#trading items

[sangfielle]

i love to join a site and then just get irritated by half of the userbase that i see

[sexybritishllama]

strap in folks it's time for another neopets drama update

some background reading before we begin: back when neopets wanted to introduce customisation (i.e. dressing up your pet) in 2007, they decided to 'convert' all existing pet art to align with a rigid body structure, rather than all having unique poses. it was just not feasible to create new pieces of art for hundreds of different pet poses every single time they released a new clothing them

customisation had been highly requested up until this point. however, the conversion was NOT popular. in some cases, particularly for basic colours, the change wasn't huge, but in other cases.... uh....

you get the idea. the more expensive colours like plushie, faerie, grey, royal and darigan got the worst of it because they had the more unique poses pre-conversion, and therefore it was largely agreed that the change to the stiff 'samey', frankly kinda goofy converted look did not look great

most users did not get a choice in having their neopet converted and it was done automatically, but if you had one of these colours where the change was huge, you were given the choice of converting or retaining the old pose (but not having the option to customise your pet). those pets that retained the old, pre-conversion poses are therefore referred to as 'unconverted', or UC for short

once a pet is converted, there's no returning to UC. you also couldn't create UC pets anymore, making UCs a limited resource that would only increase in value with time, particularly as people abandon their pets, leave the site, get frozen, etc.

i could write an entire dissertation on the drama that UC pets have caused for the pet trading economy, the neopet account black market, and general retention of the userbase, but to sum it up, people REALLY want UC pets. they are the single most coveted status symbol on the site

we skip forward now to 2023

the neopets team are planning to introduce UC pets back to the site, so that people will be able to create their own UC pets again for the first time post-converstion (legally at least)

they drip feed bits of information over the year about what this will look like. the main points are

changing a pet to UC will be done via some kind of item bought with neocash, the premium currency on neopets that you need to spend real money to get

putting this item on your pet will give it the UC art style appearance

so. not much really known. but expected release is set for january 2024

yesterday, they hosted an AMA focusing on the new UC pet system and how this was going to work. noticeably absent is any explanation of how much this is actually going to cost and whether it is going to involve any kind of gatcha mechanic, so that's causing our first lot of concern

second lot of drama is that the new UCs aren't actually going to be COMPLETELY the same as the old art, as they're making some small changes for style consistency, see below (old on top, new below):

the biggest drama, however, comes from how they're dealing with the 'original' UC pets. ALL pets will be getting forcibly converted on the 23rd, with anyone who has a pet that is already an original UC immediately receiving the UC neocash item. there's mention of possibly some kind of trophy or badge recognition for particularly old pets, but it's vague, and generally seems like it won't be possible to distinguish between the original UCs and these new ones

the people who already have OCs are not happy about this

people are allegedly pounding their pets, cancelling their premium, and quitting the site in protest. the boards are flooded with people complaining about the changes and laughing at the downfall of the 'neo-elite' in equal measure

it's t-minus 5 days until the second great conversion goes live. let's all pray for our souls

[front-facing-pokemon]

[darqx]

I FORGOT TO SHOW OFF THE AWESOME XMAS 2023 GIFTS I GOT (which technically came exactly in time for my bday a few months back - listen mail is slow ok...we were all worried they were at the bottom of the ocean - so I also consider them bday presents XD What great timing honestly lmao).

@cold-creature once again showing off her fine art skills with an amazing paper collage of Izm! I can't even with some of the fiddlyness of the paper cutouts - apparently she had to invest in some tiny ass tweezers for this omg XDD

The entire thought of these tiny bits of paper flying away with an exhale both makes me groan in sympathy but also laugh loudly LMAO.

@justonepurpose and @enbae not only sent me the CUTEST keychains starring my characs in different clothes (winter and Royal!Au respectively) but also a mouse and phone case (which I asked for since APPARENTLY I can't get them in my own damn country) and a mini shortcut keypad (which was a surprise) :D However they won't let me pay them back for anything 😐 So I'm still trying to decide on the best art thing to do to try and at least repay them for the awesomeness |D

[bunnymedley]

i wanna commission a minecraft mod so bad but itd probably be rly expensive and idk if mod commissions are even rly a thing...

[knickknackgalore]

Lorcana The First Chapter Booster Pack featuring Elsa

[balkanradfem]

Eyy we did it!

This was the first batch of tomatoes, and they were very beautiful, so I traded them. I brought them to a nice woman as a gift, and in return she gifted me some clothing, and some new bedsheets, with little whales on them! I am loving the no-money trade and my new bedsheets, imagine if you could just grow food and trade it for anything else you need.

[adobe-outdesign]

the way you get specific NC items on Neopets is absolutely deranged and frankly I'm amazed it works at all

So basically you have the NC Mall, where is where you go to spend NC (NC being a separate currency from the standard game currency that you buy with real money). Sounds fine, right?

Well the problem is that the mall tends to only have an item in stock for about a month, give or take. Once an item has left it almost never comes back, save for rare exceptions that usually involve some form of chance (such as randomly getting them from mystery capsules).

So in order to get basically any item that you missed during that very short period, you have to trade with other users. You can't trade NC itself or NP; you can ONLY trade NC items for NC items.

Now, in order to trade those items, you have to have something called gift boxes. You get a few boxes from redeeming NC and a few from dailies, but they mostly come from something called Gift Box Mystery Capsules (abbreviated: GBCs/caps). Because of this, "caps" are their own currency of sorts used to give a baseline idea of item value. One item may be worth 1 cap, 10 caps, etc. Some can get as high as 100 depending on item rarity.

Now you know what item you're looking for, and you know what the cap value of that item is, so now you have to make a list of what you have to trade with and what you're looking for. Nowadays you do this through Jellyneo's wishlists, but back in ye olden days you had to hand-code an HTML/CSS list to host on your pet pages.

Now, with everything set up, you just need to find a trading partner. There's no centralized place to trade NC, so you have to do this by either:

Making a post on the Neoboards and praying someone with the item you want happens to see it and will be interested in a trade

Try to find a person to trade with using JN's wishlists, which you then shoot a Neomail off to (and keep in mind this is a recent development, as you couldn't previously mention fansites like JN on Neopets itself)

Then you just have to hope that you get some kind of a response instead of just being ghosted or rejected, which can be extremely difficult depending on how desirable the item is. This can take weeks if not months. Once you have a partner, you both send each other your trade items on a trust basis because, once again, there's no official system in place to do any of this.

And then you just do that very simple process for every single customization you ever do

[ayumitsuu]

FE4 comic: Trading Items (ft. Sigurd, Noish/Naoise, and special guest: pawnshopkeeper)

Dw I went back and stole everyone’s lunch money but does anyone else think the item & money trading system is a little unnecessary? 😅

BONUS: Sigurd being extra 💍💍💍

[canis--familiaris]

When I was around 10 my lil bro logged onto our shared Webkinz account and sold a bunch of stuff, including the signature item of my favorite one (my Webkinz husky named Snowball). I never got over it… until now.

I traded with someone on Reddit to get her signature item back last night!!! Nature is healing, finally, after 13 years!

Look at how happy she is to have her bed back!!! :3

[halloweentual]

gaming will make you go man i miss the pathologic 2 barter mechanic

[cecils-dragons]

Finally!!!! Book Worm Jr has printed and it looks so good, this honestly might be one of my best looking skins, at least in a while. My little guy worm gets to wear it because they were the one to inspire the idea <3

[cupcakedex]

Pokemon Trading Card Game cookies by snollia!

[iniquity-fr]

aaaagh seriously we need a huge update thats just tons of different food items added to gathering specifically that are not used for anything else except feeding dragons. desperately. i am begging

[belphieslilcow]

i dont get people against the gathering revamp stuff

like okay you already have enough food for your dragons, then you'd just get more?? how is that a bad thing??

even though i'm very comfortable food wise right now, it's so insane that im level 33 foraging and got a SINGLE mushroom in a turn today, not to mention i abandoned the idea of brewing something cause over a few days of straight hunting i didn't get a single lizard i needed out of the like 10 or 15 you need

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

Weird AU idea: Crossover AU between Minecraft and Welcome Home. Those bitches gotta kill some dragon to get back home IDK. I can see many shenanigans with this concept

Mainly made this up because I had a dream the Warden from Minecraft and Julie Joyful met (Julie was not enthralled for obvious reasons) (tbh it was more a nightmare DX)

bold of you to assume their Goofy Asses could get anything done, let alone kill the ender dragon