The Ultimate Guide to World Challenges
Written by theonlysaneone
I. Introduction
II. Three Ways to Win
III. Completing Your Map
I. Introduction
As someone who makes most of his income from World Challenges, I’m constantly looking for ways to improve my chances of winning. Whether you already make lots of neopoints from World Challenges, or you don’t even know what they are, you can probably learn something from this guide. First, you must know what a World Challenge is: Every hour, everyone on Neopets will have their game scores matched with other peoples’, for a nominal fee of 100 NP. The people with the highest number of wins, the highest score, or the highest total of scores win a piece of a map. Collect all 20 pieces and you can win a prize, ranging from 100K to millions of NP! Unfortunately, it’s not easy to win these pieces, and that’s where I come in. With my help, you can be well on the road to mastering World Challenges!
II. Three Ways to Win
As I mentioned earlier, while I was rambling on like a Donald Trump self-help video, there are three ways to win. You can win any one of them, but you should target one way at the beginning of the challenge. The first step is to find a game you’re moderately good at. You don’t have to make a high score or anything, but you should be doing reasonably well compared to the other people doing the challenge. To see how well you’re doing, go to the game at a time when it’ll be really crowded, and check to see each person’s average score for the hour. It takes a lot of time, but you’ll be glad you did it. To find the average score, go to the Total Score column and divide by Number of Scores Sent. Do that for every person on the list. If your usual score is about as good as or higher than some of the people who have a Tally of 0 or better, you’re set. If not, you may need a little practice. Try to figure out from that the range of scores you’ll be sending. If your scores are good (in the range I described above) try to amass a high total score. If your scores are higher than good, try to get the highest tally. If your scores are amazing (like high-score table good, or close to it), try to get the highest score for the hour. Details below.
A. Highest Tally (high, but not really high scores)
The tally is the fundamental aspect of World Challenges. To win this way, your tally must fall into the range in which you can get prizes (in other words, be above the little line on the chart). Each game will have a different tally that you’ll need to get in order to beat the other people. Quick games like Meerca Chase and Whack-a-Kass might require you to get a tally of 5 or higher to win, but longer games like Faerie Cloud Racers don’t need as high of a tally. Again, pay attention to previous games, and watch your chart. In order to build up your tally, you need to win against people you’re randomly matched against. For all you know, you could be matched against the #1 player of the game, or you could be matched against a complete newbie. However, you can maximize your odds of winning against the other person. If you see someone who is winning a lot of times with really high scores (higher than yours), you should wait until right after their score is paired to send yours. That way, you might not be paired up with them. You shouldn’t send scores that aren’t high, because you’ll LOSE a point from your tally if you lose against someone else. In my opinion, this is the hardest way to win World Challenges, but it is the only way that earns you NP from the Jackpot (Jackpots don’t usually run very high, so that’s not a really good reason for it). If you get your tally to a point where you are satisfied with it, don’t send any more scores, or else you could lose those points.
B. Highest Score (for really good gamers)
This is the absolute best way to win World Challenges, but only if you can pull it off. You could conceivably win a World Challenge having only sent 1 score! However, your score must be really high (obviously). Winning this way should never be your only option. In other words, if you get a good score that isn’t a really high score, go ahead and send it. It can help out in other ways, like bumping up your tally or total score. When you send a really high score, you may think you can just walk off and win the challenge automatically. WRONG! Two things can go wrong there, and cause you to lose the challenge: First, you might be paired with someone who has a higher score, and get a tally of -1. No matter how high your score is, your tally must be 0 or higher for you to win. Secondly, you could be surpassed by other people with higher scores. That usually doesn’t happen, but it’s happened to me before. My suggestion is, check back every 10 minutes or so to make sure you’re at least one spot above the winning line. You don’t want to be in a position where you could be kicked out by one person in the last 10 minutes of the challenge. Also, make sure your list is sorted by High Score to win this way. To do this, click the link above the data field, and make sure you’re well into the winning range.
C. Total Score (for people who are good, but not that good)
This is the most time-consuming way to win the World Challenge, but it is also the easiest for players who aren’t as good at the games. The idea here is to have your scores, all added together, in the winning range for that data field (again, click the link to resort the list), while keeping your tally at 0 or higher. The nice thing about this method is that it employs a good deal of strategy. First, you should win a pairing. When you do, check your score, and the other scores above you. If you lose, don’t worry! You can get that point back. The next step is to play again. Score as high as you can, but make sure it is a score high enough to get you well into the winning range. Send it, no matter what it is. It doesn’t matter if you win or lose, because your tally will just go back to 0. This strategy will put you above the people who just send high scores, and many people who try to get high tallies. If your game is one where people send scores lots of times, just wash, rinse, and repeat. Remember not to waste a single win, and never let your tally go below 0. If it does, get a win as fast as you can.
III. Completing Your Map
Now that you’re winning all of these map pieces, what do you do with them? If you’re like me, you’ll keep getting doubles. My advice is, keep winning challenges without trading for unique pieces until you’ve got only 5 pieces to fill in. I ran the numbers: If you wait until you get all of the pieces by themselves, you’ll have won 67 challenges. At the limit of 3 challenges per day, that’s more than three weeks! You can’t wait that long! If you only go until you have 5 left to fill in, you’ll have won only about 25 challenges, with about 10 doubles to trade (The numbers there are a little shaky, because the randomizer that determines which piece you get is a little off. Expect it to be a few more than that). Trade for the last 5 pieces, and sell your map! Then, use the doubles you had before to begin your new one, and keep going. If you’re planning to convert your map, compete in WCs until you have exactly 20 pieces and trade the doubles. You’ll have no use for the doubles once you move up to the next map. The going price for a completed map is always changing, so be sure to check your price on the Trading Post. You’ll have to split the map in two to trade it.
If you thought my guide was helpful, feel free to PM me on PPT as theonlysaneone, or drop me a Neomail (my username is nicholasclaus). Thanks for your time, and good luck!
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