20 replies to this topic

[gwalle]

Gwalle’s guide to the cost of training your pet (up to the start of Ninja School)

I know a few of these are out there but recently I found the need to know how much it would cost to level a pet to a decent HSD, what would be the cheapest way to do it and how long it would take.

I guess I will first start by giving some simple facts:

Mystery Island Training School
Can train your:
Strength/Defense/Speed: at twice your level
Health points: at triple your level

You can only train Strength/Defense/Speed if no other stat is more than double your level.

E.g. A level 20 pet with 48 HP, 28 Str, 34 Def and 32 Spd must have its level raised to half of the highest stat (48 HP) before you can train other stats.

Below is the table that explains pet level, codestone cost and the time each course takes to complete.





The Swashbuckling Academy
The other beginners training academy is the Swashbuckling Academy. This is cheaper but has downsides when compared to the Mystery Island Training School. These are as follows:

1. The Swashbuckling Academy can only train HP/Str/Def/Spd at twice your level. The difference here is the HP being limited to twice, not triple as in the Mystery Island Training School.

2. The Swashbuckling Academy trains at a significantly slower pace.

3. The Swashbuckling Academy only trains to level 40 and thus 80 of each stat.


However, if you are willing to wait the extra time, you will save 50%+ on your training costs (at the cost of losing around 50% of the speed).

Below is the table that explains pet level, dubloon cost and the time each course takes to complete.




The cost of training with dubloons and codestones
Having prowled through various resources (Neocodex, TDN and Jelly to name the main three) and doing my own research (scoping shop wizard and trade prices), I came up with an estimate of the cheapest way to train a pet from the basic stats of:

Level: 1, STR: 10, DEF: 10 and HP: 10

To the end of normal codestone training:

Level: 250, STR: 500, DEF: 500 and HP: up to 750 (750 HP not advised if you plan on going onto red codestone… 590 is sufficient so you do not pay more in red codestones later).

Spoiler

EDIT: Added progression costs and time

I feel I must explain a few things:

1. When you start codestone training it is wise to not train your level to the maximum until you are just about to move onto the next range of training.

E.g. If you train your level past 78 (as indicated in the table above as the ideal max level until you are ready to move on), you run the risk of getting a double or triple super bonus. This can put you at level 81 and then you have to pay 1 codestone extra and wait more time for each stat point.

2. At level 40 you will want to increase your HP to the maximum it can be trained at the Training School – this is because spending 2 codestones for 40 HP is cheaper than paying 3 codestones… der! This will mean you have to get your level to 60 before you can start training your strength and defense.

3. It should also be noted that you train things in this order: Level, Strength & Defense (double level), Health (triple level). This is because if you first train your Health to triple your Level, you will not be able to train your Strength or Defense without having to train you Level again... thus rolling over into a higher codestone requirement


UPDATE 22/10/2011 - How to increase your defense super-quickly
I came across some new information (for me at least) regarding hunger limitations and how to use it to the advantage of your training. Below I will pretty much just copy & paste from an article in the Neopian Times:

"Initially, what you would need to do is let your pet's Hunger level drop to "Dying". Depending on its current level, this could take several days. Once your pet's hunger level has reached "Dying", you can feed a Negg, which will make its hunger level "Starving". In exactly 2 hours, you will be able to go to QuickRef and see that the Hunger level has dropped back down to "Dying". At this point, you can simply come back every 2 hours and feed your pet.

You do not have to feed in exactly 2 hours for this to work. 2 hours is just the minimum amount of time you will need to wait."

This provides those who:

• Are at a high level where Neggs are cheaper than codestones
• Have exorbitant amounts of NP to blow / Negg tokens / Armoured Neggs

The ability to raise their defense stat ridiculously fast compared to other forms of training.

Here are two more tables to consider.

This table shows all the costs, time, etc for training ONLY Level / Strength / Health - as I will be explaining an alternative for leveling your defense via Neggs.

A simple overview of the changes this table now represents without defense being trained for:

• Roughly 13,000,000 NP less spend on codestones/dubloons
• Roughly 250 days less time to get from basic stats to Lv250/STR500/HP600

Now some people might be saying, "Ok, so it saves money and time, that's obvious given you are training one less stat. I may be 13mil richer and 250days quicker, but I have no defense... how much and long will it take to get my defense up then?"
Below is that table.



What are the hard facts this table shows?

• To get to the equivalent defense as if you were to train with codestones/dubloons it will cost you around 3,000,000 more NP
• To get to the equivalent defense as if you were to train with codestones/dubloons it will take you around 250 days less (as you can Negg train WHILE you codestone/dubloon train... it doesn't add any time) - however, it will take 42 days to get that 500 defense if you use the method explained above every 2 hours (Math is: 24 hr in a day / every 2 hr you can feed = 12 stats a day... 500 stats desired / 12 stats per day = ~42 days to get 500 stats).

Conclusion:
Pros

• Can save around 250 days of your pet training.
• Can train tandem stats
• Can still keep pet stats even, or leave defense training to the end/any point (you can go a few months without training defense, accumulate some wealth and then train when you have the NP to spare)

Cons

• Costs 3,000,000 NP more
• May cause a shortage of Armoured Neggs, therefore increasing their value and thus increasing the extra cost of this method
• If your pet is hungry, you cannot battle with it
• It can take several days for your pet to decrease to "Dying" stage
• Feeding a pet every 2 hours on the dot is not entirely feasible (though Negg feeders are said to be coming out in future Auto-Trainer updates)
• 16,500,000 NP is a hard slog on your wallet if you intend to level in one and a bit month.

Stat increasing items
Below are lists of items that increase your pet’s stats. I have used the shop wizard/trading post for the cheapest prices. Some price are well above their ‘actual’ value (namely the ones worth 300,000 or more are usually over price online – especially the ones ‘worth’ millions)

Neggs
Pros: Instant
Cons: Expensive, hunger-limited

Spoiler

First up you need to know where the Neggery is and what it does.
The Neggery is where you can trade in certain ‘Negg’ items for tokens which can in turn be exchanged for various special Neggs.
*NOTE* Not all ‘Negg’ items have a token value. Below I will supply a list you can refer to when purchasing items that are assured to have a token value.




Okay, so the above pictures show the various Neggs that can be redeemed, how many token you will receive from each Negg and the cost (searched via Shop Wizard or Trading Post). I have also included some of the more desired Neggs you can exchange for with the relative prices you would have to pay if you used Negg tokens.
*NOTE* Prices were the shop values I found based on 3-5 Shop Wizard refreshes which had at least a total of 10 or more items valued AT or BELOW this price.
Trading Post values were usually just the cheapest offered in a wishlist.

Some prices I was unable to find on the days I did my searching. Looking at all the Neggs with 8 or more tokens redeemable from them, I suspect there would be no point in purchasing them as their price is expected to be too high for profitability.
Yellow highlighted cells indicate a relatively ‘on par with trading value’ in terms of using Negg tokens for buying those specific Neggs. That is to say, for example, obtaining 126 Negg tokens will cost roughly the same as going to the Trading Post and buying a Snegg from a user.
Brown highlighted cells indicate that using tokens would increase the Neopoints spent procuring, for example, a Cool Negg by roughly 20-30%. I would advise not using tokens to redeem items in this category.
White and red cells are not worth bothering with; they are way overpriced and no profit can be gained from them.

Now, below is a list of the Neggs that will benefit your pet’s training.



This gives a better indication on which Neggs you will want to buy or redeem.
As noted in other guides, Negging for stats is much more expensive than training, and the added hassle of being dictated by hunger levels also restrict the amount of Neggs able to be used per day (to 2 or 3 max? My pet only seems to go down to ‘very full’ from bloated in 1 day).
I have tried to make this table as user-friendly and self-explanatory as possible; so my explanation will be brief as I assume most of you are intelligent enough individuals to work through it yourself:

The left column shows the Neggs you can redeem for with the tokens required to their right, what you/your pet gets upon eating the Negg and them some pricing stats as you keep going right of screen.

I have valued tokens at 2,000NP each because that is their current average Shop Wizard/Trading Post value. This also means that some ‘overestimation’ might result in my calculations… but those only means good things as it indicated the site prices could be lower.

As can be seen in the table, pretty much ALL Neggs are better off bought via Shop Wizard or Trading Post. This is due to the ridiculous inflation that seems to have occurred over the last year or two (according to a Negg guide made here on Codex in Jan 2010, token values were ~1,400np, 30% cheaper than now).

The far two right columns effectively show how much you are paying per skill point gained from a respective Negg.

• The (max) column displays the price you effectively pay if you get the MINIMUM points available from the Negg. (This is higher because you get less stats, thus you are paying MORE per stat)
• The (min) column displays the price you effectively pay if you get the MAXIMUM points available from the Negg. (This is lower because you get more stats, thus you are paying LESS per stat)

UPDATE: 21/10/2011 or 10/21/2011 for Americans
Train SUPER-FAST with Neggs
A new piece of information (for me) is that if you let your pet's hunger get to Dying, then feed it one Negg (E.G. Armoured Negg), you will be able to feed it another in 1-2 hours. This speeds up the process of Defense training SIGNIFICANTLY. If, however, you feed your pet from Full Up to Bloated, you will only be able to consume 1 or 2 Neggs per day.

Other Stat-Increasing Items
Pros: Instant, No hunger-limitation
Cons: Expensive

Spoiler

Alright, so this is very similar to the Negg table above so perhaps read through that section first to get an understanding of what you are looking at here - assuming you cannot work it out for yourself

These potions are "better" than Neggs because you can use them whenever you want. However, they are "worse" because their price tag is generally way higher than a Negg equivalent and/or their chance element makes a lot of them (cooling balm, kaylas potion - to name a couple) just aren't worth buying 10 to have none increase any stat.

Thanks to these people/sites for their data

http://www.neocodex....aining-methods/

http://www.neocodex....-cost-analysis/

http://www.thedailyneopets.com/

http://www.jellyneo.net/

http://www.neocodex.us/

http://www.neopets.c...n=12109&week=96

Big updates 11/10/2011

Would appreciate +rep if anyone finds this guide useful (whether you post a reply or not) - it will give me an indication on if I should continue to update it in the future
Also, post anything you would like to see in the guide you feel I have left out or have not explained thoroughly enough.

Edited by gwalle, 22 October 2011 - 05:07 AM.

[Epidote]

Nice guide. So is this saying that once I get to Level 151, I should buy and use Armoured Neggs to increase my defense instead?

[gwalle]

Nice guide. So is this saying that once I get to Level 151, I should buy and use Armoured Neggs to increase my defense instead?

Yes, because they will be cheaper than training at the Island AND a hell of a lot faster

The only reason you *may* want to use the Island is because it can add 2-3 stats as well... I'm not sure on the statistics of that, but potentially if you got a +2 every 8-10 trained stats, you would come out around equal with training by neggs. If you got a +3 you would have saved roughly 1 stat point

Edited by gwalle, 25 September 2011 - 04:21 AM.

[monkeypie105]

hmmm... I like this... it is actually a little better than the neopets guide I use... and a hell of a lot quicker to read

[gwalle]

hmmm... I like this... it is actually a little better than the neopets guide I use... and a hell of a lot quicker to read

Tables make short work of paragraphs

[gwalle]

Updated main table a bit to add progression costs and time values. This gives you a representation of how much it will cost up to a specific range of training as well as how long it will take.

E.G. If you only had 200k to spend on your pet training, and you started from pretty much basic stats, you could get a Lv 20, HP/STR/DEF 40 in 24 days for that cost.
Or if you are looking for a length of time say, "If i trained my pet for a year, how strong would it be?" You can look for whatever value is closest to a year (~358 days) and see the pet would get to around Lv 150, STR/DEF 300, HP 400.

Hope this helps people a bit more than the previous table

Edited by gwalle, 28 September 2011 - 07:05 PM.

[gwalle]

Did a BIG update in the Negg section and a minor update in the Other Stat Increaser section - check it out

[James]

Wow, great guide! It helps a lot especially now that I'm training a pet. Thanks!

[gwalle]

Wow, great guide! It helps a lot especially now that I'm training a pet. Thanks!

No worries
I am currently training a couple of pets too so I thought I'd give my spin on how I do it and what I have found useful for me.
The new Negg section is basically a profitability guide in itself for those who are interested in other avenues of NP making... though my conclusions pretty much found that you're better off buying pre-made 'stat' Neggs rather than buying the token equivalents

Glad to be of help if only to a few! Would appreciate +rep if anyone finds this guide useful (whether you post a reply or not) - it will give me an indication on if I should continue to update it in the future.

Edited by gwalle, 10 October 2011 - 04:14 PM.

[gwalle]

Bumping just for a minor update and put in view of any interested individuals

[ch33psh33p]

I should point out, its more economically feasible if you train your pets to Level 20 STR/Def 40, and then HP to 60 before leveling up again. This way you get the extra 20 hp points at the level 20 rate, instead of having it at the level 40 rate. Etc and so on.

[gwalle]

I should point out, its more economically feasible if you train your pets to Level 20 STR/Def 40, and then HP to 60 before leveling up again. This way you get the extra 20 hp points at the level 20 rate, instead of having it at the level 40 rate. Etc and so on.

Possibly, but 1x Codestones = likely to be more than 1x Five Dubloon Coin

Codestones range from 3,000-9,500 at the moment (and rising -.- when I first wrote this guide they ranged from 2,500-7,500). (Averaging at 6,250)
Five Dubloon Coin are steady at 5,000 (Also, more than likely people have a decent stash of One and Two Dubloon Coins from recent dailies they can upgrade to Five's).


Certainly there is potential for it being a cheaper option, but you run the risk of getting stuck on Eo/Vo/Lu payments which break the bank more than a Dubloon Coin

Valuable input though, thanks. I'll add it (and credit it) to the guide later for others to consider

[ch33psh33p]

No what I mean is.

Lets say you're level 80. Train up to 160 str/def, and then 240 HP, BEFORE going up to the next tier. This way you save out on countless codestones that would've been spent if you tried to get 160hp to 240hp at the level 100 rate.

This mainly applies once you're unable to train at the Academy. Especially for when you need to spend 6-7 codestones per lesson, saving 1 codestone over 100+ instances is 100 codestones saved.

Edited by ch33psh33p, 21 October 2011 - 04:37 PM.

[gwalle]

No what I mean is.

Lets say you're level 80. Train up to 160 str/def, and then 240 HP, BEFORE going up to the next tier. This way you save out on countless codestones that would've been spent if you tried to get 160hp to 240hp at the level 100 rate.

This mainly applies once you're unable to train at the Academy. Especially for when you need to spend 6-7 codestones per lesson, saving 1 codestone over 100+ instances is 100 codestones saved.

Ah, i see what you mean... and again I'm afraid that will only INCREASE the cost later on... I'll explain...

Lv 80 is the cut off for 3 codestones.
You have trained your HP/STR/DEF to 160 each.
You must then look at the next tier of codestones (Lv 81-100).
You can only level up a stat (other than HP) if there is no stat more than twice larger than your level, correct?
IF at Lv 80 you increase your HP to 240, you then need to be level 120 (240/2=120) before you can start increasing your STR/DEF.
SO, you only want to increase your HP to ~190 at the Lv 80 tier (give yourself some room for random events, +2/3 bonuses, etc), therefore you can level up to 190/2 = 95, making you still in the Lv81-100 (4 codestone) tier.
Going to 240 may save your HP spending, but ruin your ability to increase STR/DEF for one whole tier.

Hope that explains it Might have to add this in the guide too in case others have the same doubts

[Persuasion]

Yea; you can't go to 240 Health without getting out of the lv 80 tier.

This is interesting; and a little frustrating... 1 year and 8 Mil NPs to get ~1000 HSD, meh

[gwalle]

Yea; you can't go to 240 Health without getting out of the lv 80 tier.

This is interesting; and a little frustrating... 1 year and 8 Mil NPs to get ~1000 HSD, meh

Assuming all you do is Dubloon/codestone train.
Faerie and Kitchen quests can increase the speed a bit. But they aren't the most reliable methods of stat training (likewise is the case with random event stat increases).

I guess what one could do is simple LV/HP/STR train, then use the 'Dying+Negg trick' to quickly get your defense up [~10 stats per day if you feed the pet once an hour or two...70 days and you have your 700 def (at the significantly higher price of ~35k pet stat though)]

I hadn't actually thought of the above until now... Hmmm, might do that myself... would save A LOT of time i suspect... I'll do the math a little later...
Looks like I have a fair amount to update on! Thanks guys!

[ch33psh33p]

I used the wrong numbers.

http://battlepedia.t.../Fast-Training/

See the chart, its more cost effective that way.

[PUNCHBAGBOB]

any other ways besides using vortex neggs to decrease HP?

[gwalle]

I used the wrong numbers.

http://battlepedia.t.../Fast-Training/

See the chart, its more cost effective that way.

That's the chart I used...

[ch33psh33p]

Thats what I meant with my first post... @_@ Obviously the 240hp example was wrong, but the general concept is correct.

[gwalle]

Crunched the numbers and they hold some surprising insights...
Check out the main part (Titled: The cost of training with dubloons and codestone) for my evaluation on not training defense with the school/academy, but with ANeggs.