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Habitarium

Professor Milton Clodbottle has quite the interesting invention. Using his "Habitariums," Neopians could, for several years, raise their own petpeptets (or P3s) and watch them work, grow, and even interact with their friends' Habitariums. Those that took care of them could create quite a money-making machine. Habitariums were discontinued in September 2014, when the Neopets servers moved.

Choosing Your Habitarium

Habitariums came in three different layouts - Seedling Grove, Blossom Meadow, and Puddle Lake. After a layout was selected, players would move on to the official Tutorial, guided by the Professor. He gave tips on how to run your habitairum, and keep your P3s happy and busy.

Seedling Grove

The trees provide nice shade for Petpetpets to sleep under.

Blossom Meadow

The flowers make this meadow smell... flowery!

Puddle Lake

One Neopet's puddle is another Petpetpet's lake!

The Petpetpets and their Professions

Species

Three of the known species of petpetpet could be found in Habitariums - Mootix, Larnikins, and Pinchits. Other than appearance, there were no differences between the species; they would all perform the same tasks based on their job type. Like all bugs, though, these petpetpets only had a short lifespan (if taken care of, they'd live about a week). If players lost all their petpets, the Professor would give them a new Nester to start over with. Players were also able to save their eggs indefinitely, so prolonged breaks were easily possible. Once a P3 died, a gem would appear in the habitarium, and would give XP when clicked; the amount of XP gained would depend on how long the P3 lived.

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go!

Jobs

In addition to species, P3s would be divided up by job classes. Unlike species, this actually did impact their performance. There were three job classes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Some skills could be performed by multiple job classes; bold text denotes the job class that would perform that skill the best.

• Nesters
  • The only kind that lays eggs
  • Have comparatively low HP
  • Can gather supplies
  • Can fight off invaders
• Workers
  • Can repair buildings
  • Can gather supplies
  • Can fight off invaders
• Soldiers
  • Can fight off invaders
  • Can repair buildings
  • Can go on raids
  • Will seek out and fight invaders automatically

Jobs are not affected by species, and could not be changed. Eggs would identify both the species and the job class of a petpet before they were hatched, so users could avoid having too many of one or another type. If the habitarium was full (maximum number of petpets currently active), an egg would have to be harvested before the job class could be seen (in the inventory).

Your Screen

Another busy day...

Above is a screenshot of a Habitarium. By number, here are the things that you see:

1. This is your level meter. This tells you what level you're at, and how much experience points (XP) you need in order to reach the next level.
2. These bubbles are your options. Click these to zoom in, zoom out, turn the sound on or off, turn the music on or off, open the Habitarium FAQ, or take a photo of your Habitarium.
3. These bubbles are your resources. Hover over each bubble to see how much of that resource you have.
4. This is your magnifying glass. This gives you information about the selected item, and gives you options of things to do with that object.
5. These are your friends. If your Neofriends have Habitariums, they will show up here.
6. The brown bag is your inventory and the blue bag is the Shop. Open your inventory to view your items, and open the Shop to buy more.

Things to Do

Within your Habitarium, there are many things to do to make life better for your little petpetpets. Some of these things may take time to complete, however, so it's recommended that you have another window or tab open while your petpetpets do their work.

Nesting

By placing a Nester petpetpet on a nest, that petpetpet will start to lay an egg. Once the egg is laid, it will need to be incubated for a short period of time. However, after the egg has been cared for properly, you can do a number of things with it. First, you can hatch the egg by clicking the center "hatch" button located at the bottom of the petpetpet viewer. This will hatch the egg and give you a new member for your Habitarium. However, you might not have enough room for another petpetpet. If this happens, you will be forced to harvest the egg by clicking the "harvest" button located at the bottom left of your magnifying glass. This simply places the egg in your bag so that you can hatch it later. Finally, if you don't want the egg your petpetpet has laid, you can click the button at the bottom right of your magnifying glass and discard it.

Mama knows best!

Gathering

To buy things from the shop, you need resources. Handily enough, both Workers and Nesters can help you with that. To make your petpetpets gather a specific resource, place them near the resource tile that yields the resource you want. After a bit of scurrying around, your petpetpets will start to gather that resource. Not sure what resource yields what? Not to worry. Just check the table below to find out! (Keep in mind that of these six, wood, mud, and stone are the resources that you will need the most of.)

The bog will give you mud.

The water pump will give you water.

The trees will give you wood.

The flower will give you pollen.

The rock will give you stone.

The grass will give you grass.

Your petpetpets can 'hold' 350 units of each resource amongst themselves (presumably they all have pockets). Beyond that you will need to build a storage facility in which to store the resources you gather. A level 1 storage building can hold 2500 units of each resource. Upgrading these buildings will increase their capacity to 3500 units at level 2, and 4500 units when maxed out at level 3. More about upgrading later.

All of your petpetpets will collect resources at the same time and then will all turn in what they have collected at the same time. Since this means they have to make the journey to the nearest storage facility and then back to their resource tile, some petpetpets will return to work more quickly than others. They will all continue to gather their individual resources for about 18 seconds or so from the time that the last gatherer returned to work. This means that your gatherers should all remain in sync with each other.

Invaders may attack resources. If left unchecked for too long, they may temporarily damage a resource, making it impossible for your workers to harvest resources on that square. Damaged resources are readily recognizable from their wilted or ruined appearance. Damaged resources will automatically restore themselves after a few hours, or a Neofriend can restore your tiles once per day.

Fighting

Sometimes pests - or even your friends' Soldiers! - will get into your Habitarium trying to steal supplies! Don't worry though, your petpetpets will all band together to push out the intruders. If your petpetpets don't seem to notice the intruders, simply drop one next to the unwanted parasite, and they'll join the battle.

Occasionally you may come across a glitch where it seems your petpetpets don't recognise a particular pest invasion, and instead of fighting them off they just stand around with question marks above their heads. In these cases, in order to get them to "recognise" the threat, move your petpetpet to a square which is enclosed on all sides (you can do this with decorative items for this specific purpose) and your petpetpet will somehow magically attack the pest even if there is a large distance between them. (Thanks to little_kitty13 for letting us know about this!)

Building

You can buy buildings from the Shop, but there is a little construction required. To build the buildings you buy, all you need to do is place Worker or Soldier petpetpets next to the materials. Your bugs will get to work and, when the green bar is full, you'll have one fully functional building.

Abracadabra, alakazam!

Leveling Up

Leveling up your Habitarium to the maximum of level 50 can be quite the task. In the earlier levels, only a small amount of XP is needed to reach the next level. However, in the later levels, you will need quite a bit more XP. So, to make things a little easier, here is a list of XP earning tasks.

• Defeating an invader - 30 XP
• Discard an egg - 200 XP
• Hatching an egg - 30 XP
• Help out a friend - 50 XP
• Have a petpetpet reach the end of it's life cycle - 50/100/150 XP depending on that petpetpet's longevity
• Gather a resource - 1 XP per resource gathered
• Finish a building - 200 XP
• Upgrading a building - 300 XP
• Repair a building - 5 XP per level of decay

Also, by leveling up your Habitarium, you can earn items, an increased maximum population, and more space in which to place those spiffy decorations. To see all of this, check the table below:

After Level 50

Currently there is a level cap in place which prevents you from leveling up beyond level 50. Once you reach this point the experience bar at the top of your Habitarium will be replaced with a purple bar. Each time you fill it a purple gem will appear somewhere on your Habitarium board. Clicking on these gems will grant you 500 NP.

A number of players have reached this point and then set up their Habitarium so it continues running in the background while they do other things or even leave it running all night to amass a large quantity of gems. We strongly advise against this. This behaviour falls into a grey area as far as The Neopets Team and their rules for playing the site are concerned; leaving the game running could be interpreted as letting the computer play the game for you, which is frowned upon. As such some players have experienced a "lock out" when returning to their game if it has been left running with a number of gems on the screen.

Lock Outs

Being "locked out" of your Habitarium means that when you try to load it you get stuck at the little "loading" wheel and your game won't actually load. People mostly experience this at level 50, but it can happen at any time. Factors which seem to increase the likelihood of being locked out include hoarding large quantities of items, refreshing whilst there are a number of purple gems on the screen, and leaving your Habitarium running for extended periods of time.

If you do get locked out there are ways of resetting your Habitarium, although none of them are particularly simple. Your best chance at fixing the problem would be to seek help on the Habitarium Neoboard; there are a number of users there who have experienced with this glitch who can talk you through what to do next.

The Shop

Who doesn't love shopping? Well, even if you don't there are tons of useful items in the Habitarium Shop. The categories of items are as follows:

• Buildings
• Supplies
• Ink (Ink Droppers and Ink Bottles)
• Decorations

Check here for a list of all items and their functions. Also note that some items that need NC to be purchased.

I hope you brought your grocery list...

Upgrade

When you get to certain levels, you can start to upgrade your petpetpets and your structures. The more you upgrade, the more advantageous your petpetpets and structures will be.

At level 11, you can upgrade petpetpets, which helps them to do their jobs better by giving them increased health, food, and rest counts. This way, your petpetpets can go much longer doing their jobs before they need to rest or eat.

Upgrading structures will make them more useful. At level thirteen, you can upgrade your houses, which will then be able to hold two more petpetpets (from a maximum of three to a maximum of five). At level seventeen, you can upgrade your nests, which will then have shorter incubation times (the blue bar will fill up faster). Finally, at level 21, you can upgrade your storage, which will then be able to hold more resources, exactly 3500 of each resource, to be precise.

Upgrading will cost you resources, however, so check the table below to see how much of each resource you'll need.

Interacting with Neofriends

As well as take care of your own Habitarium, you can also interact with your Neofriends' Habitariums. Although, it's up to you you'd like to be kind or tricky.

Gifting

Using the gifting option, you can exchange gifts between friends. To give an item to a friend, click on the present icon below their username at the bottom of the screen. From there, you can simply drag and drop the item you wish to give them into the empty bubble. Keep in mind that you cannot transfer items purchased with Neocash to other users.

Raiding

If you're feeling particularly treacherous, you can raid your friends' Habitariums by clicking the sword icon below their username. This will send out your soldier petpetpets to take resources from their tiles. However, be warned! If your friend has a good number of petpetpets, it will be extremely difficult to gain any resources without a good number of soldiers to counter. In the end, if you don't think that your petpetpets will be able to gather resources without being killed by your friend first, it is not a good idea to go on a raid.

Helping Out

Helping out is one of the most useful functions of being able to interact with friends. Once you click the hammer icon below their username, you will be presented with the three options below.

• Take Care of a Petpetpet: This option will restore the health, rest, and hunger of one of your Neofriend's petpetpets.
• Repair a Building: This option will remove one level of decay from one of your Neofriend's buildings.
• Repair all Resource Tiles: This option will repair your Neofriend's resource tiles so that their petpetpets can gather a maximum yield.

Closure

Following their purchase by JumpStart in early 2014, Neopets moved to new offices, and new servers. As a result of the move, the site had to be shut down for several days. During this period it was announced that Habitarium was no longer going to be featured on the site. As such, Habitarium officially closed on September 17, 2014.

After the site was back online and running, TNT announced a set of prizes available to all users who had ever played Habitarium. By visiting the Habitarium main page, users can receive a Habitarium Goodies Chest as well as an exclusive site theme.

When opened, the chest will award users with the following items:

This game guide was written by JN Staff and last updated on August 27, 2024.