Neopet

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This article is about the Neopet species. For other uses of "Neopet" or "Neopets", see Neopets (disambiguation).

A Neopet (from Ancient Greek νέος meaning "new", and "pet") is any one of 54 sentient, sapient species of a virtual animals yet discovered to inhabit the world of Neopia.

Players on the Neopets website can adopt, raise, and play with these creatures. While different types of Neopets are classified into different species, the Neopet community is not divided amongst species boundaries. They are capable of home building, operating a market economy with currency, building and utilising tools and technologies of a range of complexity, and complex social interaction. Neopets enjoy art, sports and physical competition, and play.

Biology

Neopets are categorised into 54 different species. While the word species usually defines a group whose members can breed with each other to produce new offspring, different species of Neopets have been shown to have families with each other. Neopet species often varies wildly within a biological family (as Neovian Genealogy notes, "Skeith plus Zafara equals... Ixi?"). Any given Neopet may change into a different species through exposure to certain potions, magical plushies, or the Lab Ray while retaining the same essential identity.

The form of any given Neopet can change due to what colour it is painted. These changes can be as small as re-colouring a red Neopet blue to drastically changing a Neopet's biology - they may gain wings, become aquatic, or even forgo organic bodies entirely. Except for the Grundo, who can also begin as purple or orange, all Neopets begin coloured red, blue, yellow, or green.

The primary means of altering a Neopet's colour is at the Rainbow Pool in Neopia Central with a paint brush or through the Lab Ray.

Most new Neopets come into existence when a player creates them using the Create-a-Pet feature. However, some species have been shown to hatch from eggs - the Draik - or metamorphose from a different creature - a Krawk petpet into a Krawk Neopet.

Neopets are vulnerable to a variety of diseases and some species are allergic to certain foods (for example, Kyriis get Itchy Scratchies from anything with apple in it). Other species, by contrast, can eat non-food items, and may even do so spontaneously.

Origins

It is unclear exactly how Neopets evolved. While the Tyrannian paint colour shows what seems to be less-evolved versions of Neopets (reminiscent of variously caveman, sabre-tooth cats, etc) the Neopedia article on Dr. Frank Sloth suggests that Neopets began to come into existence from flashes of light. The presence of faeries and faerie magic may explain the existence of Neopets, or they could have been brought to Neopia from other worlds by technologically superior powers. At least one species of Neopet, the Grundo, was brought to Neopia this way.

Mood

A Neopets mood, being happy or sad, is changed by user actions around the website. There are ten levels of happiness, from least to most happy:

  • Depressed
  • Very unhappy
  • Miserable
  • Unhappy
  • Content
  • Happy
  • Cheerful
  • Extremely happy
  • Joyful
  • Delighted!

There are numerous ways to change a Neopets happiness, such as playing with a toy, grooming them, riding the Roo Island Merry Go Round or eating a Happy Negg. To see the Neopets current happiness level, a user can go to the Quick Reference page. If a Neopet happens to be sick when this is done, however, its happiness will be lowered.

The only known effect of happiness occurs from a rare random event when a user's Neopet is unhappy. Should the Neopet be unhappy when it occurs, its colour turns to blue if really sad, or red if angry, and green if really sick.

While a Neopet's happiness doesn't effect gameplay and doesn't need to be changed, it's generally considered mean not to keep a Neopet happy.

Hunger

Just like real life creatures, Neopets become hungry over time, and must be fed to become full again. Neopets can be any of the following levels of fullness:

  • Dying
  • Starving
  • Famished
  • Very hungry
  • Hungry
  • Not hungry
  • Fine
  • Satiated
  • Full up
  • Very full
  • Bloated
  • Very bloated

Neopets can be fed with any food item, of which will lower its hunger (though it can sometimes be in the same state of hunger even when fed, which is random). Food is acquired with the Neopoints users gather. Should a user not have enough Neopoints to buy food for their Neopet, they can go to the soup kitchen which will feed a users Neopets if they have under 3000 NP (including their bank account). They can also gather food by going to Dailies, visit the Healing Springs which will sometimes make a users active Neopet bloated, or complete an Earth Faerie Faerie Quest which will make a random Neopet bloated. Also, Jetsam can eat Aquatic Petpets and Grarrls and Skeiths can eat any non-food items, allowing a user to save Neopoints and other food items while feeding them items they don't want.

Unlike a Neopet's mood, hunger has a direct affect on how Neopets is played, because Neopets who are hungry (or not hungry, if it shows up red) cannot fight in the battledome. However, despite the name of the most desperate hunger level, dying, a Neopet cannot actually die of hunger.

Losing a Neopet

The only way a user could lose their Neopet is if the owner abandons the pet themselves at the Neopian Pound or if the Neopets Team deletes the Neopet if its name contains profanity or is otherwise against the rules.

Neopet lookup

Besides the species and colour of the Neopet, there are many other characteristics which can show the difference between each of them. Among all the statistics a Neopet can have, there are also those which can be raised in the Training School for use in the Battledome. Outside of the Battledome, these stats don't have much use, but as of late The Neopets Team have implemented a few of them into puzzle plots.

Statistics

Age - Told in days and hours.

Level - Shows the level of the Neopet.

Owner - Displays the username of the Neopets owner along with the name associated with the username.

Gender - Shows the gender of the Neopet.

Height - Shows the height of the neopet in centimeters (cm).

Weight - Shows the weight of the Neopet in pounds (lbs.).

Hit Points - Shows the hit point value of the Neopet.

Strength - Shows the strength.

Defence - Shows the defence.

Movement - Shows the movement, or speed of the Neopet.

Intelligence - Shows the intelligence.

Fishing Skill - Shows the fishing skill of the Neopet, used and raised in Underwater Fishing.

Employment Agency - Shows the number of jobs completed, failed and the rank of the Neopet in the game Employment Agency.

Battledome - Shows the total number of fights the pet has been in and also how many of those were won, lost, and drawn.

Personality

Located below the owner's name are two sentences describing the general nature of the Neopet: what they like to do most (e.g. gathering food, making friends) and how they typically react when meeting others (e.g. smile sweetly, run away). These attributes are selected during the pet creation process and do not have any real effect on the pet.

When the site was revamped in April 27, 2007, pets that were created before this date all had their personalities set to gathering food and acting friendly while those that were created after show what their creator chose instead. TNT did acknowledge this glitch but have not fixed it yet.

Pet Spotlight

First started on August 29, 2000, the Pet Spotlight is one of the many competitions run on the Neopets website. Users submit a short story or description (limited to 500 - 2500 words) of their Neopet of choice accompanied by a self-created drawing of the pet. Trophies for the spotlight began to be handed out on October 17, 2000 and are displayed on the pet's lookup.

Site Spotlight

The Site Spotlight is a regular competition on the Neopets website where players can submit petpages that they created on a variety of topics and receive a trophy in return if their submission is selected. Site content may range anywhere from profiles of their pet to guides for various Neopian-related topics such as Faeries, games, or morphing potions.

The Site Spotlight started on August 29, 2000 and trophies began to be handed out two months later on October 17, 2000. Due to a decline in popularity, the last Site Spotlight will be selected on August 11, 2010.

Trivia

  • A user's Neopet would send its user an e-mail wishing them a happy birthday when the time came after January 27, 2000.
  • Level 181 is the minimum level a Neopet must have to receive the rank "Too High to Count".
  • Users could rate the look of another user's Neopet via a five star rating from their Neopets Lookup as of September 12, 2007.
  • Users were given the option to send photos of their Neopet to another user on September 21, 2007.
  • Since site update from Neopets 2.0 and Neopet Customisation, Neopets were unable to show emotions and other battledome poses as they were used to. This changed with an update on December 21, 2007, and a Neopet's facial expressions could show when they are happy, sad, angry, or sick.
  • The most popular Neopet is the Shoyru.

See also

External links

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