Has the secret lab been changed or something?

[Ryshu]

I haven't played in a couple years so I don't know if there's some reason behind this or w/e, but in the last couple weeks, my pet has lost like 9 strength, 7 defence, 6 HP, 3 levels, changed gender twice, and turned into a damn frog (fugliest pet there is, I hate this thing with a passion) and changed to Christmas colors.

This is getting ridiculous, pretty soon I won't have a pet worth battling anymore -.-

Almost as bad as when I went to the lab one day and it randomly said that I hadn't collected it yet, and then a neopets employee told me that it's only a one-time use Had to go buy another for their screw-up

[theonlysaneone]

You lost HP at the Lab Ray? That's never happened to anyone before, so if you can provide a screenie, we'll know something definitely HAS changed.

[Ryshu]

Sorry, I meant movement. My health hasn't changed at all.
Speaking of which, does movement actually affect battles yet?

[KMB1933]

Speaking of which, does movement actually affect battles yet?

As far as I am aware of, the answer is no.

[shapu]

Agility does affect the ability of some very rare, high-priced items. However, for 99.999 percent of the users/bd items, agility does bupkus.

[metalmario]

A few weeks ago I was only (I think) 2 away from the 250 strength boost and 3 from 35 defense boost (yay lab!) and now I'm 12 away and 7 away. Oh yeah, and it's always been pretty brutal on my level. I don't think I've seen such massive losses of strength in quite a while. Maybe it's just because I've finally been paying more attention, but it does seem weird. Strength, HP, and movement generally go up over time. Defense and level stay kind of the same. *shrug*

[chi_chi1548286]

In the past week, my pet has gone from level 27/28, down to level 17 because of the lab ray, it keeps taking away 2 levels everyday.

[TDG]

Its just bad luck really. It'll even itself out eventually and overtime your strength, defense, movement and HP will increase.

Level will generally decrease over time. Its just the odds specified for the lab.

As for losing it in the past, there used to be a feature of the lab where randomly (very low chance) the 'flag' on your account that specified you had Lab Ray Access would be removed and a new flag would be set on your account that gave you the special battledome abilities Improved Defend and two others (EG: Scorch). This was changed a few years ago, but older accounts may have had it happen to them (happened to me as well). Most of the neopets staff weren't aware of the specifics of the function, which is why there were often confusing replies to bug reports - but it was definitely a programmed feature (One of the programmers - I believe snarkie, but could easily be wrong - confirmed this). Eventually I think TNT got sick of the bug reports, so just removed the feature.

[Siouxper]

As for losing it in the past, there used to be a feature of the lab where randomly (very low chance) the 'flag' on your account that specified you had Lab Ray Access would be removed and a new flag would be set on your account that gave you the special battledome abilities Improved Defend and two others (EG: Scorch). This was changed a few years ago, but older accounts may have had it happen to them (happened to me as well). Most of the neopets staff weren't aware of the specifics of the function, which is why there were often confusing replies to bug reports - but it was definitely a programmed feature (One of the programmers - I believe snarkie, but could easily be wrong - confirmed this). Eventually I think TNT got sick of the bug reports, so just removed the feature.

I would gladly lose my lab access for those special abilities, mainly because I have stopped labbing and it would be worth the 425k in my mind.

Luckily for me, when I was labbing, me Defence rarely decresed and actually increased over time (for a lot of people I know, this is not the case). In most cases, the lab increases your Str and HP disproportionately to your Def causing many lab rats to have extremely low defence compared to their strength, which makes training Defence or other stats a real pain later on. But your Strength will eventually start to increase.

[Ryshu]

... and he changes into a Yellow Hissi!!

Better than that stupid frog...


Anyway, something I just thought about is that during those two weeks of zapping, my pet didn't have a happy mood. Then I played with the idiot for a bit and now I'm getting good ones again o.O

Dunno if it's just a coincidence or not, but it's pretty consistent so far, that when my mood is happy I seem to get good things much more often. Just a stab in the dark, let me know what the rest of you get out of it.

As for losing it in the past, there used to be a feature of the lab where randomly (very low chance) the 'flag' on your account that specified you had Lab Ray Access would be removed and a new flag would be set on your account that gave you the special battledome abilities Improved Defend and two others (EG: Scorch). This was changed a few years ago, but older accounts may have had it happen to them (happened to me as well). Most of the neopets staff weren't aware of the specifics of the function, which is why there were often confusing replies to bug reports - but it was definitely a programmed feature (One of the programmers - I believe snarkie, but could easily be wrong - confirmed this). Eventually I think TNT got sick of the bug reports, so just removed the feature.

I don't have Improve Defend, all the abilities my pet has were from using bottled faeries that I found through random events and are all level 1.

[May]

... and he changes into a Yellow Hissi!!

Better than that stupid frog...

Just as a quick note, if you're interested in tracking/posting your daily happenings to the Secret Lab, please visit this thread