Note: This has been rotting in my computer for well over a year and a half now, and rather than it rot some more, I decided to show it anyway.
It is incomplete according to my standards, but now that’s its officially ‘published’ I can be motivated to finally complete it. I will be doing what I did last time, editing it over a period of two weeks or so, then do a final edit and I’ll leave it alone unless someone adds a FAQ.

Moonkies Train of Articles:
[ Petpet Laboratory Q&A ]

Article related links:
[ Laboratory ]

Intro and what happens
Yarr welcome to my second spanking article which is all about The Secret Laboratory!
In this guide/article/Q&A/whatever it's simple aim is to have all the information on it as possible, so if you have any suggestions send them in. Because this is the first version there’s going to be several edits for at least 2 weeks. After people stop sending in suggestions and I’m happy with it, a full edit will be in place and that will be called the final article.
Now we've talked about the things that you don’t really care about its time to get some pizza and some Neocola and sit and read the actual article.

The laboratory, or the lab ray was released back in what some would call early days of Neopets, it's been around for as long as I can remember, and many would agree with me that it is one of the best things to have. In the lab ray you'll come with all of your Neopets and make a selection of which Neopet to zap.

Keeping in mind that when you zap, there are many things that can happen.
Level changes

- Decrease by a certain amount of levels
+ Increase by a certain amount of levels
- Decreased to level 1

Species change

Doing so it will most likely change the color as well. Some species cannot be obtained in the labray.

Colour change

Almost any color that the species has available. There are some exceptions..

Nothing

Sometimes nothing can happen at all

Gender change

Simply changes your current Neopet's gender to the opposite gender.

HP/DEFENCE/ATTACK/SPEED changes

+ Increase.
- Decrease

Okay so I know what the Labray can do, but what would I use it for?
Heres what I’ve seen people use it for:
1 Free battlers use them to train their pets
2 Adopt, Zap and Release
3 Painting and Species changing

1 Free battlers use them to train their pets:
I call people who don’t care about screwing up their Neopets stats Free Battlers. They use the Lab to train their pets with levels and stats such as HP and stuff. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing to do; I do it myself in fact even our famous mod Dolphie does it. The only downside to doing this is the lab can give you too much of one stat, and not enough of the other, which means levelling up using the training would be costly, very costly.

2 Adopt, Heal, Zap and Release
These people adopt a Neopet from the pound and take care of it while they zap it into something really special. When it’s finally been zapped to something special they will release the Neopet back into the pound, and now hopefully the Neopet will have a nice new homey owner.

3 Painting
This can be a long boring process. Zapping a pet until it turns into something spiffy. Some may be very specific, wanting a special Poogle or Kougra and color or so. They’ll zap over and over until they get what they want, and if the species is changed believe it or not some will actually buy the morphing potion so it’ll go back. Expensive

Getting Access to the Labray!
So you know what the labray does and what people use it for, so I guess you now want to know how to get it.
Since the Labray is a ‘secret’ labray you can’t just waltz right in there and go ‘hey dude zap my neopet!’. No you need to collect all 9 pieces of the Secret Laboratory Map. There are two ways to collect these map pieces. You can either walk around wearing horse shoes and hope it’ll rain random events giving you each of the map pieces, or you can do the smart thing and go to the trading post, shop wizard or auction genie and search for “Secret Laboratory Map” and buy each of the pieces.
Oddly enough, every piece will not be at the same price, they will all come in different numbers, but they’ll be around the same. When shopping for Secret Laboratory Maps, be aware that you need every piece to be unique. It is a good idea to have a plan on what pieces you need to buy. There have been so many instances when I was map shopping that I forgot what pieces I already owned that I missed out on some great bargains because I hesitated for too long.
You can also bid on a full set of Secret Laboratory Maps in the trading post. You are better off buying each piece by itself though because in the end it is most likely going to be cheaper doing it piece of piece(but do your homework, because sometimes you might get a good deal on full sets.) Full sets are good if you are impatient and if you have the spare Neopoints, but again it is often the better idea to buy one by one.
Once you have gotten all 9 pieces go the treasure maps game and click Laboratory (Click). (you can also go here to see what pieces you have and don’t have).
Then click collect prize, and congrats you now have access to the Lab Ray!! Bookmark it for easy access. If you ever lose the address for some crazy reason, you can easily go back to it by playing the treasure maps game again and clicking Laboratory, then click the go to lab ray button.

Dropping To Level 1
It is quite common to have your neopet zapped to level one. The theory behind it is that it only happens if you are at or below level 5.
The theory is that this only happens because your Neopet's level is low enough that zapping it to level 1 would cause no harm.
I believe that TNT initially wanted this to happen to all Neopets of all levels, but they changed their minds and decided to let it only happen to neopets under level 5.
There is no solid proof that being over level 5 will keep you safe from the evilly dropping down to level 1 zap, but all lab ray users would agree that using a neopet with a high level dramatically reduced their chances of getting the dropping to level one zap. My advice is to level up your neopet to level 10 or higher, that way if it drops a few levels you at least have a few levels to back you up.

Species not obtainable from the Labray.
If you could just zap your neopet to any species, it would suck the expensiveness and exclusiveness of the rich neopets(and their owners

ooh I shouldn’t do a personal attack like that, there’s some powerful rich neopets users here).
So TNT decided that some species are not obtainable from the labray. They are:
Draik
Krawk

Colors that are not obtainable from the Labray
Colors are important and exclusive as well, so to keep the prices high, TNT have restricted a few colors to be obtained from the Labray
They are:
Royal

Can the labray do anything to my Petpet?
Sadly the labray cannot do anything to your petpet, but if you have access to the labray, and you have all 9 pieces of the petpet lab maps you’ll get special access to the petpetlab which you can use to zap your petpet lol.

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Comming Soon
- Screenies when visiting and zapping in the lab ray.
- Using the labray
- a FAQ section
- other stuff

Questions, Suggestions and Corrections
If you have any questions about the Labray, a suggestion on what else I should add to the article, or if you have any corrections then please do not hesitate to Private Message me.

Help, I need somebody!
Err I haven’t used the labray for quite some time, and well I think I’m a bit out of touch with the whole thing. I’m absolutely positive that I’ve left out species and colors of neopets that are not obtainable from the Lab Ray, so if anyone could please fetch me a bone and help me that would be great.
Also I need some screenshots of obtaining the labray on the treasure maps game page. If anyone would like to help me, could you please take a clear screenshot of the page before you collect it.
If anyone happens to find a captain contest picture that is labray related, or a neopian times image that is labray related, could you pretty please show them to me with a private message, this article needs some more pictures.

Thank yous:
Dolphie31 – Confirmed some information that I wasn’t so sure about..

More edits to come