Key Quest

 

Introduction

Welcome to our Key Quest guide, your guide for anything and everything Key Quest. This guide goes into big details of how to play and everything else there is to know about Key Quest. If you simply want a quick introduction to Key Quest and how to play, then Neopets their own Tutorial might be more interesting to you. And even for those who are new to Key Quest and already want to know everything, their Tutorial might still be interesting. Everything in that Tutorial is also explained in this guide though.

Key Quest is mainly a board game. You play with two to four players, and you have to collect two to five different coloured keys on the board before being the first to reach the Quest Door. In between you get to play some Mini-Games, collect Power-Ups to aid you in your quest for the keys, and a few other things. At the end everyone is awarded with the NP they’ve collected while playing, and also a reward key which you can open the vault with and receive some additional prizes.

 

Getting Started

Before you can play a game you must have at least one Token in your Key Quest Quick List. Everyone gets a free Token to start with, and you can collect more Tokens by purchasing certain Neopets Merchandise and later also by other ways. Go to your Collector Case and select one of the Tokens you have. There you get the option to add it to your Favourites and to add it to your Key Quest Quick List. Only Tokens which are in the Quick List can be used in Key Quest, so make sure you add the ones you want to use. You can check our Tokens page with more info on how to get them and all the ones available.

Once you have at least one Token ready to use, you can actually get started playing. Go to the Key Quest page and choose the game type you want to play or create one yourself. You can choose a game by the amount of Keys needed or a game by Topic. Once you choose one of the types, you will see a list of created games, and how many players and the amount of Keys wanted for each game. Just select one of those games and join it. If you really don’t know which type of game you want to play, and don’t want to create one yourself, you can also choose Quick Game, which makes you join a random game.

  • Create a Game
    When you create your own game, you need to select the amount of Keys, as well as how many players will play. You also get to choose the Gameboard you will play on, and the choice of Topic (you can leave this open if wanted). There’s also an option to choose the Chat Level, but this will only be activated at a later date.
    Lastly you can also invite Neofriends to play a game with you. Using this option you can play Neofriends only Key Quest games.

  • Game by Keys
    The amount of Keys mainly determines how long a game will take to play. The less Keys needed to collect, the faster you will finish a game. But also the reward Keys you’ll get are determined by this:
    • 5-Keys game: Everyone gets a reward key: the winner gets Gold, 2nd gets Silver, 3rd gets Bronze, and 4th gets Lead.
    • 4-Keys game: The winner gets Silver, 2nd gets Bronze, 3rd gets Lead, and 4th only gets the NP.
    • 3-Keys game: The winner gets Bronze, 2nd gets Lead, and both 3rd and 4th only get the NP.
    • 2-Keys game: Only the winner gets a reward Key; Lead. Everyone else only get the NP.

  • Game by Topic
    There are four different Topics, but mainly only Newbies and Experts are used. Obviously new players to Key Quest will rather check the Newbies topic to get started, while expert players who like a challenge will check the Experts topic.

Once you’ve created or joined a game, you will be brought to the waiting room. There you can choose your colour (red, yellow, green, or blue) and wait for the others to join and their tokens being loaded. Once everyone has joined and their tokens are loaded, you get to roll to determine the order. When the order has been determined, you get to choose your starting place. And once that has been done, the game finally starts.

All this preparing for the game might seem to take a long time, but it actually goes pretty fast (if nothing goes wrong). Now that you know how to start a game, let’s learn how to actually play a game.

 

Overview of the Screen

  1. User Display: There’s room for up to four User Displays on top of the screen. They’re listed in order of playing, and the player whose turn it is has their Token more clearly. This makes it easy for all to check whose turn it is now and whose it is next.
  2. Keys Collected: In the User Display you can see which Keys you and the others have collected, and how many of each. To finish the game it doesn’t matter how many Keys of a single colour you have, as long as you have at least one of each colour.
  3. Current Power-Ups: You can also see in the User Displays which Power-Ups everyone currently has. You can have up to three Power-Ups at a time.
  4. NP Collected: Lastly in the User Display is shown how much NP everyone has collected so far. All the NP you collect while playing is rewarded to you at the end of the game.
  5. Sound/Mute Button: Click on this to turn the sound on/off.
  6. Current Player’s Token: Whenever it is someone’s turn, their Token is shown in the center of your screen, to easily notice what they’re doing.
  7. Chat Box: This is the Chat Box, where you can say some premade sentences to encourage or taunt others, or to have some random conversations. You can also click on the small icons there to read alerts like it telling a Neofriend has gotten on Key Quest.
  8. Information Box: Here you get to see some information about what you can do or what someone else is doing. Usually when something pops up there you have to click “OK” or make a choice.
  9. Mini-Map: On the Mini-Map you can quickly see where all the Keys are and where everyone their Token is located at the moment.

 

Playing a game of Key Quest

Most of the information on how to play a game of Key Quest has been separated over individual pages. If you want to know more about the boards, the Mini-Games, the Power-Up Cards, all the other Cards, and the Prizes, you can check out those pages.

Like most board games, Key Quest is turn based. When it is your turn, you get the choice to either immediately roll the die, or to use one of your Power-Ups first. After using a Power-Up you still get to roll the die. Once you’ve rolled you can move across the board.
There’s no one direction on the board, you can choose which direction you want to go and so which Keys you want to collect first. When you reach a road fork on the board, you can choose the direction you wish to go by clicking on the arrow pointing towards that direction.
You need to collect all the different coloured Keys on the board before you can reach the Quest Door. Once someone reaches the Quest Door with all the Keys, the game ends and everyone receives their reward Keys.

On your way to collecting the Keys and reaching the Quest Door, you will come across several extras. When passing or landing on a certain square, you can either get a Power-Up or a Key, or one of the other cards, or they can start up a Mini-Game. All these extras can help you in your quest, or just turn against you, helping the other players. Make sure to check out the individual pages about these things.