#and i haven't tried finding the actual formula in the code

[aeolids-zenith]

if anyone is wondering, I'm pretty sure the reason inedible vegetables make ACAB pickles is because items have an "edibility" value that's set to -300 for inedible items, and pickles appear to give energy equal to (approximately?) 4.375x the input item's edibility. which happens to be -1312 for an edibility of -300

HELLO???

[rommaru]

Yesterday I got informed about some old gossip people told about me years ago in neopets.

The goddamn neopets dot com.

A virtual pets game that some adults take too seriously.

Take a sit while I tell you and old story and I hope you get a good laugh as I did.

So neopets has been running since 1999 to this day. There are two currencies: neopoints and neochash. Neopoints are the main currency, they can be earned by playing games, doing quests, random events, selling items and many other ways. Neocash are purchased with actual money and can only be used in a specific store to buy clothing for your pets. Think about this as neocash can buy awesome skins, but everything else runs under neopoints keeping the game "fair".

As any other game, users build the economy and the market based on supply and demand. Shady tricks to make your way into the rare items exist such as scamming, hacking rich accounts, taking advantage of glitches and straight up black markets.

In my early years playing there I made a friend who made his path to richness by reselling items and playing games. The problem is that this guy loved to give polemic opinions and talked without filters so he quickly became a despictable person for some users. People tried to hack his account and stalked him on his social media, luckily none of that worked. Tired of all this drama he decided to take a break from neopets but before that he asked me to take care of some of his most expensive items so even if his account was compromised on his hiatus they would be safe on mine.

I doubt a little because while I was always aware of the drama surrounding him, he was always kind to me and our friendship was not so public so it was unlikely that my account would become the new target for hackers. What I didn't thought through was how suspicious our transaccion would look like at the eyes of the staff.

The next day both accounts were frozen. Imagine little Rommy all sad because I loved my ugly pets so much and my little account that I had worked for sevenish years. I submitted a ticket explaining how I never cheated and provided all possible evidence. Neopets customer service is well known for being slow and inefficient, so I just waited and waited and waited.

People quickly noticed my friends account was frozen and somehow they found out about me, not entirely but they knew there was another user in the formula.

What is the juicy gossip?

People said that I was some kind of celebrity influencer offering sexual services in exchange for items and neopoints. I was frozen because my friend was a client of mine...

Ok, hold on, let me just...

I haven't laugh so hard like this in a while. Do you know what is even worse? I was a minor when this happened.

Whatever they knew about me it was very little and probably they were just trolling because it was a popular thing to do back then ¯_( ͡• ͜ʖ ͡•)_/¯

I never got harassed on my side account or social media.

Speaking of my side account. I have a confession to add to the story. The usernames of both accounts are fairly similar so I would be easy to tell it was me. Remember neocash? Neocash has a different economy system based on item trading. If you want an item, you offer your items, find a trader and agree a fair deal.

I got into neocash trading before my main was frozen, but I became really good at it in my time using my side account. So while strangers shit talked about me I was taking advantage of a glitch.

To summarize it, neocash could be bought from the neopets website or by redeeming physical cards that could be found in stores such as Walmart. Cards were available in a couple countries outside USA and due to actual currency convertion it could be cheaper to get foreing card codes rather than buy them from the website. Keep in mind that 1000 neocash equals $10 USD in regular price. Of course getting cheaper cards is not against the rules and it's still a common practice.

The glitch would not recognize what currency was used to buy the card and would assume that the amount was in USD. Let's set an example, if I remember correctly, someone told me that 1000 neocash would cost 10,000 CLP, the glitch would reedem for the amount of 10,000 USD. I'm not saying that Chilean cards would do that, I'm not even sure if they were sold in Chile but this is the most dramatic scenary I can think of.

I had a lot of neocash for dirt cheap. I'm pretty sure more people knew about this but neopets was a messy place (it still is) that recently had took multi language support away, so I can see why non native English speakers were mad and unwilling to repport their glitchy cards.

Anyway, if those trolls were aware of my neocash trades back then (because most trades are done in a public forum) I could't blame them for thinking I was a hoe selling its body for real money to waste on a game lol.

At the end, it took a year but I had my account back. I continue to play neopets with no consequences from those days.