This thread was made in collaboration with $(you need an account to see links)
If you know any other info that's relevant and missing here / any feedback, please let me know.
Release Date: 23rd January 2024
Price: 600NC for gacha style. 1,400NC for specific style. 5-Bundle multipacks are available.
Pet Requirements: Correct species required. Correct color not required.
Available Colors:Update, 27th Mar:Plushie, Maraquan, and Baby are now in rotation.
These colors are permanently available: Alien, Coconut, Jelly, Mallow, MSP, Quiguki, Usuki.
UC Pet Trading: Direct UC pet trading is no longer possible, but you can trade the NC style items.
Old / Unreleased UCs: Yes but not all, e.g. Faerie Eyrie is missing.
OG UC vs. NC UC: Pets born before 26th April 2007 were awarded a new trophy, but not young UCs.
How do I get a NC UC?
How do I switch the UC appearance on / off?
How do I trade NC UCs?
This thread is just for collecting information from news announcements, NeoBoard posts and social media posts!
If you need help using NC UCs, I made a separate thread with step-by-step tutorials. Link below
It's been one week since the launch of NC UCs and TNT is keeping the hype going by inviting users to speculate which UC color will come out next: Pirate, Plushie or Royal.
All existing UCs were converted and automatically equipped with UC styles. Pets who were born before the day of conversion (26th April 2007) were awarded a new trophy.
Some unreleased UCs are still unavailable (e.g. UC Faerie Eyrie) so be sure to check if the style you want is currently out before you buy anything!
Umbra at the Styling Studio uses an interesting turn of phrase to suggest that Faerie, Darigan and Grey will only be available for a limited time. It is possible that these colors will be cycled out when the next batch of colors come in. The length of each cycle is unknown. However, 'special' colors like Usuki Usul will always be available.
Since NC UCs are now out, older timeline posts are now archived in the spoiler below
The cut-off date for this timeline is July 2023 because that's when TNT announced the new era of Neopets!
$(you need an account to see links) pointed out that the giveaway is for Faerie Studio Styling Supplies, whereas the reward for 100% completing Stocking Stufftacular was called Deluxe Styling Studio Supplies, implying that the Deluxe version has different capabilities.
And thanks to $(you need an account to see links) for sharing KevinoGaming's video! In it, he briefly shared some NC UC tidbits that TNT had given the OK for him to talk about before the livestream.
"It does look like there will be two different items that allow you to toggle between NC UC and the current converted style. They did show me the items that are going to be used to paint them. There's not much detail on the mechanics that go into it, so I'm sure we'll be able to get more info about that during the actual live session... (snip)" [Note from Vis: One of the items he showed was Deluxe Styling Studio Supplies. The other one is something we've never seen before!]
"One last art thing... this silhouette. This will probably be the NPC that sells all these items that you can use to reconvert or re-unconvert your pets to their old art... Yeah, I'm sure we'll get more information about whoever this person is!"
Some important dev notes: all forms of Neopet transfers will be disabled from 18th Jan to 23rd Jan to safeguard against losing pets in transit (including adopting, abandoning and direct transferring). The site itself will also be down on 22nd Jan to implement the launch.
It looks like we are getting not just UC Faeries but UC Greys and UC Darigans as well! Thank you $(you need an account to see links) for sharing this!
The Latest News/New Features page on the Neopets site itself updated to show this on 16th Jan, but I am grouping it with 15th Jan updates as it reiterates the above. TNT also show teaser images of a UC Grey Draik, UC Faerie Bori and UC Darigan Poogle. Thank you $(you need an account to see links) for sharing this!
The two with asterisks were never grandfathered into the current collection of UCs which means no amount of pet trading (or buying) can get you one of those... until TNT releases them with NC UCs!
This is the second time TNT is suggesting there will be unreleased UCs by showing us artwork. Please expand the spoiler to see a preview of the reel.
That's 5pm PST on Wednesday 17th January, so save the date if you want to catch the AMA live!
The call out also mentions an 'exclusive unreleased prize' that will be awarded to users who join live. Who knows what it'll be? My fingers are crossed for sure...
This item (among other rewards) was awarded to users who completed every single day of Stocking Stufftacular in 2023's Advent Calendar. This appears to be a token for the NC feature that gives your pet a UC appearance!
On 22nd Dec (although NC UCs were not discussed in the monthly livestream) users noticed this post in the official monthly AG schedule, leading to speculation...
"Topic: January 2024 Art Gallery Schedule
Hello,
Getting this posted early, since most of the office will be done next week.
(snip)
Tuesday, Jan 23rd - New to Art Gallery Day Friday, Jan 26th - UC Pet Day
Tuesday, Jan 30th - Kacheek Day"
On 15th Nov, during the livestream Dom announced the delay of NC UCs.
"Talking about the future of Neopets, do we want to talk about the roadmap coming up in general for Neopets?
(Snip)... So in January, one of the updates on NC UC pets is they're coming back in a very unique way. We want to say that we needed to delay this. Originally we mentioned December, but we realised that we probably needed a little more time to work on this since we launched the Advent Calendar event and a lot of campaigns in December. We thought that pushing the UC pets into January makes more sense for us. I know a lot of people have been waiting for this for the longest time, but I promise it will come in January.
These are some of the artworks that we've been working with. The first series that we're launching will be Faerie. If you haven't noticed, we've been celebrating the Faerie Festival last month and the first series will also be the Faerie UC pets.
Some interesting updates. We've been referring to this as a 'paint brush' but instead of a paint brush, we're actually going to introduce a new element so that we don't confuse ourselves with the other paint brushes that we have... knowing that these are convertible items, not one-time use items, so we don't want to call them a paint brush. It will be available in the NC Mall. In terms of how to activate it, it will need a new item (a token) to activate this device so these are things that we're planning.
Stay excited, we will be launching it in January. A little bit of delay, I'm sorry about that... (snip)"
On 10th Oct, during the livestream Dom discussed how far up NC UCs were in TNT's priorities.
"While we're talking about the priority list... what is high on your priority list right now?
Account recovery has always been the number one most important task... (snip) the second one would be overall site performance... (snip) then a lot of our users are super excited about UC pets, so we are working a lot on that. As promised, we will deliver that in December but alongside that we are also making changes to premium subscriptions... (snip) the Community Ambassador Program is something that we've been working on as well."
On 6th Sep, during the livestream Dom builds up hype for the launch of NC UCs.
"We cannot even begin to tell you how many questions we got about NC UCs... So are you able to provide a percentage of how far along they are, or if there's an objective release date? Basically what can you tell us about NC UCs, Dom?
This is probably more than 15 years overdue, but I'm very excited to tell you guys that we will be launching our first series by December this year. My team will probably kill me for sharing too much but in the interest of committing to transparency I'll just spill the beans... note some of these details might still change, but I'll try to share what I can.
As you know, UC pets will come as a UC paint brush. We might change the name... this UC paint brush is actually not like your normal paint brush, because it's not going to vanish. It will be treated more like a special wearable so it unconverts your pet cosmetically. After you use the paint brush, your Neopet will not be customizable and also it will be reversible. So you can put on the paint brush and see your pet as a UC Neopet! And I hope you will love this, the UC paint brush won't be color specific, it will only be species specific.
We will bring back a series of them but unfortunately we won't be able to bring them back all at once. Our target is to launch 30 or 50 of the more than 200 UCs by this December so we're still in the final stages of fine tuning these designs and based on what you hear, feel free to tell us if you have any suggestions or other comments. Tell us what your favorite UC colors that you want to see come back first are, Plushie, Faerie, Royal? I mean, we're still deciding on that. The main hurdle for us is actually getting all the artwork ready and also being in place for our users to really work their magic on it."
On the end of the last year TNT released a general survey about the NC UCs in order to gather some feedback from the playerbase. Two of the most important notes were the re-introduction of old UCs that were autoconverted long ago, and the possible redrawing of the UCs from touched up line art to entirely new poses (not sure if this was for all UCs or just NC UCs).
I'm glad they're working on it, but I'm really hoping this isn't delayed again! And +1 to the comments above that mention the gatcha aspect..... please don't let it be gatcha
I think someone had compiled a petpage with NC UC information and my favourite part of that page was also the MANY exerts from Scrappy saying they were never going to happen
NC UCs coming in 2024!
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Originally Posted by Mothman
