by fenshae
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When it comes to making money on Neopets, you're faced with two choices: The easy way, or the hard way. Of course, when you put it like that, the right choice seems obvious, but most people continue playing the game the hard way without realizing there's a better method. This leaves thousands of players with the feeling that they will never be rich because they can't succeed at playing games or restocking.Fortunately for you, that's completely not true, and I'm going to tell you how to become a millionaire with only a minimal investment of time.
You won't become rich overnight, and you'll need a bit of luck to succeed, but I absolutely guarantee you that implementing this guide will set you on the path to making more NP than you can spend. Are you ready?
Step One: Learn to Live Frugally
You're not going to get rich if you spend your NP as soon as you get it. Therefore, the first step to becoming a millionaire is (ironically) learning to live on nothing. Of course, if you're already starting with nothing, this should be pretty easy. Here's a few tips to being frugal:
Don't buy food for your Neopets. Between the Soup Kitchen, Giant Omelette, Giant Jelly, Movie Central, Fruit Machine, and all of the other freebies, there is no reason why your pets should ever go hungry. Don't forget that the Healing Springs will sometimes reduce your pet's hunger too.
Have a goal in mind and don't buy anything until you reach it. It helps to give yourself a concrete goal to work toward and stick with it. Start with a small goal at first so you can reward yourself along the way.
Carry no more than 10,000 NP on you at all times. This will prevent you from accidentally over-spending it. Every time you go over 10k, go drop the 10k in the bank and start over from whatever's left. Remove money from the bank only to make important purchases.
Step Two: Build a Habitarium
If you don't already have a Habitarium set up, do so immediately because it's one of the best methods for farming NP. There are a ton of Habitarium guides out there that can give you good detailed information on how to succeed, so I won't get into it too much here. Just know that the key is to level up quickly, and keep the game open as much as possible. I get on my Habitarium as soon as I log into the game and leave it running while I do all of my other Neo-duties. Here's a couple of other helpful tips:
Don't bother buying food or a hospital. Your P3s can heal and eat by spending time in your house. Spend your resources on building and upgrading houses instead.
Don't let your nesters sit around. Ensure that they're always nesting or resting.
Keep just enough eggs to restore your P3 population, then discard the rest for more XP.
Keep a higher number of workers in than nesters or soldiers; they'll ultimately be the most valuable.
Once you've reached the max level, you can start getting from 50-100k every day. The best part is that you don't need to pay careful attention to the game. You can keep it on in a separate window while you're working or studying and just peek in from time to time to make adjustments.
Step Three: Do Your Dailies
Neopets offers a ton of activities that can be completed once a day or more for various rewards. Take advantage of all of them. Several places have a list of dailies, and you can compile your own list for a quick reference. Dailies will give you free food, items, NP, or even stat bonuses for your pets. What would you rather do, spend money on a codestone or get stat increases for free at Coltzan's Shrine?
Bear in mind that not all of the "dailies" are completed once per day. Some reset every 12 hours, 8 hours, or other times. Some, like the Snowager, only happen at specific times of day. Others, like Turmaculus, happen at completely random times every day. Spend a little time figuring out the pattern and visit them as often as you are able.
Step Four: Invest in Some Stocks
Between Habitarium and dailies, you should have plenty of NP on hand to to make a few long-term investments. You can buy up to 1,000 shares each day. Spend those shares wisely by investing in bargain stocks. To do this, find stocks that are currently trading for 15 NP or more. Buy up 1,000 of your chosen stock, and wait for it to go up in value. Once it reaches the 50% inflation mark, re-sell the stocks. Suddenly, your initial 15,000 NP investment turned into 225,000 NP without you needing to do anything.
You don't have to wait until the stock reaches 50%, of course. Some people sell at 30%. Some sell at 60% or even higher. If you find yourself in sudden, desperate need for NP, you can always sell some stock at a lower price. So long as the % in your portfolio is a green number, you'll be selling at a profit.
The best part about the Neopian stock market is that, unlike the real stock market, it's fairly stable. Stocks will rise and fall, but the businesses never go bankrupt and all investments eventually pay off. It's a waiting game, but it's the easiest way to dramatically multiply your NP with a minimal amount of attention.
Step Five: Do a Bit of Gambling
This step isn't for the meek. It's risky, but it's also potentially very profitable. After you've invested in your thousand bargain stocks for the day, consider putting any left-over spending money into a riskier sort of investment – a Food Club bet!
The Food Club is overlooked by many Neopians because it seems very complicated. And, truthfully, it is more complex than many other games on the site. Still, it's not impossible to learn, and you can potentially make a tremendous amount of NP on the game. There are several very well-researched guides on the Food Club, and they're worth reading for all the ins-and-outs of the game. But here are a few tips to get you started:
You can start off by copying other people's bets until you learn what you're doing. There's usually a thread about it on the Games forum. After you've done a few rounds, you'll start to gain enough comfort to make bets on your own.
Balance out your bets with one or two high-odds bets (which are unlikely to win but earn substantially higher pay-outs) and a few low-odds bets (which are more likely to win but earn a lower payout). This improves your odds of winning at least some of your NP back.
Take a little time to research the contestants and the menu so you can rule out any contestants who are very unlikely to win – like those with allergies to everything being served on the menu.
The five tips above will lead to you earning a healthy amount of spending money. You could stop right there and, over time, develop an impressive bank account. But you don't want to just be a little rich, do you? Of course not. You want to be hugely, impressively, disgustingly rich. You want to be feeding your pets Draik egg omelettes and rolling around in a swimming pool full of dubloons, right? Of course you do.
So here are a few more pro-tips for maximizing your profits without spending all day playing:
Pick a couple of games you enjoy and play them. Don't bother with the ones you're bad at, and don't waste your only hour on the site playing flash games (unless you want to, of course). Spend your time on other more lucrative things instead.
Look for opportunities to refresh often. I know I just said don't play games, but I do have to make an exception here for the cheap browser-based games like Dice-a-Roo, Cheat!, Scorchy Slots, and Gormball. Every time you play a round of these games, you refresh, which boosts your odds of getting a random event. I particularly recommend Dice-a-Roo because you can win all sorts of potentially valuable food items from it even if you don't get close to the jackpot.
Play the sponsor games. If you feel like playing a game, play the sponsor games like Adver-Video and Super Shopping Spree. Not only are they easy and profitable, they also help keep the site running, which is pretty important.
Do a bit of restocking. You don't have to spend hours lurking around waiting for unbuyables in the magic shop like a hardcore restocker. You just have to peek in from time to time to snatch up things that might be valuable. I skip the more popular shops altogether and lurk about the bookstore in addition to the Garage Sale and the Almost Forgotten Attic.
Check the trading post often. This will help you see which items are in high demand and what the more expensive items are worth. You might also notice someone giving away a "freebie" lot full if items you really want, like books your pet hasn't read.
So there we have it. A simple guide to raking in cash without flash games, restocking, or any other time-consuming activity. Even if you only have an hour of time each day to devote to Neopets, you can still earn enough NP to reach all of your goals if you invest smartly and have a little bit of patience and luck.
