete beginners guide to playing Neopets (or a refresher course for those that all ready play!)
Images are Copyright 2000-2007 Neopets, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used With Permission.
Hello, I'm Offa_rex and I understand you are here to see what all this neopet fuss is about. Well it just so happens that although my owner, Opaltigerdragon and I have only been together for a short while, I actually have an older brother and sister on her side account. They have taught me all I need to know about being a good Neopian and I hope to pass this imformation to you.
So what is Neopets then? The easy answer is that it is a free virtual pet site full of fun games to play, suitable for all ages in a very happy network of world wide players. That doesn't really answer your question though, so let me take you through the finer points of the fun world of neopia, starting with a little history. (Its not too boring i promise you!)
Neopets was started by Adam Powell and Donna Williams, way back in 1997 when they were college students, as an idea to cheer up other bored college students between homework assignments. (At least thats what I heard but it may have just been an excuse to play computer games!) and went offically live on 15th november 1999. The site quickly became popular and by July 2000 it had become a viable buisness under the valuable direction of Doug Dohring, the company founder of Neopets Inc, who bought in lots of nice people to work on art, programming, writing, sales and support for the site. Originally only having 1 server it grew over the next 6 years to needing 400 servers and has over 30 million members registered from all over the world. ( I don't think they all play at the same time but there are often 35,000 - 80,000 players on line at any one time - Wow thats a lot of players!) In june 2005 MTV work,Inc (a subsidion of Viacom,Inc) bought neopets and is still expanding and improving the site to this day. Adam and Donna still work at neopets and can be found on the about us page here:- http://www.neopets.com/aboutus.phtml .If you search various articles in the neopian times, The neopets team (or TNT as they are commonly known) will tell you that the site is geared for all ages.
See not too boring and now if anyone tells you are too young or too old to play you can be reasured that the site is for all ages which makes you exactly the right age to play.There are a few restrictions for age but if your under 13 check with your parents or guardian, maybe let them read this guide and then everyone will be happy. I will put up some rules and regulations which you should read but remember the rules are to keep ALL players of any age safe, so we all have a happy time. I'll tell you more about that later though. You can check out neopets rules here, and indeed you should do so before you sign up. http://www.neopets.com/terms.phtml
So lets start at the begining and i'll show you where the fun is, I'll answer questions at the end so don't worry if you don't understand everything straight away. Please feel free to read through the guide before joining neopets and getting your own pet, you can always come back to this bit when you've finished reading. I got opaltigerdragon to put in a nifty shield as a reference point for you!
O.K first you need a pet and not just any pet either. There are lots to choose from and you can have more than one, its best to start with one just until you get the hang of what and where everything is. You won't want to leave it to long before you get another pet , as you won't want your first pet to get lonely when your not playing. I already have a sister to play with and i'm sure that before long opaltigerdragon will expand our family even more! There are 54 pets in total to choose from but 12 are limited edition and only available at certain times. The 42 standard pets gives you plenty to choose from and you may even be lucky and have picked a time one or more of the limited pets are available. To sign up to neopets you can either use this referal link http://www.neopets.com/refer.phtml?username=opaltigerdragon or if you don't want to credit my owner with a referal point just click on http://www.neopets.com/index.phtml and click the large sign up now sign on the left hand side of the page. Remember you don't have to sign up until you've completly read this guide (i'll put the links at the end of the guide as well). To see the pets click here http://www.neopets.com/allpets.phtml but please note that TNT have recently updated the site and the pets have gone through a slight change in appearance. You can view the pets available for choosing before you make your final choice so if you change your mind you can just pick another. Don't worry about it too much though you will have a hard time choosing just one pet out of the available 42, they are all wonderful.
First, you will need to choose a username for yourself, a password and if you haven't already read the terms and conditions as well as the privacy policy. If your under 13 you should get mum, dad or your guardian to read them as well.To read them now click here http://www.neopets.com/terms.phtml and here http://www.neopets.com/terms.phtml. Most of it is common sense and designed to protect the players, some is required by law to protect players (thats were the under 13 rule come in) Neopets takes saftey online very seriously - You can read more about this here - http://info.neopets.com/presskit/faqs.html#10 as well as some other interesting facts about neopets. Once you have choosen your user name and password click next and the screen will then ask you about yourself. You only need to fill in the bits with the stars, the rest is optional. So you don't need to put a first name (or you can make one up!) but you do need your birthday, Gender, country and postcode or zipcode. Your birthday is extremly important - don't be creative and make one up, many people have done this only to find they forget what they made up and can't get into their account! Then click next to go to the e-mail screen where you are ask to put in a valid e-mail address twice! yep twice - this is to check you have spelt it right as mistakes mean you can't get your activacation e-mail and can't play.You then get the chioce to create a pet now or go to the end of sign up. choose which one you want to do. If you go straignt to the end you will be given some basic info and some links to start playing, plus 1000 neopoints. Once you have done this you may need to wait a short while for your confirmation e-mail from neopets, its never taken more than a few minutes for any of my owners family, if for some reason you don't recieve one check its not gone into your spam folder. (if your not sure about all this get some help from the computer expert in your house, they be able to see that neopets e-mail comes through to your inbox). Once you've confirmed your e-mail you will be able to choose your first pet! (if you haven't already choosen to do so)
When you recieve your e-mail click or copy and paste the link into your browser, or insert the activacation number in the conformation box. you will then see the launch page explaining what you can do. Its worth having a look through the game guide just to get a feel of what to do, as well as containing lots of useful links for you. However if you get confused or lost, most of the things will be in this guide so don't worry. If you haven't already i'll now help you creat a pet. If you've followed the links in the Game guide pages and selected "start playing neopets" you should be in pet central. If you aren't either select it from the top bar or click here http://www.neopets.com/petcentral.phtml. There is lots more information for you to read here but we are interested in creating a pet so we need to go my account and select the create a neopet link at the bottom.
Choose a pet species from the ones shown available, or click the "pick for me". Neopets at this stage have four basic colours - red, blue, green or yellow. You can change colours (and even species) later in the game if you choose to but for now choose your favourite out of the four. Want to know more about a species? Highlight the one you want to know about and click the link About this species under the picture. you will be shown a small animation about the species. Once you have choosen a pet and colour click next to confirm and go to the next page.
On this page you need a name for your pet (once again a handy choose for me button to either give you ideas or decide for you) As well as deciding gender, where your pet comes from in neopia, what his/her favourite thing is, how they greet other pets as well as some basic Stats (Strength, defence and movement) Your pets health (hitpoints) weight and height are already choosen for you and are displayed here. Again once you have choosen press next and you should now see a congratulations screen for your new pet.
I'm feeling a little tired now so i'll put some more in this guide very soon. Any questions you can contact my owner Opaltigerdragon and she'll do her best to help you out.
Ok, Once you have your new pet you will be offered the chance to do some more reading about the site, i'll put the link here so you can read it at your leisure, or if you wish to refer to it again later and can't find it. http://www.neopets.com/gameguide/index.phtml It contains infomation on signing up, as well as some of the things you can do whilst playing neopets. It is worth reading to familarise yourself with the site and what to expect. However most of us just want to go and play, so if you've already read the guide or want to come back to it later, lets go and see your new account and find out what you can do. If you visit your inventory page you can collect your Newbie pack or welcome pack which is a small set of gifts containing food, a book and a wearable item as well as 2 starter paintbrushes for changing your pets colour and a cardboard petpet or 2. These items change from time to time, but are general items to help you get a feel for the site and start looking after your pet.To use an item simply click on its picture to open up a new side window and choose which action you would like to do. If you have more than one pet you will be offered a choice for each one, if your pet can interact with the item. Example :- an item of food can be fed to your pet, a toy can be played with, but an item of clothing, if wearable, has to be put in your closet before being worn.
Your pets are usually not hungry when they are created but over time their hunger levels drop, and if you wish you can feed them Food items to keep them happy and healthy. Please note that if you don't fed your pet, nothing will happen apart from its status changing. A Neopet, once created cannot die no matter what anyone tells you. They can become unhappy and turn blue or grey through Random events connected to them being unhappy, but this takes a long time and has an element of chance to it. The bottom hunger level DOES say dying but that means they are very very hungry, not that they will die. (Think of it as being like when someone says "I'm dying of hunger" - Most of us have never actually been that hungry, we just think we are).
It is a good idea to put away anything you are not using, as very rarely an event occurs that can remove your items (these are called Random Events or R/E's and i'll go into more detail about these later). Also some activies around the site run a small risk of your items being zapped or removed if they are in your inventory.
So, after you have read your book and played with your petpets you should go and open a bank account. We will do that next.
- Posted by opaltigerdragon on 10/08/2007.
