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.

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:

• Any one of the nine pieces can be received from a rare Random Event.
• One of three different pieces are possible main prizes for the day from Tarla's Non-Toolbar Treasures.
• Any one of the nine pieces can be won from the Wheel of Extravagance.
• Any one of the nine pieces is a possible prize from the Creative Contests.
• You can get the full set of nine pieces once you referred 250 people through the Referral Programme.

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.

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.

Zapping Your Pet

Once you have turned the map pieces in, you will receive permanent access to the Lab Ray, but you are limited to one zap per account per day. 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.

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.

* 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!

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:

• Baby (need to use a Baby Paint Brush or morphing potion)
• Magma (must be done at the Magma Pool)
• Pirate (need to use a Pirate Paint Brush, morphing potion, or magical plushie)
• Plushie (need to use a Plushie Paint Brush or morphing potion)
• Quiguki (need to use an Usuki Paint Brush)
• Royal (need to use a Royal Paint Brush or morphing potion)
• Usuki (need to use an Usuki Paint Brush)

There are four species that cannot be obtained from the Lab Ray:

• Draik
• Krawk
• Ixi
• Tonu

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!)

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:

• Burlap
• Ice
• Mosaic
• MSP
• Robot
• Sponge

However, there are a handful of caveats to the above.

• Bori cannot be zapped to Ice due to them being exclusive to an old sponsor promotion. (To learn more about how Ice Bori were created, see our Ice Bori guide.)
• You can acquire an Ice Hissi using a morphing potion or an Ice Draik using a Draik egg. (These are rare exceptions, and TNT has cautioned players not to expect more to be released.)
• The One-Use Robotification Zappermajig is a No-Trade prize from the Return of Dr. Sloth plot that can transform your pet into Robot.
• The 2018 Charity Corner and 2019 Charity Corner "Colour it Wild" perk allowed a pet to be zapped to any colour available at the Lab Ray.

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, Clay, Coconut, Custard, Garlic, Jelly, Mallow, and Snot.

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), Mutant (normally from Transmogrification Potions), and 8-Bit (normally from 8-bit Power-Up Potion).

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.

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 article was written by: Dave & Kenny