The prices seem to be steady around 400K right now, so I don't know how much more you could get. And if you decide to use it, it's just luck -- you could get an item worth 4K, one worth 40K, or one worth a million plus.
And great, now I have someone accusing me of cheating. His neomail:
Quote:
Hi, I was just taking a look at your volcano run world challenge records and it just struck me that you were able to send two scores over 4000 within 3 minutes of each other. Maybe it's just me and my past experience, but how in the world could you do that?
I replied:
Quote:
Easy -- I didn't actually send the scores at that time. Sometimes not many people are playing the game (especially at the beginning of an hour), and it takes a while for someone new to come along and enter the challenge. Sometimes I'll have two or three scores pending at the top of the screen, because there's no one for me to compete with. If two or three people come along and submit their scores within a couple minutes, all of my scores will be matched up with theirs, and it'll look like I submitted them all at that time.
I thought that was pretty straightforward, but he said:
Quote:
Isn't that almost like cheating though?
I wrote back:
Quote:
No, not at all. I'm playing the game and sending all those scores within the alotted hour. It's Neopets' own system that scores are "pending" until someone comes along to match them against. For example, take the game Whack-A-Kass. It's a pretty short game, so you could play maybe... let's say 10 high-scoring games in 10 minutes. Let's say I did that between 1:00 and 1:10 am NST. Neopets isn't very busy at that time, so maybe only one other person enters the world challenge for that game in those 10 minutes, and only plays 2 games. 2 of my scores will be matched against him, and 8 will still be pending. If 8 people showed up within the next 2 minutes and all sent scores, all 8 of my pending scores would be matched up against theirs, and it would LOOK like I had submitted them all within 2 minutes, when really I'd played only one game per minute earlier. Do you understand?
Apparently he doesn't, because he wrote again:
Quote:
So you don't consider that taking advantage of the system?
And me:
Quote:
No. There's no way it could be considered taking advantage of the system. I pay my 100NP to join the challenge at the beginning of the hour. I play a game and send the score. I play another game and send that score. I just keep doing that. Sometimes a bunch of other people will be playing at the same time as me, and my scores will be matched up with theirs almost immediately after we send them. Sometimes hardly anyone will be playing, so some of my scores will be pending (if you don't know what that means, it means that they appear in light purple at the top of the world challenge page for that game with "pending scores" in front of them*), and they will be matched up with other people's scores whenever they send them. If you check the world challenge records for anyone who regularly plays Volcano Run, you'll see the same thing you saw in mine -- sometimes it will look like they sent two good scores within three minutes, when really the scores just took that long to be processed. I'm getting tired of being accused of cheating, so I suggest you try to get hold of a programmer and get him or her to explain how this works, or at least go look at other people's records before you jump at me.
(*I realized later that it actually says "Your scores that are not processed and not going towards your rating yet:," but same thing, really.)
I hope that's the end of it. I swear, if I get reported and unfairly frozen when I'm not doing anything that could EVER be considered cheating...
(Also, I now have a full set of Tyrannia that I'd like to trade for a full set of anything BUT Faerieland or Meridell. If anyone's interested in trading, PM me!

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