I attribute blocking to part of my recent level up sweeps at Habitarium. Before I blocked my towers and nests I was only getting about three or four gems from pest kills; now that things are blocked I am getting “full kill” from each attack. There’s no set number of pests that will attack your Habitarium; it could be four but it might be seven. Each red gem collected is worth 30 XP when you click on it. If you have unblocked areas that the blue pests can get to, your Soldiers and Workers won’t attack them even if you put them right next to them or on top of them.
What Is Blocking? In Habitarium it is when you have something in front of a nest, storage tower or house to block it from being attacked. I never though that this was important but since I blocked my storage towers and nests, I have been able to kill more pests. Pests that attack nests are completely impervious to Soldier and Workers so they sit there and chomp away while your Soldiers and Workers completely ignore them.
You can block with just about anything but I prefer to use the Twice Fence and the Glowing Ember. Why? Both allow me to see that is behind them as well as for nests, if the eggs are done incubating. When you block your storage towers on all sides (put them against the side wall of your Habitarium so you can save space) your Nesters and Workers will not carry resources to them; they will just keep harvesting. That means that you will have to check them a little more often to see if they need a rest, food or are low on life. This is a complete must for the Workers because they can aid in fending off attacks from the blue pests.
Twig Fence: 40 mud, 100 stone, 360 wood
Glowing Ember: 50 mud, 700 stone, 100 wood
Both of these items are found in the Decoration section.
After having many nests almost destroy and pests attack them with no recourse on my end, I gave blocking a try and now it is something that I fully endorse. Pests that attack nests can’t be killed off in most cases so that’s one less 30 XP gem you can collect. My average pest invasion is five but I have seen six or seven of them at one time. While that 30 XP might not seem like a lot if you can get even one extra red gem per attack and you are getting 10 attacks a day, that’s 300 XP. Over the course of a month, 9,000 XP or about 1/3 of a level up for someone who is in the 40 range.
One of the problems with blocking things is that there is only one way that an item will fit into the Habitarium. If it takes up the block in front of a structure or nest then it is blocked even if it looks like there is a break. I use the embers for the nests so that my P3’s and Soldiers can still get to other parts of the Habitarium in case there is an attack. The twigs work perfectly for the storage towers because I can still see them perfectly and the fences are right against them so it isn’t a lot of visual clutter on the screen.
The screenshots I have attached to this show just a couple of ways to effectively block towers and nests; those are the way I have found work best for me in my Habitarium but ever person is going to have a different idea. Each Neopet player has a different Habitarium design; the resources can not be moved so sometimes you have to work around them for placing your buildings and nests. Since no two players will have the same exact Habitarium design it is impossible to say exactly how someone should block. Some will need to block on three sides while others might only have to do one side. That’s one of the benefits of having nests or towers in a row; that way you only have to block the front and ends unless you run them from corner to corner.
Effective blocking saves you from having to repair structures and it protects your incubating eggs. Moreover, it allows your Soldier and Workers to be able to attack all of the blue pests that appear during an attack.
