My guide is the be-all-end-all of all plushie tycoon guides. If you have trouble not going bankrupt, then i suggest you read this guide
PLUSHIE TYCOON GUIDE
I.Disclaimer
II.Introduction
III. Profitmaking
III-a Materials
III-b Workers
III-c Warehouse and Shop
III-d Avoiding Tycoon Bugs and Things to watch out for
IV. FAQ
V. First Day Guide and Price List
I. Disclaimer:
This guide was written for the player that has read the basic Plushie Tycoon guides before, and wants to know how to finally PULL A PROFIT.
This guide assumes you already have the basic knowledge of how to start jobs, how to use accessories, and how to load plushies and sell them and buy materials. If not, I suggest you read the basic Neopets guide. I'm not repeating it all here because this guide is long enough already. Here it is:
http://neopets.com/games/tycoon/tycoon_help.phtml
This Guide was written and updated in the April game of Plushie Tycoon. When May rolls aorund, some of this info may become invalidated. plushie tycoon, neopets, and everything in the world is copywrited by neopets or else theyll sue your pants off (c)2004
THE NEOPOINTS AND PLUSHIES YOU MAKE IN THIS GAME ARE NOT REAL! This game is just a 'simulation' of a neopets plushie factory. The only NP you get out of the game is at the month if you make a profit. I know, its kind of ironic.
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II Introduction
Plushie Tycoon, as you all know, is the annoying unwinnable game under the puzzles section with the red star next to it. Here's how to win it: Earn more than 50,000NPs by the end of the month. Simple, you start out with 50k already. Just make at least 1NP profit right??!! Not really.
Pulling a profit requires you to balance the cost of your plushies, workers, and Shop. Spend too much in one area and it's game over. Spend too little, and you will waste time and NP.(as time = NP). First of all, recognize that the goal of the game is to make NP.
Recognize that using Green cloth is superior to Red cloth, and also know that the rest of the plushie materials are NeoCotton, Rare Gems, and Velvet packaging. Thats the specifications every plushie mentioned in this guide will have. Nevermind that it will make your store look a garish green color, they will sell anyways because Neopians are all colorblind(well at least the ones that will buy from your store=P).
The next 6 sections will deal with the different aspects of the game;
If you wish to start right away skip to the seventh section for your First Day guide. It will give you step-by-step instructions managing your first batch of plushies and give you a good idea of how the game works.
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III. Profitmaking:
Obviously, this is a good thing that you want to do. When you sell a load of plushies, each plushie is already pre set at a particular price. You will obviously want to sell expensive plushies. The prices are listed below. Multiply it by 100 and that is how much money you get when they sell out. Remember you get NO money until you sell the whole load completely. Plushies with accessories are the only ones worth making. They cost more to make, but they more than make up for it in profit.
Out of every Neopet species, the species that pull the most profit are:
Zafara- 139NP
Kougra- 137NP
Draik- 121NP
Buzz- 121NP
Koi- 117NP
Kau- 117NP
Moehog- 115NP
Tuskaninny- 113NP
The prices set in the game are based on complexity and the amount and quality of materials required or used. You cant change these prices.
(green cloth plushies are a little cheaper than red cloth, but as Red costs a lot more, you overall earn more profit with Green cloth.)
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III-a. Profitmaking- Materials:
Materials fluctuate during 9AM to 5PM NST. The fluctuations are apparently random(but seem to go very low when I have no cash on hand), or at least as random as the fluctuations in the Stock Market. (Think of stuffing like AAVL, and Accessories like JCK, fluctuations, but within a certain range. Stupid JCK.
) When they are high you should consider stopping production for an hour, but when they are low you should consider buying extra for next time if you have the excess cash on hand. If you are just beginning, though, the extra cash should not be spent on unused materials.
Green Cloth-(remember to multiply this total cost by two, three or four depending on the plushie you are making)
Price Range: 90-350
Buy extra: 140 or lower
NeoCotton -
Price Rage: 150-420
Buy extra: 180 or lower
Rare Gems -
Price Rage: 700- 3200
Buy extra: 1300 or lower
Velvet Bags -
Price Rage: 490- 1300
Buy extra: 600 or lower
Buying Materials at the highest price to make your plushies can still be profitable, but remember the 1k you save when you buy your materials is 1 more k for your pocket.
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III-b. Profitmaking-Workers
How do the workers work, anyway? The answer would be, very quickly
. If you hire them soon before the :01 they will complete the work at that time as if they had the whole hour to do it. Its a useful trick.
While looking at the PT discussions on the neopets boards, the people playing seem to come to an agreement: that a worker/manager ratio of 10/1 is necessary and that Trainees are the most efficient workers. So for example to complete a load you would have to hire 700 trainees, you'd also have to hire 70 Managers.
The plushies that you will want to make are Kougra Plushies, and at their complexity, 125 Trainees will finish one load of them. This may be different for other plushes with different specifications.
You should set apart 1/5th of your money that you get from a sale of plushies to pay for workers.
An important thing to remember with factories is that unlike your shop, you can't expand them without adding jobs that pass the limit beforehand. Every factory expansion adds to your monthly rent up to a maximum of 8820NP a week. Also, every factory expansion adds two more jobs you can do at a time. If you have added more jobs and you are prompted to decide whether to expand or not, make sure that you have enough NP on hand, because if you don't you will lose immediately because you have to pay upfront for exapnsion, unlike the shop and the warehouse.
IF you find yourself at the maximum of 18 jobs at a time, a trick you can do is buy materials for 200 plushies at a time and run those 200 at once on the start job page. Just remember if you decide to make 200+ plushies as one unit, in your shop, you have to wait for all 200 to sell before you get your money.
Remember that upgrading your factory, unlike the Warehouse and Shop, require that you pay upfront. Make sure you have the money first or you'll lose immediately!
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III-c. Profitmaking- Warehouse and Shop
Warehouse: This part should not ever slow you down at all. When you get it you should immediately upgrade it to level 9. That way, the plushes load in less than an hour and according to PT time, your plushies have spent no time in the warehouse. If you didn't, the warehouse would be wasting 4.5 precious hours of your time. In level 9, it only takes .5 hours. Enough said.
Shop:
When you start out you should get advertising and upgrades. They help your plushies sell out faster. For upgrades, I buy all the Tiki themed ones
. For advertising, maxing out the cheapest three, and half of the fourth allows plushies to sell out relatively quickly, approximately 3 hours. When you receive your money from sold plushies, you might want to max out the fourth one to sell out the next faster. Remember Time = NP! Especially if you want to get a trophy, you must remember you are in a race with other players to earn NP. The neopian times ads are the most expensive and the most customer-attracting.
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III-d. Profitmaking- Avoiding Tycoon Bugs
Job Eating Bug: PT has some bug that causes your plushie materials to disappear when you press the start job button. I've found out that if you wait a couple of seconds after your page fully loads(to make sure the page is completely loaded, turn on the status bar in your browser and when the loading bar disappears, the page is loaded), this bug will not happen. I think that this is in place to prevent autoplay PT programs from cheating at the game, but I am not sure.
Popup Window Bug: Another bug that affects my computer is when I do anything in PT that involves popup windows, when the window closes, the leftmost browser window(if multiple browser windows are open) refreshes instead of the current one. Mostly harmless bug but just make sure you aren't doing anything important on the internet while your playing PT or you might lose your window.
Can't buy stuff bug: Sometimes you can't do buy materials/hire/fire workers or anything having to do with a popup window. Hopefully, you arent trying to do this near the very end of the hour. Wait five minutes and try it again. this bug usually happens when neopets is at its busier times, or maybe when the servers feel like it. If you keep some cash on hand, you might be able to pay off the workers you can't fire instead of going bankrupt.
Cheating Workers: One awful bug that caused me to lose my game was the overcharging of workers. Maybe the Worker's Union demands it, but sometimes the workers charge double or triple labor for one hour's worth of work. There is no way to avoid getting this bug except to not hire workers(and thats not how you play PT), but you can minimize your losses by spreading out the work over several hours, not hiring excess workers, and keeping a buffer of cash on hand just in case they do charge extra. If you are one of those players who spends all their money every hour, you will want to always have plushies in your shop as a safety precaution. Why is explained in the next paragraph. This bug happens mostly when neopets is at its busiest and may happen even more as the war progresses.
Negative Money: If you log into your plushie tycoon page and see your NP on hand is negative, don't panic just yet but don't go past the front page of the game or else you will lose your game. If you have plushies in your shop that you are confident will pay off the debt(and any further debt hired workers will add), come back when the plushies are sold and play normally. If you don't have any or enough plushies in your shop, though, you should probably panic.
Lost AdvertisementsOnce I had my Upgrades and Advertisements deleted and had to start over again. There is no way to avoid this but carrying at least 7K on hand will be able to buy you most of the upgrades and adverts to sell your plushies. If you can't pay for it, you will have to restart your game because without advertisments your plushies will NOT sell.
Money Cap This was only seen in the most recent month(April) of plushie tycoon. Any money returned from jobs that surpass 100 million are thrown away. The only way to get around this bug is to buy materials and spend on labor so that the monetary return from the plushie job is as close to 100 million as you can get but not over. This may require spending on materials and labor that you won't get a return on just to make that sale bump you up close to 100 mil. However unless you are rosebud2554 (99,999,998 NP), violetsfriend3 (99,999,834 NP), or roweslab (99,999,729 NP), you shouldn't have to worry about this bug:). It will probably be fixed by next month in some way.
Can't get your money Sometimes when you have sold out a whole lot in your shop, itll still be listed in your shop as 100/100(or 500/500, w/e) sold. You won't get your money from your till and the only thing you can do about it is wait. It doesn't negatively affect you except that in the delay it can shave a few hours off your total playing time. There is no way to avoid this bug and putting more lots in your shop won't help or hurt.
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IV. FAQ
How many NP profit should I expect per lot?
Look below for a more detailed explanation of profit per plushie. But to cut it short, if you make only Kougra plushies(which you should) you will average out to an approximate 200% return or in other words doubling your money every time you make and sell out a job. Other species sport a smaller profit margin than the Kougra.
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Detailed Explanation:
Well consider the cost of materials. The cost of the cloth is between 100-300. Multiply it by the number of cloths your lot requires. Then add the prices of one of each of the rest of the materials.
A lot of Zafara Plushies
Material / PriceMin / PriceMax /
4 Cloth / 400 / 1200
NeoCotton / 100 / 200
RareGems / 900 / 3100
Velvet / 540 / 2000
plus labor costs which is about 1000
plus Warehouse costs, which is 278
So the minimum manufacturing cost is 3218
the maximum is 7778
The amount you get from selling Zafara Plushies is 13,900NP.
SO, depending on materials prices, the amount of profit you gain is between 10682 and 6122.
Take, for another example, Gelert Plushies. They require the least material and are of the least complexity. Good deal, huh?
not really...
Material / PriceMin / PriceMax /
2Cloth / 200 / 800
NeoCotton / 100 / 200
Velvet / 540 / 2000
plus labor costs which is about 500
plus Warehouse costs, which is 278
The amount you get from selling Gelert Plushies is 2,400(they are sold at 24 NP each)
The minimum manufacturing cost is 1618
The maximum is 3778.
See, the amount you receive from the selling is very low from non accessory plushies, sometimes you lose money from them if you do not get the very lowest prices on materials. The gelert is a good example of this type of plushie, there are more and less profitable varities of these but they are all inferior to any accessories plushies. The lesson here: ALWAYS buy Accessories.
End of Detailed Explanation!
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Why is my factory/shop not working?
The game updates every hour between 9AM and 5 PM NST. If you have customized your time zone it will update during that range in your timezone. Some timezones have bugs I hear.
During that space of time(9AM to 5PM) your workers will work, and your shop will sell plushies. Price fluctuations are based on 9-to-5 neopian time. This month, apparently, the 24 hour wait period has been removed.
How can I save time with workers?
When it is near the end of the hour(within 9AM to 5PM of your selected timezone), hire bunches of each worker and then fire them all at the end of the hour(actually one minute after the end of the hour when the factory is updated). The workers don’t need to have been there the whole hour, only at the end of the hour. That way you can get a lot done without a lot of waiting.
How else can I save money?
fire all your workers when theyre not working on plushies. Wastes your money to have idle workers. dont buy too much advertising in the beginning, but don't be afraid to expand your shop or factory when necessary when you have more plushies coming through.
Why should I have extra money on hand? Wouldnt it be more profitable to invest it in plushies?
To have some cash on hand when you spot some cheap materials. Lets just say that if you spot rare gems at 900, you really really dont want to be caught with 500NP on hand.
The amount you should leave should vary with the networth of your game. ten percent is what I try to use but these are just guidelines and I may be wrong so use your own common sense.
What worker/manager ratios should I use?
10/1 is acceptible at this time.
How do I win?
Heres what it says on the neopet's site:
To be a Plushie Tycoon you must have at least 50,000 NPs in your Tycoon account at the end of the game.
All Tycoons win a Trophy plus, the Plushie Tycoon avatar.
NPs are awarded based on your Tycoon acccount, as follows:
Over 1,000,000 NPs wins 100,000 NPs.
Over 250,000 NPs wins 50,000 NPs.
Over 50,000 NPs wins 25,000 NPs.
Oh no I've gone bankrupt!
No worries, there is always a button you can press on the main page that allows you to start over. no need to wait a whole month to restart. If you want to quit and start over, the button at the botton of the main page allows you to do that too.
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V. First Day Guide and Price List
Okay. So I've read all this and now I've started my game. What do i do now???!!!
Your first day will be the hardest, but everybody starts out on the same level here so here is specifically what you should do on your very first day in PT:
1. Pay your rent in your factory, Warehouse, and shop
2. expand your warehouse to level 9. VERY IMPORTANT!!
3. go to the purchase materials page. According to the price lists above, figure out wether the prices on goods are low or high. If they are high, you might want to wait until the next hour, but even if they are somewhat high you should still be able to survive, albeit less wealthy in the end.
4. Buy Accessories for three Kougras(3 Rare Gems)
5. Buy NeoCotton Stuffing(3)
6. Buy 12 Green Cloths.
7. Buy 3 Velvet Bags.
Now you have the materials avaliable to produce two loads of plushies.
8. Go to your factory and Start New Job. Select Kougra then select each of the radio buttons. Then in the next screen press start job. Repeat for the 2 other Kougra plushies.
---If the game ate any of your plushie jobs, or anything else that you paid for dissapeared, you might want to start over at this point. If you aren't short on time you will be better off that way.
9. Go to Hire Workers and hire 550 Trainees and 55 Managers. Nobody else should be hired.
Now your factory and Warehouse are set, look at your store...
10. For Upgrades, buy all the tiki themes ones, and dont spend too much.
11. For Advertisements, buy the whole of the lowest four levels, and 2 of the fifth level(lowest levels are cheapest, not lowest on page)
12. You should have about 25K left.
On my first day I found it was possible to make 3 jobs total so you shouldn't have a problem. If the jobs dont finish completely, you should hire 10 to 20 trainees and 1-2 managers to fnish up at the end of the next hour(if you have the money). Productivity is variable and you may not get the same amount of work done with the same number of employees. However 550 trainees usually finishes the Kougra so you won't have to worry.
13. Wait for the hour to pass. The workers will have completed all or almost all the plushies. They will be in your warehouse. Congratulations.
14. fire everybody you can. Tell them "it was because of the economy". You can't fire your one remaining manager, so remember that every hour you spend at least 54 NPs.
15. Go play with your dog.
16. come back in 55 minutes and click the load buttons on your warehouse page.
17. Wait for the hour to pass
18. view your shop with pleasure knowing you sold some plushies already! Divide 100 by the number of plushies you sold average and that is how many hours, rounded up, that you need to wait before you have sold everything. My first batch took 4 hours and I used the method above.
19. Use the money you get to but some In Store Promotion Adverts(probably just one or two) and spend 4/5ths in materials and keep 1/5 for labor costs.
20. Repeat steps 3-19 for 29 days, adjusting to taste and circumstance, then wait for neo to give you your trophy, money and your avatar!
Here is a general guide to the materials requirements for Plushies:(The prices are only on the highest priced plushies, using the green cloth, NeoCotton, Rare Gems, VelvetBags).
The starred Kougra and Zafara are both the most profitable plushies, and while the Kougra gets less profit, they are cheaper to make and can cost less in the end.
Everything that doesn't have a price in it is unpriced for a reason: you won't make much profit from them if any, so dont make any or else you will dissapoint me
Species #Cloth Complexity Trinkets Price
Acara 300 5 No
Aisha 100 6 Yes
Blumaroo 200 2 No
Bruce 300 4 Yes
Buzz 300 9 Yes 121NP
Chia 300 3 Yes
Chomby 200 3 Yes
Cybunny 300 5 Yes
Draik 300 9 Yes 121NP
Elephante 300 7 Yes
Eyrie 200 7 Yes
Flotsam 200 4 No
Gelert 200 5 No
Grarrl 300 5 Yes 113NP
Grundo 100 3 No
Ixi 200 4 Yes
Jetsam 300 5 No
JubJub 200 5 No
Kacheek 300 2 No
Kau 300 7 Yes 117NP
Kiko 300 5 Yes 113NP
Koi 300 7 Yes 117NP
Korbat 400 7 No
Kougra 400 5 Yes 137NP *Most Profitable
Krawk 200 7 Yes
Kyrii 200 4 Yes
Lenny 300 5 No
Lupe 200 5 No
Meerca 300 4 No
Moehog 300 6 Yes 115NP
Mynci 200 6 No
Nimmo 200 3 No
Peophin 200 5 Yes
Poogle 300 3 No
Pteri 200 6 Yes
Quiggle 300 3 No
Scorchio 300 6 No
Shoyru 100 4 Yes
Skeith 200 6 Yes
Techo 300 4 No
Tuskaninny 300 5 Yes 113NP
Uni 200 7 No
Usul 200 5 Yes
Wocky 200 3 Yes
Zafara 400 6 Yes 139NP *Most Profitable
Big thanks goes to
http://petpages.neopets.com/~2forWolverine and m_evard and Reinier
And big thanks to neopets for making this game, and generously contributing to the bugs section
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I was doing great at Plushie Tycoon during May, then the game restarted mid-month!!! 
