We are bringing you one of the best and most up-to-date FAQs on the internet for Zetapets below. If we have missed out something that you think should be there, let us know and we'll give you credit for it! Similarly, if you notice any errors, we want to know about it too ^_^

The original source for this FAQ is from Dymphna (drawing-boardie) from her Zetapets homepage (now offline), and she has kindly allowed the club to borrow the content and expand on it!

This article was last updated on April 9th 2005.

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Pets

Why are my pets never hungry?

Why does my pet look different from the picture I saw when I was creating it?

Zetapoints (ZP)

Games

Where are all the games?

Account Preferences

How do I change anything in my profile? (avatar etc.)

Forums

How do I change my forum avatar/edit my signature?

How do I post a new topic/board?

Clubs

Shops

Miscellaneous

Why does no one ever help me on the forums?

Why did I get warned/muted/banned?

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Q: How do I get a pet?
There are two ways to do so - create a pet or adopt a pet. To find out how to do both, click here for a more detailed guide.

Q: I have a pet, but it says that I do not! How do I activate it?
Click on "Pets" on the left sidebar. You will be brought to a page which shows the image(s) of your current pet(s). Click on the name of your pet in order to activate it. You can also tell if your active pet needs 'activating' by the message next to your pet name if you do not have an active pet.

Q: How do I feed my pet?
You will be given a few items when you first sign up for Zetapets. Go to "Inventory" on the sidebar, and click on the image of the food item. A pop up window should come up displaying your options (make sure you have javascript enabled and any pop-up blockers turned off in order for this to work.) In the pop up window, choose the "feed" option, then choose the pet you want to feed. The item will disappear once it has been fed to your pet

Q: Why are my pets never hungry?
Your pet now becomes hungry on a frequent basis! This has changed since the start of Zetapets.

Q: Why does my pet look different from the picture I saw when I was creating it?
When a pet has just been created, it starts out in a baby stage. It will become an adult in exactly 2 weeks. But you will have to activate it!
Babies are only one of two colors - pink if female, and blue if male. Once the pet becomes an adult after a month, he/she will turn the color you chose when you created him/her.

Q: How long will it take for my pet to grow up?
Your pet will remain a baby for 2 weeks.

Q: How can I raise my pet statistics?
Currently, statistics can only be increased by referring people to Zetapets, or by random events. More items will be brought out in the future (eg. books) and that with the opening of the battle arena will mean you can actually train your pet to raise its stats.

Q: How do I get a petpal for my pet?
Pet Pals can be obtained by purchasing one, referrals, or random events. Generally they can be bought from the Traders at Emestar using items as credits, or you can buy them from user shops.

Q: How do I change my pet's profile?
Click on Pets in the left navigation bar, and then click on the yellow button that says "Edit Pet Profile".

Q: How can I change my pet's colour?
Your pet has to be an adult before you can colour it. First, you will have to have a water distiller, which can be obtained by either by referrals, or by purchasing one (from the , or from user shops). Then, you will have to pay a visit to the Rainbow Lake in Emestar.

Q: How can I make my pet happier?
You will be given a few items when you sign up for Zetapets. Go to "Inventory" on the sidebar, and click on the image of a toy. A pop up window should come up displaying your options (make sure you have javascript enabled and any pop-up blockers turned off in order for this to work.) In the pop up window, choose the "play" option, then choose the pet you want to play with. The item will disappear once your pet plays with it. You can also visit the Shining River in Nirvana as well!

Q: Where can I feed my pet for free?
If you have less than 2000 ZP, you can visit the Food Pantry and feed your pet for free.

Q: Why is my pet suddenly a different species? No longer applicable
There has been a little glitch recently in Zetapets which results in some pets changing species. Send an email to bugs@zetapets.com explaining your situation.

Q: What are Zetapoints?
Zetapoints (ZP) are the currency of Zetapets. ie. money

Q: How do I make Zetapoints?
There are four main ways - playing games, referring people to Zetapets, voting for Zetapets, signing up for sponsors and opening a shop to sell items. Please read Earning ZP for more indepth information.

Q: What can I do with ZPs?
You can use Zetapoints to buy items in shops, or to adopt a new pet. You can also store extra points in the bank (located in the "Shops" section of Zetapets) and collect interest to make your money increase.

Q: I am missing ZP!
Random Events (more info) have been known to take more than 600 ZP in one go! Therefore it is a good idea to keep money in the bank (located in the "Shops" section of Zetapets) where it will be safe.
There is also a slight possibility that you might have been scammed and another player stole money from your account.

Q: Why does my point status show me as poor? No longer applicable
Your "point status" indicates the amount of ZP that you have on-hand in relation to others on Zetapets. If you do have a lot of spare ZP (see top right box for your "cash") then your point rank rises. However, we highly recommend that you save spare ZP in the Bank since random events have been known to take a lot of ZP in one go.

Q: How much ZP can I earn each day max?
There are four main ways - playing games, referring people to Zetapets, voting for Zetapets, signing up for sponsors and opening a shop to sell items. Please read Earning ZP for more indepth information.

Q: Where are all the games?
You can find all the games at the Games section (find Games in the main navigation bar on Zetapets) There are 3 categories - Luck, Puzzle and Arcade.

Q: Why are there so few games?
Zetapets is still a relatively new site (Official start date was in January 2004) and is worked on more as a hobby rather than "paid employment" (or job). Games are notoriously hard to program and debug hence the general 'lack' of games at the moment. More games will be brought out in the future though!

Q: How do I play (insert name of game)?
We have a more detailed guide on how to play any of the available games on Zetapets in our help article on Games written by Dymphna and others.

Q: How do I change anything in my profile? (avatar etc.)
This is probably one of the most asked questions - and to do that, simply find and click on Settings - which is underneath the Logout button and beside your name in the top right corner, and you can enter your password to customise your profile description and choose from all the available profile avatars!

Q: Can I change my password?
You will be able to change your Zetapets password under 'Settings' (see above question) by putting in your old password, and entering your new password twice. We recommend that you do use a different password here than on other sites such as your email provider.

Q: How do I edit my homepage?
Visit your profile by clicking on your username located on the top right corner of every page. Then scroll down to where it shows a link to your homepage, and you will see a link that says "Edit Homepage".

Q: How can I remove the right-click menu? No longer applicable
When everyone first starts on Zetapets, the "right-click" button of the mouse generally causes a menu to show up by default - which can be both useful and inconvenient at the same time. To disable this, click on "Settings" (under Logout button as usual) and scroll down to the bottom where there is a drop down box for you to select whether or not you want to use this function.

Q: How do I change my forum avatar/edit my signature?
Once you are on the "Forums" page, there is a link that says "Forum Settings." Click on it, and you can change your avatar to one of many listed in a drop down menu. There are no secret avatars.

Q: How do I change my font so it looks like xxx?
You can experiment with zetaHTML by using the buttons left of the reply box of a board and changing the settings there. For a more detailed guide and walkthrough, please visit our guide on zetaHTML written by lily4846.

Q: How do I post a new topic/board
Once you are on the "Forums" page, you will see many different topics to choose from (General, Help, Newbies, Ideas, etc.) Decide what the category your topic fits into (ex. - a post about how to create a new pet would go in the "Help" section.) Click on the icon below the title, and it will bring you to a page with recently posted topics in that category. Scroll down to the end of the page and you will see a form for you to fill in with your topic, and a large box to type your message.

Q: How do I reply to a topic?
Once you are on the "Forums" page, you can browse around the different categories (Help, Battle, etc.) Click on the title of a topic (ex. I am new! Please help!) You can read the previous posts on the topic, and at the bottom of the page is a large text box where you can write a reply. Posting multiple times in the same thread does not "boost" or "bump" the board up.

Q: Why does it say newbie under my name? No longer applicable
Each Zetapets player has a special title when posting in the forums. If you have not posted much in the forums yet, your title will be "Newbie," even if you have been a member of Zetapets for a long time. For more detailed information, please read the article about the Forums on our site.

Q: How many posts do I need for each title under my name? No longer applicable
In order to get the "higher" titles of "Veteran", "Forum Fanatic", "Elder" and finally "Grandmaster" you will have to post more (non-SPAM for obvious reasons) on the forums. Generally you will need 50 to reach "Veteran".

Q: What is a club?
A club is a place where a group of people with similar interests can hang out. Normally one person creates the club based around a theme, and others can join. Clubs have their own forums for the members, and the owners can choose to make the club public or private (so viewable by clubmembers only)

Q: Where are the clubs?
Click on "Shops" on the left sidebar. Once the page loads, there will be a banner that says "Explore Sentrion" and buttons will be below it. Choose the "Clubs" button. Alternatively, you can click on http://www.zetapets.com/clubs.php.

Q: How do I make my own club?
After reaching the stage listed above, when the clubs' page will load, you will see a yellow button which says "Create Club". For more information about clubs in general, please click on our help article : Clubs.

Q: Where can I edit my club layout?
If you are the owner (or co-owner) of a club, you will see an 'extra' set of functions available on the main page of your club, under the heading 'Admin'. This includes 'News', 'Polls' and 'Edit'. The first two are pretty much self-explanatory, "News" used for editing club news, and 'Polls' for editing and viewing results of the current polls (You are allowed a max of 2). "Edit" allows you to control the theme, layout, welcome messages and forum ranks of the club. For more information about clubs in general, please click on our help article : Clubs.

Q: Where can I find the list of all the clubs?
After reaching the stage listed above (Shops-->Clubs) click on the yellow button that says "List Clubs" and you will see a list of all the existing clubs in the Zetapets world. It is sorted by the highest number of members in a decreasing order at the moment. The list does not show private clubs.

Q: How do I join a club?
Once you have found a club that you would like to join, go to their main page (often looking like: http://www.zetapets.com/viewclub.php?id=#### in the URL bar) click on the text in the top right corner that says "Enlist". You will now have access to the forums and polls of the club.

Q: How do I join a private club?
In order to view and join a private club, you will have to zmail an existing member of a club for an invitation.

Q: How do I setup a shop?
Go to Shops in the left navigation bar, and then click on "My Shop". If you do not own a shop, you will need to setup one for 500 ZP. Then you can customise the name, design and welcome messages of the shop.

Q: How many items can I put in a shop?
If you have a Size 3 shop, you can stock 15 different items. This means you can have more than 15 items in your shop, but only 15 different types of items.

Q: How do I promote my shop?
You can promote your shop by posting (non-spam) on the Shop Messageboard or buying ad space on the Ad Board.

Q: Where can I search for the cheapest prices?
You can use the Shop Scouter to search through user shops for a particular item. It then lists the prices in ascending order. One small limitation with the shop scouter at the moment is that if you search for eg. "soul sphere" you will only get eg. Actaeon soul sphere and no other results. However, the search is very quick and very easy to use.

Q: I am new. What do I do?
In a nutshell, we recommend that you read the Official Zetapets Newbie Start Guide and/or our own Newbies Help section to get your started.

Q: Why can't I buy anything from the shop or anywhere?
Normally when you click on an item in your inventory or from a shop, a popup window will appear with further things to do. If this does not show up, it is quite likely that you have a popup blocker which has prevented it from appearing.

One way is to hold down Ctrl when you click on the item (which works with some popup blockers), and the other is to turn down or disable the popup blocker while you are on Zetapets. If both methods fail, please check your browser settings and see if Javascript is enabled.

Q: Why does no one ever help me on the forums?
Unlike other places, the Forums on Zetapets are not that active. Therefore it does take a while for a response. Generally a moderator (or another user) will pick up your question after a while and answer it - and most people tend to click on boards that have 0 replies. If someone replies to their own thread (so reply=1) it gives the mistaken impression that someone else has answered the question.

Q: Why did I get warned/muted/banned?
Generally you can be warned, muted (cannot post messages for a week) and at most banned by not following the Rules and guidelines of Zetapets. Normally an automated zmail will let you know why if you receive a warning. If a user has 3 warnings their account will be permanently banned.

Q: Can I have more than one account?
You are allowed to have one other account - but as a gallery only. The gallery account cannot be used to earn extra ZP - so is only used for displaying your items.

Q: How do I contact the staff on Zetapets?
The contact page link is found at the bottom of almost every page on Zetapets. If you have questions, suggestions, ideas and complaints there are details on that page that has information on who to email.

Q: When was Zetapets created?
Zetapets has been around since early 2003 but was only officially released for the public in January 2004. Before that Zetapets was only open to "beta-testers" (such as Dawna- the head moderator). For a more indepth history on Zetapets, please visit ZetaLog.

Q: Why are so many people 55 years old? No longer applicable
The signup form has changed slightly since January 2004, and anyone who does not put in a recognised/valid birth-date when they signup and register (it cannot be changed afterwards at the moment) has a 'default' age of 55.

Q: I can't seem to logout!
This is quite a common experience - especially for those who share computers. If you are using Internet Explorer as your internet browser, click on Tools -> Internet Options -> Security (tabs at the top) and lower the 'security' level. This is a more permanent option, but you can always simply clear your internet cookies (reference Google.com for more info) by clicking on Tools -> Internet Options and then Delete Cookies. However this will mean that at any other site where you have a login account (but have auto-login normally) you will have to login again there, unless you find the specific cookie for Zetapets.

Q: Why can't I talk about other pet sites?
As we are part of the community at Zetapets, we should respect the creators of the site by refraining from mentioning other similar sites ("comparing and contrasting" really has no place here) and abiding by the rules. There are other sites and messageboards which allow you to chat about the two freely so please use those instead. It would be a waste of the creators' resources and time if people just talked about other pet sites on Zetapets.

Q: Zetapets is a copy of xxx!
It is difficult to say if one site is a copy of another (unless blatant) - any pet site is going to have similar characteristics (such as a selection of pets, items and all that) which make it a pet site. It is just like saying one chocolate cake is a copy of another (when both require chocolate and cake ingredients to be a cake) - and made worse when someone says that one is nicer than another without trying both!

Another analogy: how can anyone say that one car is a copy of another if all they have in common are pistons, the car-frame, engines and wheels?

We always suggest that a "sceptic" or a newbie should give Zetapets a chance before running to criticise (or compare/contrast), and test it out just like they have tested out another pet site. Zetapets is not a commercial business unlike eg. Neopets.com and is created by two teenagers as a hobby, and maintained by others donating their spare time.

Q: What are these random events that appear when I'm on Zetapets?
These random events are things that things that happen to you and your pet at random! It could be just as message, or even a friendly tip, but sometimes it can give you free ZP, free items! It occurs every 1 in 200 pages, so the more users there are only actively surfing Zetapets, the more frequently these events will occur!

The random events info is from the Zetapets Help section.