Lutari Talisman

In the Site Feature Trophies section of your user lookup, you'll find this lovely icon:

This is known as a Lutari Talisman. The word "talisman" usually refers to an object that can be charged with magical powers. The Lutari Talisman, loosely based on the Native American dreamcatcher, can store several magical beads. While these beads are quite expensive (to the point of not being cost-effective), they might just bring you some good fortune while playing Neopets!

While the icon appears on everyone's lookup, you can only see your own particular talisman; you cannot view any other user's talisman.

Beads

There are five kinds of Talisman beads, each available in four different colours:

You must place a bead on your Talisman in order for the bead to work. To put a bead onto your Talisman, click on it in your Inventory. There will be an option there for you to move the bead over.

You can only place one bead of each kind on your Talisman. Once attached, they can never be removed.

When you have placed your beads on your Talisman, they will look like this:

As you can see, the beads in your inventory look the same by themselves as they do on the Talisman. There is one glitchy exception to this rule: when placed on the Talisman, the red Tongi bead will appear as a red Matu bead and vice-versa. Nobody is quite sure why this happens; one can safely assume it is a harmless glitch.

Getting Beads

Currently, beads can only be obtained from other players. All original sources of the beads are permanently retired.

The Lutari Talisman was originally a feature of Lutari Island. This land was in turn part of Neopets Mobile, a service that allowed users of certain mobile phones on certain carriers to access a special version of Neopets on their phones. If a user referred a friend to Neopets Mobile, both the user and their friend were rewarded with a bead when their friend signed up.

Neopets Mobile was discontinued in June 2009 and this method of obtaining beads disappeared with it. All beads except Tongi beads were still given out by an old random event until April 2014, when the random event was discontinued after the revamp.

Bead Effects

The exact effects of each bead have never been revealed by TNT. The official descriptions of each bead are as follows: red beads bring strength, green bring luck; blue bring diplomacy and yellow bring speed.

However, we can draw some conclusions based on the research of Neopians including solsticesprite and chaosrocket regarding what some beads might actually do:

• Red beads result in shop discounts when haggling at Neopian shops (not user shops). Evidence suggests one red bead equates to a 2% discount; two red beads a 4% discount; three beads, 6%; four beads, 8%; and five beads, 10%.


Sample shop price bonus showing 4% discount
- courtesy of ryan104965

• Green beads result in Neopoint game bonuses. When sending your score after a game, occasionally your Talisman will randomly increase the neopoints you receive. One bead will grant you a 10% increase in neopoints, two beads 25%, three beads 50%, four beads 75%, and five beads 100%.


Sample game bonus showing 10% NP increase
- courtesy of hypertext_godess1999

• Blue beads and yellow beads have unknown effects. Several effects have been speculated, but these are purely conjecture, unconfirmed by hard data:
• they increase the chances of red and green Lutari bead effects
• they increase the frequency of training bonuses
• they increase the frequency of Faerie quests
• they increase the frequency of Random Events
• they increase the chances of semirandom avatars such as Edna - Cackle! and Snowager - Rawr!

It's possible that TNT has changed the properties of blue and yellow beads. It's even possible TNT never activated them, and they do nothing.

I remain shrouded in mystery - just like the island, in fact...

This article was written by: Torratz