Newbie Guide Part Two

The Newbie Guide consists of five parts:

* Part One: The Newbie Guide Main Page
* Part Two: **Items & Money**
* Part Three: Pet Activities & Training your Pets
* Part Four: Caring for pets
* Part Five: Newbie FAQ

## Items

### Materials

**Basic Materials**: Fluff, Blue Dye, Black Dye, Red Dye, Yellow Dye, Leather, Paper, Plastic, Rubber

**Advanced Materials**: Clay, Copper, Glass, Gold, Iron, Silver, Tin, Log, Wax, Gossamer

**Compound Materials**: Simple Circuit, Complex Circuit, CPU, Pyrestone, Bronze, Electrum
Your crafting and inventing pets need materials to work with. The List of Materials includes common items such as Fluff and Dyes, less frequent resources as Iron or Glass and rare stuff like Gossamers and CPU. For your pet to start a craft, *all* the materials it needs for this craft have to be in your house (outside Protected Rooms). Lower level crafts such as pillows need only Fluff and Dyes, and materials like Gold or Complex Circuits are of no use for beginners pets, because they are not skilled enough yet to do anything with those.
A good selection of materials for beginners is: Fluff, Blue Dye, Black Dye, Yellow Dye, Red Dye, Plastic, Paper and Rubber. If you keep those in your house, your pet will soon start crafting simple pillows or plushies, or even a painting. Your crafting pet can even make some of its own materials. It can turn Blueberries into Blue Dye or Rubber into Plastic as well as many other things.
Crafting and inventing pets need adventurers, gatherers and hunters to support them. If you make all your pets into crafters, you will have to buy all the materials they need on the market or they will try to craft something, and if they do not find the necessary materials they will go out and try to gather some - but as crafters they are not very good at hunting or gathering. As a guideline, for every crafting or inventing pet you own, keep at least 2 gatherers or hunters to provide them with materials and food.
Besides crafts and inventions, materials are also needed for *constructing* add-ons to your house. If you keep Clay, Iron or Wood in your house, your skilled or strong pets might use these for constructing additional space in your house, usually 1-4 space units per turn.

**Materials Resources**: Debris, Rubble, Ruins, Small Rock, Large Rock
If you have a good gathering pet, it might bring home one of these items. Usually, they contain one or more materials/items, which you can reveal by searching the rocks or debris. You also get one Debris every day with your daily resources box. If you are unlucky, your rocks will contain no valuable items, in any way rocks and debris disappear after your search.

### Food

Your pets need to eat, and they eat a lot. Therefore it is important to always keep enough food in your house, so your pets can eat by themselves when they get hungry. If you don't feed your pet and also do not keep enough food in the house, your pet will starve to death.
If you move your mouse over a food item, you can see what meal size it is for all your pets (some pets need more food than others). Do not feed them items marked "too much", that is not just a waste of food but a waste of money as well. As a rule, you only have to feed them when it says they are *hungry* or *very hungry* and feed them only Light Meals and Full Meals. Sell snack-sized foods back to the game for money.
Besides filling your pet's stomach, food can also give them love and esteem. This depends on what you feed them. If you give them self-prepared food you will give them more extra love, if you feed them homemade food from other residents they will gain esteem. For a start, here is a list of easy to prepare foods.
See also: Newbie Guide Part Four.

### Equipment

There is a huge variety of equipment, ranging from weapons and tools to books, maps and jewelry. Some equipment does greatly improve your pets stats, others raise some stats but also lower others, and there is also equipment (as the Silver Tiara) which just looks pretty but does not actually do anything. Equipment affects both your pet's performance in hourly actions (crafting, hunting, gathering) and in park events (brawl, capture the flag, strategy game).
You can equip your pet by clicking on the hand symbol left of your pet's image. A window opens with all your equippable items and you will see which your pet can use. Because it won't be able to use all of them - your pet has to meet the requirements for the item. If your pet is not strong enough, it won't be able to carry the Unreasonably Large Sword, if it is not intelligent enough it can't use the Eye-Con 5000 camera, and it might not be skilled enough for the Sewing Machine. **New:** click on an item image anywhere in PsyPets (your house, Market Square, ...) and you can see if an item is equippable and which of your pets are skilled enough to use it.
You need to experiment with the equipment, and see if you like the effect it has on your pet. Use equipment that supports the type of pet your have: items that improve your pet's strength help defeaters, those that make your pet faster help hunters, and so on. Some items both raise and lower stats, the Unholy Vorpal Sword of Southern Icereach makes your pet stronger but also less intelligent. Most items do what you think they are doing, so will a map help gatherers find things.
For a start - good equippable items for lower level pets are: Axe for defeaters, Basic Toolset for crafters, Binoculars for gatherers, Hunter's Bow for hunters. Later you may want to try out the IR Goggles or Pyrestone Earrings, but young pets won't be skilled enough to use those high end equipment.
Items that your pets have equipped will eventually wear off or break, then you have to replace them or equip your pet with something else.
See also: Equipable Items, Equipable Item Effects

### Half-Hourly Action Items

Also referred to as *Toys* in the PsyPets Encyclopedia. Every 30 minutes you can use one of the *Half-Hourly Action Items* instead of just petting your pets. If you own one or more such items, a drop down menu appears next to each of your pets names, you can choose which toy you want them to use, and click the button. Each item has a different effect, they make your pet feel safe, loved or esteemed, or a combination of those. **New:** click on an item image anywhere in PsyPets (your house, Market Square, ...) and you can see if an item can be used as a toy in half-hourly actions.

See also: Half-Hourly Items

### Safety/Esteem Items

If it sound like something that would make a kid feel safe, chances are it's a safety item. For example, pillows are good safety items as are lights.

If it seems kinda fancy and not really necessary for day-to-day life, chances are it grants esteem. Paintings, vases, urns, flowers and gems are good examples.

These don't have to be expensive to work well! Always go cheap at first... not only will it save you money, you will have more house room as expensive items tend to take up a lot of space.

Good starting items (pick 2-3 per pet):

* White Pillow
* Royal Purple Pillow
* Small Fancy Pillow
* Chinese Lantern
* Shooting Star Painting
* House Painting
* Flower Painting
* Vase
* Ornate Vase

### Rare Items

These are generally not important. Maybe they show up on your profile? Maybe they grant esteem or look shiny? So what. You'll have lots of time to hunt these down later on when you have lots of money! Don't worry about these for now. Your pets will be just as happy with a few common pillows as they would be with a big, fancy, rare bed and the pillows are way cheaper.

## Getting Items

How do I get items? Where are the stores?

Currently the only stores are as follows:

* The Florist sells flowers for gifts and the Apiary
* The Alchemist's trades collected items for magical potions. It's also where you trade in points from PvP duels.
* The Smithery repairs damaged items and makes items out of other items.
* Real Estate sells you land if your house is under size 500 and creates deeds (minimum size 50) to sell your land if your house is over size 500 (and you have enough space left over for all of your items).
* Pet Shelter houses unwanted pets needing good homes and is a good place to find pets.
* Pawn Shop trades items for items of lesser value which is useful sometimes.

The only other places to get items are the Market Square, the Seller's Market, the Flea Market and the Auction House, all of which are places where players come to buy and sell things pets make. You heard right: pets are the ONLY source of food, materials (past the 2 Debris optional allowance) and most items past buying things from other players!

Pets may engage in some activity once every hour. What they do depends on their personality and skills: a pet that is good at making things is more likely to make things than to hunt, for example. Most likely your pet will not do something every hour, however theoretically your pet *could* get 24 items a day.

### How do I make money?

If you need money to buy things your pets didn't make, here are a few quick ways.

* Every 24 hours you collect allowance. *Vacation time does not count toward allowance.*
* If your pet crafts, hunts, or otherwise acquires items, you can sell those items, either to the game (by using the "sell" button available in Storage) or to other residents through the Seller's Market, the Flea Market and the Auction House'.
* If your pet is very talented at some games, you can win prizes from events at The Park. Warning: This costs money to do.
* Get creative at the markets: sometimes people sell things for less than game sellback value and you can make money by reselling them.
* Sell art and avatars in The Plaza if you are good at drawing.

Things get easier as your pets get stronger. Everyone is poor at first! Save what money you can and things should be alright.