The Lab Ray: An Analysis
by nykkel
You may want to send your NeoPets out of the room while you read this... most of them are quite frightened by the subject I'll be discussing.
Ready? Then I'll continue. With the rising price of Codestones these days, perhaps you've been looking for another way to improve your NeoPet's stats for the Battledome. For those who aren't interested in the Battledome, you may have several NeoPets you would like to paint Faerie, or Fire, or some other color that has unusually expensive Paint Brushes.
You could wait for Codestones and Paint Brushes to fall into your lap via random events... but there is another way to raise your NeoPet's stats and get it painted in interesting colors, if you are willing to pay the price. You can use the Lab Ray.
Most NeoPets think that the Lab Ray is a strange and frightening thing. However, it only frightens them because they (and their owners) do not understand it. This essay will show you what the Lab Ray can do to your NeoPets. Once YOU know how it operates, you can explain it to your NeoPets, and they will no longer be afraid of it.
In order to use the Lab Ray, first you must collect all nine pieces of the Secret Laboratory Map. At the time of this writing, the cheapest piece of the map available on the Shop Wizard was 8,000 NP, so you should expect to pay over 70,000 NP for a complete map... perhaps even as much as 100,000 NP. This may seem like a lot of NP, but you can save a lot more than this by using the Lab Ray.
Once you have the map, bring it to the Treasure Map game and turn in it. From that point on, you will be able to use the Lab Ray on one NeoPet per day.
The Lab Ray does a random thing each time you use it, but there are only a few things it can do. Some NeoPet owners keep logs of what the Lab Ray does to their NeoPets. Based on those logs, here is what you can expect the Ray to do to YOUR NeoPet.
Number of Lab Ray "zaps" studied: 581
28.22%: Level Change (164 zaps)
16.35%: Color Change (95 zaps)
13.94%: Move/Speed Change (81 zaps)
13.25%: Health/HPs Change (77 zaps)
11.87%: Strength Change (69 zaps)
08.43%: Species Change (49 zaps)
07.91%: Sex Change (46 zaps)
00.00%: Defense Change (0 zaps)
00.00%: Intelligence Change (0 zaps)
Strength (out of 69 zaps)
+5: 10 times (14.49%)
+4: 14 times (20.29%)
+3: 09 times (13.04%)
+2: 19 times (27.53%)
+1: 17 times (24.63%)
Level (out of 164 zaps)
+2: 75 times (45.73%)
=1: 30 times (18.29%)
-2: 59 times (35.97%)
The Level=1 zap appears to only happen to pets below level 6. Don't know what it does (in place of that) to higher level pets. Would guess it becomes Level-2, which would mean you're more likely to lose levels than gain them. That could actually be useful, as it would reduce the cost of using the Training School, so it is probably wrong.
Hit Points (out of 77 zaps)
+5: 00 times (00.00%)
+4: 21 times (27.27%)
+3: 19 times (24.67%)
+2: 20 times (25.97%)
+1: 17 times (22.07%)
Movement (out of 81 zaps)
+5: 13 times (16.04%)
+4: 15 times (18.51%)
+3: 18 times (22.22%)
+2: 16 times (19.75%)
+1: 19 times (23.45%)
As you can see, the Lab Ray can raise your Movement or Strength by up to 5 points per zap, your Hit Points by 4 points per zap, or your Level by 2 levels per zap. Think of how many Codestones that would cost! Of course, it can also lower your Level by 2 levels per zap, but this will happen much less frequently than it raises your stats, so you will come out ahead. Just make sure your NeoPet is at least level 6, so it is immune to the Level=1 zap.
It can also change your NeoPet's sex, which is curable by a Strange Potion. Any particularly hideous Species Changes can be fixed with a Magical Plushie or a Morphing or Transmogrification Potion. However, it is best to tolerate these changes until you have decided to stop zapping that particular NeoPet, since the Lab Ray might decide to make the same change again the next day.
If you are using the Lab Ray to prepare your NeoPet for the Battledome, you will still need to use the Training School to raise that NeoPet's Defense, as the Lab Ray never changes this stat. But if you're just using it to make your NeoPets more attractive, you can zap them every day until you like the way they come out... and you're improving their stats for free while you do it! Some people enjoy temporarily adopting NeoPets from the NeoPound, zapping them a few times, and then returning them once they are "prettier" and more likely to find a loving owner.
The process is a bit slow, but the map is a one-time cost that will allow you to zap your pets for free forever. What do you have to lose? Start zapping today!
|
