When should I speed level for the Secret Ninja Training School?

[zoroastria]

I was planning to wait until I reached 100 level and 200 strength, 200 defense, and 200 HP before speed leveling to 250, but then this faerie quest thing came along... and I'm wondering if it makes more sense economically for me to keep doing the quests (today's will bump me up to level 101, which means a new training bracket and will force me to start speed leveling) or to go back to normal training.

 

My current stats:

 

Lvl : 100
Str : 164
Def : 164
Mov : 72
Hp : 100 / 200

 

Thanks!

[Lamppost]

If you're trying to keep your stats even, I would advise not doing the quest for level. It may save you NP now, but it will cost you extra to get your strength and defense to the 200 boost. This is part of why I recommend not training level up precisely to the top tier until you have to - so you can take advantage of almost-free stats like faerie quests.

[zoroastria]

That's what I'd been doing before the quests started; I trained level and hp to 97 and 194, respectively, and started focusing on bringing up strength/defense. But the ongoing faerie quests event raised me to where I am now.

 

Which I think brings me back to my original question: at what point does it become cheaper to speed level to 250 than to keep going at Mystery Island? 4 codestones? 5? 6? (I'll by cancelling any lessons that I have to pay for with a Zed codestone)

[AJ11]

what you may not have taken into account are: when you are training with reds you can choose NOT to accept the codestone it asks for, so if it asks for a zed you can refuse, you then have to wait 24 hours before returning and you again have a choice .. it could be zed again or it could be mag or sho - any one of the 6 reds available. You are not forced to pay for the expensive ones unless you are in a hurry.

 

The time it takes to train on the brown codestones was the real shock for me, when you are waiting for 8 hours between training as you get more advanced it takes forever to raise your stats. If you level up and move onto reds you can raise your stat every 4 hours and with one red stone which is so much faster.

 

I wish I had gone for it sooner and moved up to reds as soon as it was possible, I waited keeping level stats and I think that is the expensive and longer way to raise stats.

 

I decided to raise just level until I could get into the reds training school and then it was much cheaper raising all my other stats while in there, and very much faster.

 

Just my opinion but there are some really informative things written else where on the logistics of all this.

[patricebee]

Thank you for bringing this up because I am going through the same thing. Except for the faerie quests, I'm starting to train level and get him up to 250 asap. It's a pain when they want 6 brown codestones and the training is 12 hours! I look for the training cookies but they are hard to come by.

[Lamppost]

Right now, as of today, red codestones average about 18,000 NP each, and regular codestones average about 4,000 NP each. That means it becomes more expensive to train with regular codestones than red codestones when you are training with 5 regular codestones, i.e., when you are above Level 100.

[AJ11]

wish I could remember where I read the article about the costs and time of training, After reading it I sat with a calculator working it all out logically and chose to go the red codestone route

 

I had the exact same opinion as lamp post until I sat down and read it all through, the way it worked out it would have taken soooo much longer to get decent stats and cost soo much more too, you have to consider a lot more than just the cost of the individual codestones its the amount of stats you will be raising at each level and how many stones within those levels also the time you will have to wait each time between training

 

Its a personal thing but I am happy with the way I did it just as other people are probably happy going the brown codestone route

[Aquamentis12]

First thing, I would say depending on your training, I would wait until you hit the 7 or 8 brown codestone training levels. My reasons are as follows....

 

Another thing to take into account, and this is why I've been against the masses speed-training to 250 from the lower levels to start, was because the MORE people who need the red stones, the even HIGHER the darn things will go in price!

I DO understand it's a personal choice. I was roughly halfway through the 8 regular codestone training zone before I went up to Level 250 during the Obelisk war. But the whole reason that the red codestones average as much as they do right now is because people just raced up to the red stone training ranges because they were cheaper at the time than training with the regular codestones.

 

It's NOT all about speed, the best way to train, imho, is to do it at a measured pace, so as your pet gets stronger, in however way you train them, you understand their strengths, weaknesses, and are able to compensate. The one thing you cannot gain from speed training levels, is experience. A speed leveler, will gain experience eventually, once they are forced to slow down, but in the meantime, the many speed levelers force down the prices of brown codestones, and over-inflate the price of red stones. At this moment, a Zed Codestone has once again inflated (from the last time I looked) to about 37,000np. For ONE. An Eo Codestone, usually the highest priced of the brown stones, is under 9k. When a player get into the multiple red stone range, and get asked for 2 or more Zeds, Trust me, the wallet HURTS. 2 Zeds is about 74,000np. Simply insane...... although, I must admit, not AS insane as when the red stones first came out. They were ALL unbuyable back then.

 

But still. nobody's gonna stop anyone from speed leveling, and unless someone talks about speed leveling, nobody will probably even know if they are, but I think people should at least be made aware of what it means not just to them, but to everyone in the red stone range. And that those stones WILL only continue to get more expensive as more people, one way or another, enter the red stone range.

 

One more thing, someone could say to me "Sure you're at the top boosts and we're not". To which I would say, It took me 10 years to get this far. I didn't always have the np to train with stones. So I used other methods available as well. Like scratch cards, faerie quests and Kitchen Quests. I took a total of several years off in total from the site since I joined. So that naturally slowed me down in training. I went from the 7 regular codestone level to the 8th during the Obelisk War, and then leveled to level 250 from 236 because the regular codestone training at that level WILL kill a wallet. During the obelisk war, I seem to remember that all my stats were under 500. Since then I've trained slowly due to the rise in cost of red stones from the speed levelers. Before major speed leveling started, the red, Zed codestones were expensive at 10,000np, Now they're almost 4 times that amount.

 

It's really a simple case of supply and demand. There is an order as to how things are supposed to be done. If one disrupts the natural order, then it causes chaos and rationing for many if not all involved.

[fireembemphanatic]

I've been thinking this over since I recently decided to start leveling up to the secret ninja training school and so I decided to crunch the numbers.

The average price of a brown codestone is 4160np*

The average price or a red codestone is 18243np*

 

Starting from level 120 with 240 strength, 240 defense, and 300 health it takes

 

Brown Codestone Route

1500 brown codestones to get to level 150 with 300 strength, 300 defense, and 400 health

costing 6,240,000 np

and taking 3000 hours with no downtime

 

then

2450 brown codestones to get to level 200 with 400 strength, 400 defense, and 500 health

costing 10,192,000 np

and taking 6300 hours with no downtime

 

then

2800 brown codestones to get to level 250 with 500 strength, 500 defense, and 600 health

costing 11,648,000 np

and taking 8400 hours with no downtime

 

Total cost training levels 120-250 with brown codestones: (w/500 strength and defense and 600 health)

6750 brown codestones

28,080,000 np

17,700 hours with no downtime (737.5 days)

 

Red Codestone Route

180 brown codestones to get to level 150

costing 748,800 np

and taking 360 hours with no downtime

 

then

350 brown codestones to get to level 200

costing 1,456,000 np

and taking 900 hours with no downtime

 

then

400 brown codestones to get to level 250

costing 1,664,000 np

and taking 1200 hours with no downtime

 

then 820 red codestones to get strength to 500, defense to 500, and health to 600

costing 14,959,260 np

and taking 3,280 hours with no downtime (136.33 days)

 

Total cost training levels 120-250 with red codestones: (w/500 strength and defense and 600 health)

930 brown codestones

820 red codestones

18,828,060 np

5,740 hours with no downtime (239.17 days)

 

In summary: Speed leveling to the Secret Ninja Training School from level 120 will save you 10 million np and over a year of training time.

People are saying it is a personal thing. It absolutely is NOT. It is simply much more expensive and time consuming to train with brown codestones.

 

* Codestone prices from:( http://items.jellyneo.net/index.php?go=show_items&name=codestone&name_type=partial&desc=&cat=0&specialcat=0&status=0&rarity=0&sortby=name&numitems=20&start=0)

[siniri]

In summary: Speed leveling to the Secret Ninja Training School from level 120 will save you 10 million np and over a year of training time.

People are saying it is a personal thing. It absolutely is NOT. It is simply much more expensive and time consuming to train with brown codestones.

 

* Codestone prices from:( http://items.jellyneo.net/index.php?go=show_items&name=codestone&name_type=partial&desc=&cat=0&specialcat=0&status=0&rarity=0&sortby=name&numitems=20&start=0)

Awesome job crunching the math on the two possibilities. And now I feel a lot better about my bank account's relatively small size (compared to many other accounts of similar age), because I thought I hadn't invested in much, but both codestone types were a lot more expensive before the new BD, and speed-leveling was cost-prohibitive because reds were 4-5 times what they are now (browns were only about twice as expensive), so I must have spent several 10s of millions of NP training my battle pet over the years.

 

One caveat is that all the speed-levelers are making reds inflate (while brown prices are holding steady or even possibly deflating). I personally haven't been keeping track too carefully, but inflation might be as high as 2-3% per month, so by the time you get to reds, your savings won't be as substantial. Right now, I would probably take the risk (supplementing with all the other level-granting options possible), but at some point, it won't be worth it. And all of us paying with reds will be stuck paying more, forever. But that's how an economy works.

[fireembemphanatic]

Awesome job crunching the math on the two possibilities. And now I feel a lot better about my bank account's relatively small size (compared to many other accounts of similar age), because I thought I hadn't invested in much, but both codestone types were a lot more expensive before the new BD, and speed-leveling was cost-prohibitive because reds were 4-5 times what they are now (browns were only about twice as expensive), so I must have spent several 10s of millions of NP training my battle pet over the years.

 

One caveat is that all the speed-levelers are making reds inflate (while brown prices are holding steady or even possibly deflating). I personally haven't been keeping track too carefully, but inflation might be as high as 2-3% per month, so by the time you get to reds, your savings won't be as substantial. Right now, I would probably take the risk (supplementing with all the other level-granting options possible), but at some point, it won't be worth it. And all of us paying with reds will be stuck paying more, forever. But that's how an economy works.

Yes there is inflation of reds, but the price would have to increase by 60% before we have parity.

There's also a huge difference between cheap and expensive reds. It costs you 24 hours to cancel and hope for a cheaper codestone, but with savings of up to 30k to cancel a zed, you can get your cost below the average. The time savings on training with reds are enough to cancel about 500 times before it evens out with browns in terms of training time.

[Batman]

 

 

One caveat is that all the speed-levelers are making reds inflate (while brown prices are holding steady or even possibly deflating). I personally haven't been keeping track too carefully, but inflation might be as high as 2-3% per month, so by the time you get to reds, your savings won't be as substantial. Right now, I would probably take the risk (supplementing with all the other level-granting options possible), but at some point, it won't be worth it. And all of us paying with reds will be stuck paying more, forever. But that's how an economy works.

 

Although I tend to agree that it will be more expensive the more people actually try to get higher I still think it isn't as well liked as a lot of other areas of neopets. Meaning that I don't think there are a ton of people trying to get amazing battle pets vs stamp collectors/card collectors/book collectors/ etc. It is an expensive proposition when you could just get your pet to level 50 say and beat most challengers daily to get a nice profit.

[deliciouswaffles]

One other thing to remember: As long as you are at exactly Level 250, you can use both schools. I'm fairly sure you can have training sessions in both at the same time, though I don't know if that violates any rules. That might be a good Editorial question.

[lovedwallflower]

I consider myself a casual trainer, in the sense that I never ever buy brown codestones. I use the battledome and store all codestones I get in the SDB. If the codestones I need are in my SDB, I use them. If not, I simply wait for them to come from Tombola, Geraptiku or (most frequently) the Battledome itself. In this way, the training pays for itself.

This is obviously a slower and less intense option, but another *cheaper* option nonetheless :)

[tomeander]

I'm trying to get my BD pet to level 250 as fast as I can. It's currently at level 219. I get a lot of codestones from KQ and the BD so my only issue is the time to complete lessons. Right now I sell all the red codestones I get. Once my BD hits 250, I'll start selling off the regular codestones.

 

I've also stocked some Faerie quest cookies that I will use once I get a Quest Refresh boon from the Obelisk skirmishes.