The neopets battledome has been around since the dawn of time on Neopets. For many years it was the prime mode in which neopians participated in ‘plots’. Ever since Viacom has taken over Neopets, wars have ceased, BUT that does not mean the battledome is useless now! This guide is to help you understand the battledome better, and maybe even turn you into a battledomer. (:
Here’s what this guide will be covering:
1. Stats: The basics of ‘Boosts’.
2. Training: What you should have your stats at and why.
3. Weapons: The basics of how these work and a couple of simple ‘sets’.
4. Strategy: How to beat your opponent!
Part 1: Stats!
Now the first thing you’ll need to understand about the battledome is stats! This is pretty straight forward in the long-run. There are three major stats that you need to worry about for the battledome: Hit Points, Strength and Defence. Now, we’ll go in that order to explain each one.
1. Hit Points: This is your Neopets life, run out of this and you lose. I like to think of it in terms of Pokemon, when you run out of HP, you don’t die but rather get knocked out. When training this stat can be 3 times your level, and most people do have this higher than their strength and defence.
2. Strength: This is where it gets a little technical. Strength, and defence, work in boosts. Now, to explain what boosts are; They refer to the number at which your strength increases the damage per icons. (I’ll explain icons a little more in the weapons section.) Here, time for a fancy table!
Now that we have the cool table out of the way I’ll explain what it means. The first column is strength, and the second column is how much damage per icon you do at each level of strength. That means, that people with 355 strength and 399 will do the SAME amount of damage, given that they use the same stance and do the same amount of icons. The last two parts are vital, and I will explain stances in the strategy portion of the guide. All strength 700 and higher do the same amount of damage per icon.
3. Defence: This is probably the most confusing statistic out of the three major stats. For a long time it was not understood, and thus ignored largely. That is no longer the case, it has been examined in depth by Garet_Jaxx. I don’t think I can explain it any better than he did, so I am going to plagarize a little to help you understand this stat.
Here is what Garet_Jaxx has written about Defence:
“Ok, everyone knows what a strength boost is, right? That you’ll do more damage per icon the stronger you are.
Well, defence boosts work the same way only they function with those defensive weapons that don’t block all of an icon.
I tested this theory with the dark faerie collar which blocks 5 light. Because my pet has 400 defence, that means that I’ll block 5 icons worth of light damage from a 400 str pet’s base damage amount. Base damage per boost is what you get when you use a constant iconed weapon and cautious attack against an opponent also using cautious, then divide that damage by the number of icons from the weapon. At 400, the base damage is 8.5 and since the collar blocks 5, we multiply 8.5 times 5 to get the amount blocked for the collar by me which is 42. So if I use the collar at my current defence boost, i’ll always block 42 pts of damage from light if i use Cautious/Species/Ability (see below) regardless of the actual NUMBER of icons used against me or amount of icons SHOWN as blocked. If the opponent uses 20 icons but is so weak it doesn’t add up to 42, it’ll block all light damage and if the opponent is stronger, it’ll block less icons, but the same amount damage…42. If your pet has a lower defence, it will block the equivalent DAMAGE as the base damage from a strength boost that corresponds with it (When using the Collar, for example, a pet with 150 defence will block 15 points worth of light damage, one with 100 defence will block 12, etc.) As soon as a page on IBA goes live, I’ll tell you where to go to see all defence/strength boosts as well as their corresponding base damage.
Note: The Defend ability has NOTHING to do with the defence stat. Unless you also use a weapon that defends part of an icon, a pet with a defence of 1 will ‘block’ the same amount of damage when using Defend as a pet with the 700 defence boost. (See explanation of Defend on beatmetoapulp’s page. IBA should be adding it shortly.
Additional Comment: Is training to the final defence boost useful? It really depends on the weapons you use. If none of your weapons block some of an icon, then no it isn’t. If you use, say the Dark Faerie Collar which blocks 5 light, it means that at the final boost you’ll always block 75 points of damage from light rather than 15 from the 125 boost (ppl that stopped at 150 because it was rumoured to be the final boost are actually in the 125-199 boost).
UPDATE: Defensive icons ARE included in YOUR attack modifiers from base icons, but your OPPONENT’S attack modifer isn’t. What does that mean? Well, with ATTACKING icons, if you use a weapon that does 100 pts of damage on Cautious, it will do 150 if you Berserk (assuming your opponent does the same attack). Simlarly, if it does 100 on cautious and YOU do cautious while your OPPONENT berserks, it will still do 150% of base damage or 150 points. If you BOTH berserk, it will actually do 225 (100*150%*150%). 9np has this information up on his pet, beatmetoapulp’s, page. How do the modifiers affect defence? Well, if your defensive weapon blocks 42 points of damage from light (see earlier example), then if YOU berserk, it will now block 63. Unlike with attacks, however, if YOU use cautious and THEY berserk, it will still only block 42. Bizarre, huh? ”
This is a lot of information, and it is quite confusing. Here is a simple rundown: Your defensive boost works to make sure you defend the max amount of icons the weapon can defend if your defense boost is the same as the opponents strength boost. Suffice to say, it does help you if you want to use dual duties or shields. If there is something you don’t understand feel free to post and ask about it.
Dual duties, shields and constant icon weapons will all be explained in the weapon portion of the guide.
4. Movement: The ‘useless’ statistic. But wait! Lately this has come out of complete obscurity with the introduction of one weapon: Heavy Robe of Thievery. This weapon requires you to have 201 movement or more and 68 intelligence. When you meet these requirements this weapon is a 100% stealer, it will steal the weapon in the first slot of your opponents set. (Note: It disappears for the rest of the battle after stealing.) This can be a great surprise tactic in 2p and a huge help in 1p.
Part 2: Training, leagues explained.
There are several options on Neopets when it comes to the training of your pet. You can use Cap’n Threelegs’ Swashbuckling Academy, Mystery Island Training School, and the last way to train is the Secret Laboratory (Not recommended). When doing courses at the Academy and Training School your strength and defence cannot be more than twice your level and your HP cannot be more than three times your level. If your stats exceed this you will have to train your level til it is half of the highest stat. (A third if the highest stat is HP.)
Let’s do a little rundown of each way to train.
1. The Academy: This is the cheapest place to train regularly, but it does take the longest. I’m going to be lazy and copy down the tables from the academy itself.
Personally, this is what I use to train from levels 1-20. It is much cheaper, at only 3k per stat currently. Codestones can cost up to 10k, for Eo, making it much more expensive and not quite worth the half time, at levels 1-20, in my opinion.
2. The Training School: The OG of the bunch, this has been around for ever. Again, lazy so time for a table!
I use the Training school after level 20, the decreased time makes it worth it at that stage, in my opinion. This method of training will last you a looong time, til 500 boosts and 750 HP.
3. The Secret Ninja Scool; The upper echelon of training. No one really likes paying this much for training, but it’s the way the world works. Each codestone used here requires a red codestone, not a regular one. Red codestones are made by throwing a set of codestones into the volcano on Mystery Island. Table time;
4. The Lab: Probably the most common way to ‘train’ a pet. The benchmarks of a labpet: Low level and defence, high HP, and decent strength and movement. These are very uneven pets, and not suggested for 2p battling. The lab takes a long time to pay off in the stat department, I know many examples of 4+ years of labbing with only 125 boost in strength, or even less. This is a VERY ineffective, in the short term, way when compared with the previous two methods covered and thus not recommended.
5. Now, the last type of training is Neggs/potions. This is probably the most expensive route and almost exclusively used by higher level pets. I’m not going to list all the Neggs with what they can boost here, as there are a lot of them. x.x I will instead refer you to idb; http://idb.finalhit.org/stat That is a list of all neggs and stat increasing potions should you need it.
Now that we know about training methods let’s discuss ‘builds’. When 2p battling there are ‘Leagues’, these are pets that fall into certain statistical groups (see table below). These ‘leagues’ were formed so that it would be easier to fight wars (BD Guild wars) and make it easier to find opponents in the BD Chat around your pets stats. What league you want to fight at is completely up to you, but know that there are a lot more people in the lower leagues than the higher leagues. Also, the people in the higher leagues tend to have much better sets and be much more experienced in battling. That is not to say that these people don’t create low league pets, as well, because they do. But, if you don’t fight good battlers you’ll never develop good battling habits, so fighting, and possibly losing to, these people is not a bad thing. Now, it’s time for a table:
* Build 1 is the recommended build, but it is not the end all be all build.
** If your Defence is more than two boosts above your strength, you’re moved up a league. This has already been factored in for every build here.
*** To figure out what league your pet is in go to; http://www.neopets.com/~hoppak?PETNAMEHERE just replace ‘PETNAMEHERE’ with the pet you wish to know the league for.
Leagues are not the only types of builds, before there were leagues some people used ‘Noobinators’, and ‘Tanks’. Noobinators are pets with low HP, usually under 30, and high strength. They, as their name indicates, fight low level pets to beat them up. They almost always use an ECA, Everlasting Crystal Apple, to always be able to heal up to their max HP. Then there are tanks, these are pets with defence boosts much higher than their strength boosts. E.g. A pet with 700 defence and 35 strength. (Yeah, there’s one out there.) These builds are still around, but aren’t as prominent as they once were.
Part 3: Weapons!
Now, the part everyone looks forward to; weapons. These are your best friend, you live and die by how you use your weapons. First, let’s cover icons so that you can better understand weapons.
There are seven icon types; Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Light, Dark and Physical. Icon types do not increase damage. The purpose of icons is to facilitate shields and dual duties. These weapons do not block all icon types, they block specific types. For instance; The Leaf Shield blocks 5 earth, 5 water and 3 phsyical. If you use that and your opponent doesn’t do any of those icon types, you don’t block anything.
Also, some pets have resistances to icon types, here is a list:
Now we go onto the weapons themselves! Without these the Batledome would be pointless, so they’re kinda important.
1. Constant: this refers to a weapon that ALWAYS does a certain amount of icons. For example, the Iron Lupe Sword (old favorite of mine) does 8 constant icons of damage. It will never do less, never do more. The damage you do with icons is all based on your strength boosts, and stance (but we’ll get to that later), previously covered.
Some weapons are really annoying and can do fractional icons, such as the Werelupe Claw Necklace. It does 4.66 icons of fire, 4.66 icons of dark, 3 icons of earth and .2-5 physical icons. Fractional icons show up in the battledome as full icons, but they don’t do that much damage. In order to find out if weapon is fractional or not you can do the math yourself, which is pretty annoying or you can check out idb.finalhit.org. That site is the best site for weapons out there.
2. Dual Duty: These are weapons that do constant icons AND defend. A great example for this is the Scarab Ring, the quintessential newbie weapon. The scarab ring will always do 6 icons of constant damage AND defend 6 icons. A very useful beginner weapon.
3. Shield: These are your straight up defenders. They don’t do any offensive icons at all, they only block your opponents icons. The best example would be the Leaf Shield, it blocks 5 earth, 5 water and 3 physical. It’s a great beginner shield as it is quite affordable and blocks 3 common icon types for low level battles.
4. Reflectors: These are a little more tricky. For an example we’ll use the Prickly Potion, this weapon reflects 3 fire icons and 3 dark icons. This is one of three multi-use, multi-use means they can be used more than once per battle, weapons that reflect icons and don’t require your opponent to attack with those specific. These reflected icons do damage with your OPPONENTS strength boost. E.g. Pet A has 500 strength boost and Pet B uses Prickly Potion; Pet B does 6 icons at 500 strength boost. These are mostly used in 1p, as they are great against much stronger opponents.
5. Healers: These heal you up in the middle of battle. They usually heal a certain amount of HP, such as the Green Scorchstone heals 40 HP and can only be used once per battle. SOME healers are multi-use, such as the Everlasting Crystal Apple. Now, there is a thing called ‘overheal’ which happens when your healer heals you after the damage is done. Items like Scorchstones heal you after the damage is done to you. E.g. Pet A uses Green Scorchstone, pet B does 50 damage. Pet A takes 50 damage, and then heals 40 using their Scorchstone.
6. Freezers: These are a very important for 2p battling, unless the person your battling stipulates no freezing. ‘Freezing’ makes your opponent unable to use any weapons or do anything for one turn, leaving them a sitting duck for your strongest weapons. Freezers range from working only a small percentage of the time, to working 100% of the time. Almost every freezer can only be used once per battle. 100% freezers like H4000 Helm are expensive, 7.4m at the moment but almost indispensable.
7. Bombs: These are weapons that can only be used once per battle, but do huge amounts of icons. A good example would be the Ghostkerbomb, which does 21-30 icons and can only be used once per battle. When to use this is a tricky situation and will be addressed in the strategy section.
8. Stealers: These are weapons that steal your opponents weapon for the duration of the fight. The majority of stealers work like the HRoT, mentioned earlier, where they steal the first item in your opponents set. This has led many 2p battlers, including me, to sacrifice the first slot in their set by putting a useless item so that the opponent wastes a weapon use in the battle. Almost all stealers can only be used once per battle.
9. 1-use: These are weapons that can only be used once… ever. Items such as snowballs and muffins fall into this category. Usually they do a decent amount of icons for a cheap price. These weapons are almost never seen in 2p battling, as you have to buy new ones after every battle if you wish to use them constantly.
Now that we have all the different weapon types, let’s talk sets. Sets for 2p League battling should usually contain dual duties, a freezer, a bomb, a healer, and a couple strong constants. An explained example of an ‘ok’ 2p set:
Yes, the set only has 7 weapons in it, because I almost always put a species only weapon in my first slot so if it gets stolen the person wasted a weapon use. This is an ok 2p set, it gets pretty fucked by burrow but is manageable against sink, can blast Ghostkershield pretty well and defend decently.
1p sets are much easier to make, they usually only require constants, a healer, a freezer, a bomb and maybe a reflector or two. That is because there is much less strategy and attempts to try to block your opponents damage in 1p. Almost anything will work for 1p.
Part 4: Strategy!
Strategy is where the fun comes into the battledome.
1. 2p: This is the place where strategy will matter the most. Just because someone has a set that’s twice the price of yours doesn’t meant they’ll automatically win. You do have some options available to you that can combat expensive sets.
1a. Weapons as strategy; just because a weapon isn’t extremely expensive doesn’t mean it’s not good. The portable kiln is only 2.4m, currently, and the Ghostkershield is 7.4m, currently. But, the P.Kiln gets all 11 icons through the G-shields defenses. You want to know what weapons do what icons or block what icons. You want to know what your weapons can do to get around their defenses or how to properly block their weapons. It takes time to memorize things like this and be able to make a quick decision in battle.
1b. Faerie Abilities; These are indispensable. Here’s a quick rundown of commonly used faerie abilities:
The timing on these is crucial, I usually scout out what my opponent has for weapons before you use either of these. If they have a Bow of Destiny, which gets 10 past sink, then use Burrow instead. This can also cost you the fight. If they overpower you before you’re able to get off one of these effectively, the fight is over usually. This is especially true at the lower leagues as you have less HP to figure out your opponent. Most of the time you want to make an educated guess, it’s ok to go with your gut on what you think your opponent is going to do. Predicting your opponent is half the battle.
1c. Freezing; This is a questionable one, it all depends on what you think will happen. If you think you can survive them freezing you and will be able to heal after it, let them freeze first and try to freeze them late in the battle when you know you can kill them with your bomb and best constant while they’re frozen. That strategy can also backfire, if you wait too long they will most likely heal and could end up killing you because you already healed and can’t get them down to low enough HP to kill with freeze bombing. As I said before, half the battle is prediction.
2. Stances; this is what you choose when you attack. Each stance does something different to your attack. Here is another table, because I know how much you love them!
Your stance works for both you AND your opponent. So if you use Berserk attack, they will do 50% more damage, as well. Or vice versa if they do berserk attack you will do 50% more damage even if you used cautious.
I generally use cautious or defend, so that damage is reduced or kept even. Berserk is almost never used, usually used when someone wants the fight to end and doesn’t care if they win or lose.
A NOTE: Opponents that are frozen will always take damage as if you attacked with Cautious attack, so it doesn’t matter if you attack with berserk, you won’t do 50% more damage.
3. 1p Strategy: This all depends on the opponent. I believe there is a decent Defenders of Neopia guide on this site, so I would refer to it for 1p strategy trying to get those trophies. There is also a guide on Battledome avatars refer to that for strategies on those 1p opponents.
