The Gurus of Neopia Strategy Guide
You have dreams of what you want to do on Neopets. We all do. Some people want the ultimate collection, some want to spoil and pamper their pets like no-one ever has before, some want to excel at Battledome, some want to top the book or food lists, and others want to be the richest Neopian ever. What do these dreams have in common? Neopoints. Put simply, you're going to need them. A lot of people see getting the neopoints they need as a problem, something really difficult, and see themselves as being doomed to being poor. In the Gurus of Neopia, we know that's not true. Making the kind of neopoints even the biggest dreamers need isn't hard, it just takes patience. Interested? Keep reading! This Strategy Guide will teach you how to make the neopoints you want to have.
The Middleman Technique
The fastest way to make ridiculous amounts of neopoints is ~ shopping, or buying and selling. BUT not just plain old shopping; you are going to buy only *good* items which you can resell in your shop for profit, and you need to know HOW to do it, WHAT to buy, HOW to sell your items, and HOW to make the most of your shop.
First, the basics. There are many official neoshops, and each sells items which range from you-shouldn't-buy-it-if-your-life-depended-on-it stuff, to well-you-might-as-well things, to oooo-grab-it-now, to omg-i-can't-believe-my-luck items. As you can see, you REALLY need to know what to buy, and what to ignore. We have a growing list of the 'good' items, which you SHOULD read after you finish this guide. Here's a handy link to it: hot items. You're going to need to get to grips with these items, and what they're worth. These items come into the shops in a rush, called a 'restock'. These restocks happen about 7-8 times an hour, at random times, which is where the patience comes in. You can wait for 18 minutes with nothing happening, then have 3 restocks one after another, or have a restock every 8 minutes or so, like clockwork. While you're refreshing the page, waiting for a restock, think of what your dream is, what you'll spend the nps on, and the time will pass much more sweetly. You can improve your shopping opportunities by having more than one window open at a time, refreshing to different shops. Some people like having two shops open at once, some three or four or more. Practice, and find out what's best for you. Remember, patience is the key. That's how and what to buy, but how to sell?
Apart from knowing which items to buy, knowing how to price them so that they'll sell and you'll make a profit is the most crucial part of this. Get it wrong, and you'll lose out badly, but once you learn how to do it, it becomes automatic very quickly.
Now, there are literally millions of shops in Neopia. How do you get people to come to yours and buy your items? Easy. You find out what price everyone else is selling a particular item for, and then you price your item at the lowest price, or just a little under. Result? Your items sell first, before everyone else's. If there were 10 shops in real life, all stocking the same items, you wouldn't buy from the expensive shops, would you? Same thing here. And because you sell all your items quickly, you make far more neopoints than the people who price their items expensively, but don't get people buying them. How to do this? Make friends with the Shop Wizard.
The Shop Wizard
The Shop Wizard is your best friend on Neopets. He might be rather dull, and have no conversation, but he'll help you get rich like no-one else (apart from us, of course!). The Wiz is basically a list of all the items for sale from people's shops, with who is selling them and for how much. When you go to the Wiz, enter the item you want to know the price for into it, and it'll give you a page listing prices. Now, remember, this is only one page of item prices. The Wiz couldn't possibly show all the items in stock in people's shops at once, there's too many. What you do next is refresh, at least 6-9 times, to get a few pages. With every new page you're shown, remember what the cheapest price for the item is (the one at the top). When you've finished refreshing, you'll know how much to price your item at. If the cheapest price you found for the item was, for example, 1490nps, then price yours from 1475 to 1490nps.
The second point to make here is, you have to price every item every time you want to sell it. DO NOT just price it the same way you did last time. Prices change a lot, and very quickly, and you could either make your item too cheap and lose nps, or too expensive, and not sell it. 'Wizzing' is absolutely necessary, every time you want to price an item.
Now, one other vital thing to learn - how to make your shop work for you. It's very tempting, when you're decorating your shop, to put in lots of dolls, puffs, blinkies, images, music, tables etc, BUT just think - everything you add to your shop means that it takes longer for the page to load. No matter how well-priced and desirable your items are, you'll have a much harder job selling them if it takes forever for the shop to load. People will get bored waiting and go somewhere else. DO put in a background and decorations if you want to; it's fun and will make your shop much more attractive, just go easy on it. Get a friend to go to your shop, and tell you how long it takes to load if you think you've overdone it.
How big should your shop be? The bigger it is, the higher up the Wiz list it'll be. Big is good. BUT be practical. Yes, make your shop bigger, but do it slowly. Increase the size when you have the neopoints to spare, don't spend all your nps on the size, then have nothing to spend on your goals.
Variation on the Middleman Technique
Another way to use shopping to make major nps is a variation on the middleman technique. Instead of buying from the official neoshops, you look for bargains in other people's shops/the auctions/the Trading Post, where people have for whatever reason underpriced their items by a lot. You spot them, swoop on them, and resell them in your shop at profit. Again, you need to know how much items are worth, and again, go to the hot items page to see what sells well, and check the Wiz for prices.
So that's what to do and how to do it. Once you get the hang of this Strategy Guide, and the Middleman Technique, you'll not only never be poor again but you'll also achieve your dreams for yourself and your pets.
To see the Strategy Guide in action, check out the 'Hacker's Challenge' item on our Features page here.
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