Random Event

Random Events are unexpected occurrences while playing Neopets, they come in three (or four) varieties.

Types

Something Has Happened!

The most common random events are a small graphic that has these three words at the top. These events can be beneficial (such as finding neopoints or an item), neutral (such as having a draik fly overhead on the way to Krawk Island), or detrimental (ghosts stealing neopoints from you and putting them on the Money Tree Sometimes if you're lucky enough Jacko the phamtom painter can give you a paint brush, but the chaces aren't that big.

Unlocking an avatar is a "something has happened" event, although these are not always random, since the means for obtaining avatars are widely known.

Local Events

A subset of the "something has happened" events are local events, which only occur in a specific world. They include "Winter Random Events" (Terror Mountain) and "Tyrannian Random Events" (Tyrannia). Like other events, they can be positive, negative, or neutral.

Battledome Challenger

One-player battledome challengers are unlocked randomly (although certain opponents can only be unlocked in specific ways).

Faerie Quests

Faeries give quests to players in a completely random fashion. The quests themselves are alike in that they require the player to purchase an item (which vanishes at the completion of the quest) without the use of the shop wizard. The exact types of items, as well as the rewards, depend on the faerie.

Maximizing

Random events are mostly beneficial and sought after. Players are always comparing the number and quality of their events. Their very nature makes them impossible to control, but some theories have emerged about how to increase the frequency of events.

Pet Care

Keep your pets well fed (bloated, but not beyond that) and make sure they stay "delighted!"

If you have a food shortage other than the Soup Faerie for poverty ridden players you can Eat For Free too.

To keep your pet happy have them play with plushies, toys, etc.

Sidebars

Some special Neopets Sidebars (like the birthday one, obtained and usable only on your birthday) will increase the probability of receiving a random event.

Having a special sidebar though: does not guarantee that you will get more random events. It has been known for some people to get as many as 30 random events on their birthday while others only 5 or 6 (which is normal)

Generosity

Donate items to the Money Tree frequently. According to the Neopian Times editorial, issue 241 (mark four), donating money and items does not increase the likelihood of getting Random Events.

Technical Explanation and Background

Just after the Wishing Well was added there was a new wave of an idea spreading about the on line game world and the idea was KARMA. Digital Karma measured your diservingness of bonuses and Neopets and AAA were the first few to add this as a feature although they both were very defensive about telling the users that this had happened. Generous users started getting more "good" random events and although the exact formula is (of course) secret, it works like this:

• old: Number = Random_number(1 to 6); if Number = 6 do_random_event;
• new: Random_number(1 to 6) * Karma; if Number > 6 do_random_event;

It's doubtful the "NeoFormula" is quite as simple, but that is the principle. So the bigger your secret Karma score is the better...however each test/random (I'm not sure which) makes the Karma score slip back down...also time causes the Karma to decay too so you have to top it up.

As of yet the Karma system does not seem sensitive to value so donating 100 NP in 1 NP units would get you 100 lots of donation Karma. Karma also influences wishing well wishes (the original reason it was added).

Refresh

The more times you cause the screen to refresh, the more chances you have for a random event. Although a player can literally refresh the same page repeatedly, it is generally considered less boring to move about the site (preferably without using bookmarks, so that more screens are viewed). Playing non-flash games such as Pyramids and Neoquest also increase the chances. However, sometimes TNT reduces the chances of random events on these pages.

The reason this works is that you get a shot at a random event for the "world" you are in each page request (load) and refresh is a new page request. The best bet in this department is to simply explore and interact and get lots of usage out of the site.

External Links

• Neopets TCG: [Nothing Has Happened], [Something Will Happen], [Something Will Happen (2nd Print)]
• Help File: I never get random events, what do I need to do?