The Dark Side of Neopets: Pant Devil, Dr. Sloth, Boo Brothers, Esophagor & Tax Beast!
Sep 19 '04 (Updated Oct 13 '04)
The Bottom Line Malkus Vile, Lord Kass, Vira, Shadow Usul, Hubrid Nox, Spider Grundo and Lord Darigan are all waiting for you ...
Behind all the cute Neopets and adorable petpets there lurks a small team of meanies that are there for no other reason than to cause you grief. Whether they are plotting and planning to steal your food, eat your pets or swipe your neopoints, if you play at the site long enough you will ruin into one or all of them at some point in time. This is all part of how the creators of Neopets keep things balanced – without items vanishing off the site there would be no supply and demand. Of course the Pant Devil, Tax Beast and Boo Brothers are just a few of the ways things make their way off of the site … and until you stop to think about how much planning goes into pricing items and how many are released during restocks in the shops [as well as items given away during random events] – you don’t really see the mechanics of the site. On almost every event page, like The Snowager and Tombola, it says “Please do not create multiple accounts to use the wheel as it unbalances the game. You are limited to one account per person. Using multiple accounts simply to gain Neopoints is not allowed and will result in freezing.” That is there for a reason – people with multiple account do knock the game off center however I am afraid that it is something that over half the members are guilty of.
So, What Happens To All Those Items???
One of the most ingenious things about the Neopets site is the checks and balances system that’s set up. It’s something that most players never really stop to think about but without items disappearing off the site from time to time, eventually things would be worthless due to over saturation. Books, food and battle items sort of take care of themselves; most, when used once, will be removed from a player’s inventory but there are exceptions – like the omelets and jellies that can be fed to pets up to three times before they vanish. Some battle items are labeled as “one use only” and once you read a book to your pet, it vanishes in a puff of smoke. Once you have read a pet a book you can’t read it the same title so you can sell it or trade it, so don’t discard or donate it! When I started the site I learned my lessons the hard way – through trial and error. Mispriced items, buying things for the wrong reasons and not paying attention to retired items .. three of the biggest mistakes you can make at the site but sadly, something that pretty much everyone does when they first start.
So how else do items make their way off of the site? Well, the Pant Devil is one way and boy, does he really seem to love me. He first hit me when I was playing a joke on another Neopet player and purchased a Meowclops Mirror from her shop. She was so proud that she found it dirt cheap in a shop and I wanted to try to play a little prank on her by sending her the one I just purchased from her shop. Wanting to make the joke as funny as possible, I waited a few minutes to send it to her so I decided to spin the Wheel of Excitement. That’s when that blue monster struck and took the mirror! I was still a new player at the site and losing the item and being out 10,000 NP was a huge lesson to learn. He may never ever hit you – or he could show up several times in a week, it’s all luck … or in this case, bad luck. He also stole a Drackonack off me, that stung to the tune of 33,000 NP. Outside of the Pant Devil there are other little creatures that sneak up on you and steal items and The Bug Brothers are forever taking NP from me. While not directly involved with stealing items, The Tax Beast has hit me several times and made me extremely leery of carrying more than a few thousand NP on me at a time. Getting zapped 10% for not paying taxes really hurts!
Site glitches are never a good thing; it usually happens when Neopets is upgrading the site, adding new features, is experiencing technical difficulties or doing regular maintenance to the site. I know more than a few people that lost their shop or gallery during a glitch and while it never happened to me, I can only imagine what it’s like to see all that hard work go down the drain. In most cases items and NP that are “lost” during a glitch are returned but that isn’t always the case. You can check the Help board in the NeoBoard section if you see something wrong with your shop or are having trouble with a part of the site. Most of the time when people lose items, this is where they post to see if others are having the same trouble. The Trading Post also sees it’s fair share of problems – trades lost, not being able to cancel or create a trade and some very worrisome moments when transferring things from your inventory to your trades – lost a red codestone like that and wasn’t too happy about it. Whether or not you get your items back is a mystery – you can email them to ask them about it but with the volume of Neomail they get on a daily basis, you may be in for a long wait – and that is if you get any reply at all.
If you are up for a real challenge, you can accept a random faerie quest. These come from the Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Dark and Queen Faerie and ask you for things ranging from a white elephant cookie to higher priced items. The drawback here is that you can’t use the Shop Wizard to seek out items if you don’t have them in your inventory or Safety Deposit Box. You can turn down a request if you wish however they aren’t quick to forget and you will be “timed out” for a certain period of time before they will ask for your help again. The faeries will each reward you differently so before you accept a quest that asks for an expensive item, see what you get in return for your effort and NP. You can access the list of what they will reward your pet with here: www.neopets.com/quest_help.phtml. If you want an even bigger challenge, you can take on a daily quest from either Jhodora [located inside Faerieland] or Illusien [located inside Meridell]. Both of these start of by asking you for simple items but as the levels increase, so do the difficulty of obtaining the items. These are also quests that give out avatars – complete level twenty to be rewarded. You can only accept a quest per day from either of them so if you do Illusiens and then try to visit Jhodora, she will get a little snooty with you. There are fifty quests for each of these faeries – complete them and be rewarded but fail just one of them and you will have to start back at the beginning.
The Cooking Pot is always an interesting place to visit, you never know what combination is going to work or what the end result will be. Mix together up to five items inside the Cooking Pot to walk away with a unique item that’s listed in the database as “special”. One of my favorites is to combine a Fuzzie Bear and a 100% Fake Uni Mask to create a Uni Bear. The cost to make the Uni Bear is about the same as the mask and original bear but it’s pretty fun to mix the items together to get something new. Plus, if you come across the original items for next to nothing, you can sell off the Uni Bear and make a nice little profit. There are several sites that list items that can be created but who knows what little secret items are waiting for you to find. It might be a lot of work trying out different combinations but none of the items are removed from your inventory unless you make a successful combination.
So, still wondering how items are removed from the site? Well, Neopets also retires items so that means they are still able to be sold, traded or used but the price does go up on the one time only items like books, food and weapons. A few months after I started there was a book called NeoFashion – nothing too thrilling about it and the process really seemed to fluctuate on it. Then, without any warning, the price went through the roof, no longer was it selling for 900 – 1,000 NP but 10,000 – over night! I had no real idea about retired items until someone stopped and explained it to me, that’s when I started to stockpile things and led to me getting the Pack Rat Avatar about a week after that. Food, books and weapons are the three main things that people start to collect once something has been retired; since these are one time use things – once they are used, they are gone. The retired books creep up in price because of the Neopian Book Award that’s offered if you read your pet a certain number but if you are just starting at the site, it may take you a long time and a lot of NP to make it on the leader board. Right now my pet has read about 330 books and has an intelligence level of 580+, not bad but no where near the 1,000 I’ll need to get close to the leaders.
Inside the Haunted Woods there’s a big bad meanie called The Esophagor, he will help you with your Brain Tree Quests but most of the time the items he asks for are extremely expensive. This is one of the few ways to complete a Brain Tree Quest unless you have access to answers that others have posted at off site boards. Other quests that can be done include Edna’s Tower [Haunted Woods], Snow Faerie [Terror Mountain] and the ones already mentioned. If you want to check out the Neopet Quest Guide I created, you can do so here: So You Want To Get Rich At Neopets? Quests, Quests & More Quests!. Knowing the selling price of items and having a good stock in your SDB might help you complete the more intricate quests but make sure that it is going the truly benefit you in some way before you embark on them.
As far as food in concerned - there is the Gourmet Club, a nice little place where you get recognition for feeding your pet items that are listed or classified as ‘rare’. This means that most of them are going to cost you a ton of NP to obtain but if that’s something that you enjoy collecting and feeding to your pet then it’s all worth it to see your numbers rise. I started buying the Turkey Packed Lunches [an Advent Calendar prize] shortly after I started the site; most of them were between 150 – 200 NP so when ever I searched the Shop Wizard I’d buy all that I could and toss them in my SDB. Now the prices are up to 800 – 900 NP, no where near the price of the other Packed Lunches but they’ll get there eventually. The nice thing about the packed lunch varieties is that when you feed them to your pet you get a few items back; usually a drink, partially eaten sandwich and some type of fruit.
If you are feeling in a generous mood you can hop on over to the Money Tree and make a donation. All the items that are donated are up for grabs within nanoseconds of you placing them on the tree – that is unless the ghosts don’t get to them first. This is one of the ways that people say you can increase your karma at the site but personally, I don’t really buy into that. One person was on the NeoBoards saying that you should never take from the Money Tree, only donate. I do donate to it on a daily basis – just odds and ends that I can’t be bothered stocking in my shop – or I get really generous and scout for cheap items like sailboats, berries and sand to donate. There’s something so cool about gathering up 50 items [the maximum you are allowed to have in your inventory at any one time] and then donating them all at once and rushing to the Money Tree to see you name fifty times. Of course this is a gateway to have people start begging – if they see your name show up all the time then they will Neomail you and ask for unwanted items. You can also stroll over to The Wishing Well and make a NP donation and make a wish for an item. I’ve yet to have a wish granted so I have no idea if you get a Neomail or the item just shows up in your inventory.
Here are some of the messages that I’ve received as random events …
The incessant mewing of a Mutant Kadoatie drives you completely mad, and you give its owner 5,000 Neopoints to take it away!
Dr. Sloth has his "associates" take 20% of your Neopoints away to support his next Neopian invasion effort.
SLOTH FIRES HIS RAY GUN AT YOU!!! Your Poisonous Jelly is turned into a mound of sludge!
A Ghost takes 101 Neopoints from you and puts it on the money tree!
Not been paying your bills eh? The Tax Beast arrives and takes 10% of your Neopoints away!
The Grundo Leader attacks!!! He steals 'Sausage Omelette'
The Bug Brothers jump up and steal 31 Neopoints
The Bottom Line
There are so many different ways for items to vanish from the site that when you start to add them up, your head will start to spin. Sometimes it is something that you mean to do like reading to your pet or donating items and other times it could be one of the meanies fleecing you while you aren’t paying attention. Of course there are times when you are given food or you come across some NP on the floor – or even better yet – codestones! When I first started playing at the site I never stopped to consider all the different levels that are in play at the same time – your pets are constantly changing, you are making and losing NP all the time, there are tons of daily freebies to take advantage of and on top of all that – there’s the Battledome, on site contests, special events, TCG items and more. And through all these events and actions – those meanies are hiding in the shadows, just waiting for you to have a ton of NP on you to steal or some rare item unprotected in your inventory – that’s when they’ll strike and even though it’s only a game – when you lose something that’s worth thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of points – you really do want to get some revenge on them!
As always, thanks for the read!
~^V^~ Freak ~^V^~
© 2004 Freak369
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The Dark Side of Neopets: Pant Devil, Dr. Sloth, Boo Brothers, Esophagor & Tax Beast
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