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Welcome to the 1st Saturday of the month: Rubbish Dump Day!

In April 2022, TNT updated the Rubbish Dump to increase the drop rate of "rubbish" eligible for the avatar. (And we've even seen some Hidden Tower items pop up that weren't previously confirmed as prizes!)

The Rubbish Dump is special in that items dropped there appear after a Neopian refreshes the dump. (In other words, refreshing the page gives you the chance to "donate" some rubbish to the queue.) The more people visiting and refreshing, the more rubbish dropped, and the more opportunities there are for avatar items to appear!

Starting now, and continuing all day, here's how you can gather and participate:

If you DON'T have the avatar...

• Visit the Rubbish Dump in Meridell and refresh to generate rubbish!
• Claim up to 8 pieces of rubbish to clear the way for more items to appear. (And make sure not to claim anything from the Money Tree or Second-Hand Shoppe... it's 10 items max from all 3 locations combined!)
• To be safe from accidental clicks, save your last 2 rubbish claims for when an avatar item pops up. (You can claim up to 10 items from the Rubbish Dump per day.)
• Review our guide to familiarize yourself with which items are eligible for the avatar.

If you DO have the avatar...

• Visit the Rubbish Dump in Meridell and refresh to help generate rubbish! Even if you have the avatar, refreshing helps generate more "donations" that will show up later. (And that means more opportunities for avatar items to pop up!)
• Claim up to 10 pieces of rubbish to help clear the way for avatar-eligible items to appear.
• Be kind and leave the cheaper avatar-eligible items (like the Fading Bottled Faeries) for those who need the avatar! We won't mind, however, if you try sniping a Dung Catapult.

The more the merrier, so share this post with your Neofriends and guildmates!

As you participate, let us know in the comments what junk—or treasures—you've seen or picked up! And let us know if you get the avatar so we can celebrate with you.


Can't get enough rubbish? Mark your calendars and join us on the first Saturday of next month—October 7th—for our next Rubbish Dump Day!

As announced with the management change in July, Neopets: Island Builders will be retiring in its current form and be rebooted as a new experience. Today TNT have released a page describing their plans for the 'new' game.


As part of this, TNT are asking for beta testers for the new game. This will be a mobile app like Island Builders available on both Android and iOS devices. Beta testing is slated to begin in October to November. The full release is currently slated for the end of this year. Beta testers will get an exclusive badge to display in the final game.


Incidentally, this update also confirms that the present version of Island Builders is now over. While the game has been largely down for the past few months, this update marks the official end of support as today, September 1st. If you did not already play the game or claim the Neopets.com rewards for doing so, you will be unable to gain them going forward.

The fourth item for the Escape to Kiko Lake collection is now released, and is themed around the Kiko Lake Carpentry Shopkeeper's handiwork! This item will only be available in September.

September - the herald of autumn - has arrived, and the beginning of a new month means another chance to collect some freebie foods and Neopoints!


Donations
Want to help Jellyneo stay online, and earn a trophy or two in the process? You can find all the details you need to donate to help keep JN running and ad-free into the future on our donation page! Based on the amount donated, you'll also receive an exclusive 2023 Donation Trophy.

Thanks to generous support, JN has reached our goal for 2023! Additional donations are still appreciated, and will earn you this year's trophy.



Contribute to Jellyneo
Not in a position to donate, but want to help out by contributing some of your time? We're always looking for help on different projects! Check out the Contribute to Jellyneo page (also linked on the sidebar) to see what we currently need help with at the moment. Projects include: submitting data for existing articles (like Test Your Strength results), writing new articles, helping us research old Neopian content, modeling wearables, and more!

Prima Games reporter Priscilla Wells sat down with Dominic Law, the CEO of Neopets, for an interview on a wide range of topics. Everything from Flash games returning to inflation to the 56th Neopet to Premium changes were discussed.

We recommend you read through the full interview, linked above, but here are some of the notable highlights...

On the upcoming World of Neopets app vs. the Neopets.com site we all know and love:

Prima Games: What would you say to players who are worried that the majority of financial investment and manpower will be poured into the World of Neopets app as opposed to the website?

Dominic: I think that’s probably a misconception or miscommunication from our end to be honest. Our major focus and the core of our strategy is to put a lot of our effort and resources into what the community wants the most. Which in their words is ‘fix the site’. We’re definitely pouring a lot more resources into reviving the whole IP and reviving the brand as a whole. A main pillar of that is actually fixing the original Neopets.com and making sure that our users and most long-term supporters are cared about.

On Key Quest and Habitarium... (no, they're still not coming back)

Prima Games: Speaking of restoring content, do you plan to restore aspects of the website such as Key Quest and Habitarium?

Dominic: Those two are probably the most demanded aspects from our community members. We’ve been hearing repeatedly from our community that those are the two side games that they’ve enjoyed the most. So, we are looking more into it. We have been studying what we know and trying to get more feedback from the community. Some of the new game experiences that we’ve been planning and building, for example, World of Neopets, will be drawing a lot of inspiration from these games. There are many elements that we’re drawing from and will be brought back. But so far, we’re still exploring whether it’s possible to bring back more of what our community loves the most. But definitely, looking into that.

On a possible 56th species of Neopet...

Prima Games: With Neopets having a significant amount of customization items, do you think it is possible that we could see a new species of Neopet someday?

Dominic: That I will say is, if not one of the top three, one of the top ten initiatives that we’re exploring and looking at. But, as you may know, like bringing back the website and the fixes, there are a lot of items that are on our to do lists. To be honest, we’re quite open minded and flexible. So, we are trying to work a lot closer with the community and see how we can prioritize and execute along the way. But there are a lot of tasks, and some of the most prominent and immediate tasks we are still working very hard to solve.

Introducing a new species is definitely something that’s on our mind. But the exact timeline is hard, very hard to say. I would say that we are working on developing new hero characters, we are also developing a new plot. Whether there will be a new species, I would wait for our narrative team to continue to explore when the best timing to review and talk more about it is.

On tackling inflation...

Prima Games: Do you plan to tackle inflation in the game? For most players, obtaining items such as stamps isn’t possible. This means that there’s so many avatars out of reach. There has been a range of ideas floating around, such as the rotating Hidden Tower spot.

Dominic: That was definitely one of our near-term focuses. The inflation problem that we’ve been seeing for the past decade, which hasn’t been tackled. We understand that for our lapsed users to be able to come back and enjoy the game it is one of the more prominent issues. It’s a huge problem. To be honest, it’s a million-dollar question on how we could solve it. But we’re definitely looking into all avenues and getting all the feedback that we can from the community. There are a lot of very prominent community members, and also a lot of active members that have been giving us the feedback on what we should be looking into and suggestions on how we can fix it.

We would love to have a more balanced view, and to fix parts of it, but it’s probably not something that we can fix overnight. It’s not something that we could fix once and for all, it will be more of an ongoing continuous process where we’ll be having more checks and balances, a lot of fine tuning of the game economic, and fine tuning the game metrics. As you know, Neopets is a very deep and broad game where there’s a lot of things going on at the same time. So, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what to do to in order to fix it. But we are definitely exploring the economy as a whole and trying to solve as much as we can and keep on delivering.

On Unconverted Neopets returning...

Prima Games: Is there a timeframe on when unconverted pets will be released? The Community Survey was quite some time ago, and people are wondering when it’s going to be implemented. When they are, will they be tradable? And will the original ones be grandfathered in some way?

Dominic: How should I put this, I think we’re fine tuning some of the final steps of our plan. So, I would say we will be releasing more information pretty soon. I don’t think our fans will be disappointed and our community should be excited about this upcoming announcement. The exact details are still being finetuned, so I don’t want to share too much about it. But yes, as you pointed out, the survey has been ongoing for a while. So, it’s definitely on top of our team’s mind. For as long as the survey has been out, we have been working on it. As we discussed with the inflation problem, it’s part of how to get our lapsed users back, and so there is a lot of balancing between decisions. I would say we’re pretty close to announcing more details. Of course, even after the announcement, if there’s any kind of feedback or concerns, feel free to reach out and we’ll definitely look into it. Because this would probably be one of our biggest accomplishments within our teams.

On changes to Premium...

Prima Games: Last year’s Premium sale was skipped without any communication. Will there be a premium sale this year?

Dominic: The Premium sale is one of those things that we are trying to restructure to make better sense of. For example, there are multiple tiers that you can subscribe to. But some of the benefits among the tiers might not be transparent. So, we are trying to restructure our Premium sale as a whole when it comes to the subscription itself and what benefits different tiers of subscribers would actually get. Right now, monthly subscribers and annual subscribers are not differentiated. So, it is something that our team is looking into. And then hopefully within the next month or two, we will be releasing a new plan to make sure that it’s more attuned to what modern day game economies standards are. As well as what our community members can make better financial sense of.

Prima Games: So, in the future we could expect the yearly membership to have more perks than the month-by-month membership?

Dominic: Yeah, I will say that. At the very least there would be some changes.

You can read through the full interview here for even more: