Neopet

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This article is about the creatures. For other uses of "Neopet" or "Neopets", see Neopets (disambiguation).
Several Neopets - clockwise from top, a Bruce, and Aisha, a Lupe and an Ixi. Also present is a Petpet.

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

Painting can make aesthetic differences...

Neopets are categorised into 54 different species. While the word species usually defines a group whose members can breed with each other to produce fertile 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. All species have two sexes.

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. Counterintuitively, Neopets do not begin life coloured as babies

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.

... or radically alter a Neopet's form.

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.

Neopets as owned by players do not die, despite the existence of Ghost Neopets, and can only be removed from the world if deleted for being given an inappropriate (e.g. profane) name, or if their current owner is frozen.

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.

Species

The fifty-four known species of Neopet are:


Characteristics

Each individual Neopet has a name. Neopets taken by players have names that are unique amongst all the other Neopets on the website. Each individual also has other statistics that may be viewed by a player through the Quick Ref page - in the case of their own Neopets - or an a Neopet's look-up. Individuals also have a height, given in centimetres, and weight given in pounds. A Neopet's weight can change in response to the foods it is fed.

Neopets can be trained to improve their strength, movement, defence, and hit points. While a Neopet's age is recorded, the main indicator of their experience is their level. Higher levels allow strength, movement, defence, and hit points to be trained to higher degrees. Strength, movement, and defence points can be trained by up to twice the points of a pets level, and hit points up to three times level. These statistics may be increased by random events, Coltzan's Shrine, or the Lab Ray to beyond these restrictions, however further training through the training schools will not be possible until the Neopet's level is increased again.

A Neopet's level also effects what faerie and species abilities it can learn. These abilities, strength, movement (to a modest extent), defence and hit points come into play in the Battledome.

Individuals also have a fishing skill score, which reflects its experience at Underwater Fishing and what types of fish it is capable of retrieving, and an Employment Agency rating, featuring their rank and completion statistics.

The intelligence statistic of a pet is influenced primarily by how many books it has been read, and can affect which books it will be willing to read in the future.

Personality

When a Neopet is created, the owner is asked to describe its nature: what the Neopet most likes to do (e.g. gathering food or making friends) and how they typically react when meeting others (e.g. smile sweetly or run away). These attributes do not have any effect on gameplay. After creation, they could only be seen if the Neopet was put up for adoption, however when the site was revamped in April 27, 2007, it was show on the Neopet's look-up as well.

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. The Neopets Team did acknowledge this glitch but have not fixed it yet.

Neopet care

A Neopet's owner can care and provide for their Neopets. As well customising them with clothes, accessories, and other paint colours, they can change improve or lower their pet's mood through their actions, feed it, and cure it of diseases.

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.

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 was a regular competition on the Neopets website where players could submit petpages that they created on a variety of topics and receive a trophy in return if their submission was selected. Site content ranged 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 was selected on August 12, 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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