The Lab Ray
The Secret Laboratory is highly sought after on Neopets; it allows for stats changes, as well as species, gender, and colour changes for your pets.
This guide is for the standard Lab Ray! If you are looking for information about the
Petpet Lab Ray, please see
this guide.
While we can't imagine what the Scientist was thinking when creating the Lab Ray,
at least it worked out better than Kooky's version.
Secret Laboratory Map
To access the Secret Laboratory, you must first turn in all nine map pieces (at the same time) from your inventory at the Treasure Maps page. Turning in these pieces will grant your account permanent access to the Lab Ray. It will also award 10-15k Neopoints (despite this, you are still allowed to turn in the pieces on side accounts).
These Secret Laboratory Map pieces are primarily given out through the following means:
However, if you are hoping to get all the pieces yourself through these options, it will likely still take you years, so you probably need to purchase at least a few pieces from other players.
For a complete list of our latest estimated prices for the pieces, we recommend our Item Database. Note that the pieces cannot be searched on the Super Shop Wizard, so you will either have to refresh on the regular Shop Wizard or head to the Trading Post where many players like to sell complete sets for a fixed price (though this is usually more expensive than buying individually from user shops).
The Finished Map
Below you can see what the completed map will look like.
If you notice some whitespace between these pieces, that's unfortunately because not all of the item images are perfect squares...
Unfortunately, like other treasure maps, the pieces of the Lab Map disappear forever when you hand them in. This means there is no way to get them back if you decide you no longer want to zap your pets.
Accessing the Lab
After you have turned in the lab map pieces, you can access the lab here. The lab does not appear on any world maps or other pages, so it is best to bookmark this link for easy use. (It could formerly be accessed through a Treasure Maps link in the games room, but this link was removed when the games room was updated to a mobile-friendly layout.)
Zapping Your Pet
Once you have turned the map pieces in, you will receive permanent access to the Lab Ray. Standard accounts are limited to one zap per account per day, and Premium accounts are limited to two. A counter displays underneath the "zap" button which displays your remaining number of zaps.
You are able to zap any one of your pets on any given day, and as the Lab Ray does not award neopoints, you are allowed to complete the map and use the Ray on multiple accounts. Do bear in mind that you must earn all neopoints to buy the Lab Map on your main account, and then send the pieces to your side accounts.
With the release of the Lab Ray Fortune Cookie in the NC Mall, you do have the opportunity to get some extra zaps. You can only open it on your main account, with the exception being if you have the lab ray on a side but not your main account. This perk does stack with the bonus Premium zap, allowing Premium users to have up to 5 zaps per day.
Possible Lab Ray Outcomes
There are a number of possible outcomes when you choose to use the Lab Ray:
- decrease or increase stats
- strength: -3, -2, +2, or +3
- defence: -3, -2, +2, or +3
- movement: -3, -2, +2, or +3
- hit points: +2, +3, +4, or +5
- level: -2, +2, or back to 1
- change your pet's appearance
- change your pet's gender
- change your pet's colour
- change your pet's species (and its colour to one of the four basic colours)
- nothing at all (can only happen to a pet with already low stats; see the next section for more details)
These outcomes are not all equally likely. The chart below shows the approximate probability of each possible change. Each possible outcome within each row of this table is equally likely; for example, a strength increase of +2 is equally likely as a strength increase of +3.
| Action |
Chance |
| Strength Decrease* |
5.6% |
| Strength Increase |
11.3% |
| Defence Decrease* |
7.5% |
| Defence Increase |
5.6% |
| Movement Decrease* |
8.0% |
| Movement Increase |
11.2% |
| Level Decrease** |
13.3% |
| Level Increase |
5.6% |
| Hit Points Increase |
13.6% |
| Gender Change |
8.0% |
| Colour Change |
6.7% |
| Species Change |
3.3% |
* if your pet has 7 or lower strength/defence/movement before zapping, you will receive the "doesn't change at all :(" outcome instead of that decrease.
** if your pet is level 2 or lower before zapping, you will receive the "doesn't change at all :(" outcome instead of a level decrease. This probability also includes the chance of the "down to level 1 :(" outcome; for more info see the next section.
These probabilities are calculated based on hundreds of thousands of automatically recorded zaps from our Lab Ray Logger! Specifically, we used data from January 2018 through October 2021.
The first time that you get a species change on an account, you get an avatar!
Pwned by the Lab / Guide
Get your pet's species changed via the Lab Ray.
Released: June 23, 2004
Outcome Analysis
We are able to use the data from Jellyneo's Lab Ray Logger to produce some interesting insights.
- Colour Likelihoods: If the Lab Ray changes your pet's colour (but not species), every possible colour for your pet's species has an equally likely chance of being chosen. No one colour or group of colours is more or less likely than any other (besides, of course, the excluded colours listed in the next section).
- Species Likelihoods: Like with colours, no one species or group of species is more or less likely than any other to result from a zap (besides, of course, the excluded species listed in the next section).
- Long-Run Stat Changes: You can expect that, over the long term, strength, hit points, and movement will increase. Similarly, defence and level will decrease. Specifically, the expected value of all stat changes are:
- Strength: +0.143
- Defence: -0.048
- Movement: +0.080
- HP: +0.476
- Level: -0.154
It may be easier to think about these values in terms of how much you can expect your stats to change if you zapped the same pet 100 times. (Assuming their stats are high enough to avoid the "nothing" outcome; see the final bullet point for more on this.)
- Strength: +14
- Defence: -5
- Movement: +8
- HP: +48
- Level: -15
- "Back to level 1!": TNT has confirmed that it is possible but very rare for a higher level pet to get the "Back to level 1" outcome. Unfortunately, we cannot definitively confirm exactly how rare, but the probability decreases greatly as level increases, perhaps exponentially or even factorially. However, we can offer this insight: one Jellyneo staffer has zapped the same pet, whose level was never below 9 when zapped, over 2,700 times using the logger, and never had level reset to 1.
- "doesn't change at all": This outcome can only occur when your pet has low Strength, Defence, Movement, or Level. When Strength, Defence, or Movement are 7 or lower and the randomly chosen outcome is to reduce that stat, the Ray will instead do nothing. The same is true when Level is 2 or lower. In other words, the ray can only decrease these stats when they are above a certain threshold (8+ for Strength, Defence, and Movement; 3+ for Level). This means that for pets with stats that exceed all of these thresholds, you will never get the "nothing happens" outcome!
- Time Invariance: There is no hour or hours at which any outcomes (such as a colour change) are more or less likely.
Restrictions of The Lab Ray
There are seven colours that the Lab Ray cannot turn your pet into:
There are five species that cannot be obtained from the Lab Ray:
- Draik
- Krawk
- Ixi
- Tonu
- Varwolf
The Lab Ray won't change intelligence, height, weight, age, mood, or hunger.
The Lab Ray won't do anything to your petpet. (If you're interested in doing that, check out the Petpet Lab Ray!)
You are able to zap any Neopet currently on your account, no matter its species, colour, age, or any other characteristic.
Exclusive Colours
Some colours are generally only available from the Lab Ray. The only other way to achieve them is under certain conditions of the annual Premium species change perk, or from the annual Holiday Dream Neopet Giveaway—not even a paint brush or Fountain Faerie Quest will work.
These exclusive colours are:
However, there are a handful of caveats to the above.
TNT has cautioned players that the above types of items are "rare exceptions" and not to expect additional ones to be released.
Some other colours are often considered Lab Ray colours because they cannot be achieved with any item, though they are also available through Fountain Faerie Quests: Alien, Chocolate, Custard, Garlic, Jelly, Mallow, and Snot. Clay is also mostly only accessible through either the Lab Ray or Rainbow Fountain, but does have one morphing potion available: the Clay Aisha Morphing Potion. Coconut is also mostly only accessible through either the Lab Ray or Rainbow Fountain, but does have one item available for Chias: Magical Coconut Chia Pop.
All other special colours that can be achieved with a non-paint brush item can also be achieved through both the Lab Ray and the Rainbow Fountain. These include fruit & veggie Chia colours (normally from Magical Chia Pops) and Mutant (normally from Transmogrification Potions). One colour, 8-Bit (normally from 8-bit Power-Up Potion), is available from the Lab Ray but not the Rainbow Fountain.
Wearables
If the Lab Ray changes your pet into a species/colour combination that has paint brush clothing, everything your pet is wearing will be returned to your closet. If you change to a species/colour that does not have paint brush clothing, but your pet is wearing species- or colour-specific wearables, only those wearables will be returned to your closet. You will never lose any items from the Lab Ray.
Battledome Challenger
The Lab Ray gives you access to a new Battledome challenger, the Lab Ray Scientist. To get the Scientist as a challenger, just refresh at the "Select a Pet" page when you go to use the lab.
The Lab Ray Scientist is a popular opponent for his use of the Strange Potion, which can change the gender of the pet it is used against; this change remains even after the battle is over. Players who wish to change the gender of one of their pets can do so cheaply within a few turns of battling.
Since battling in the Battledome awards Neopoints and items, it can only be done on your main account, even though you're allowed to unlock the Lab Ray on your side accounts. If your mis-gendered pet is on a side account, you will have to transfer them to your main account first—unless if the side account is your only account with the Lab Ray, then you may lose a fight with the Lab Ray Scientist for a gender change (per Editorial 889).
The Previous Lab Ray Map
The Secret Laboratory Map got an image redesign on April 20, 2011. Here's what it used to look like:
This page was written by Dave & Kenny and last updated on April 5, 2025.
