Franchise Mode
The game will poke you to get all of staff facilities, but if you do that, you are going to end up bankrupt quick. Initially, what you want to do is get a Trade Center, a Quarantine, Staff Building and a Keeper Hut. Stay away from Research and Workshop until you’ve made some decent money.
When guests start flooding your zoo, it’s good to have Merchandise Shops open so as to get quick money.
Setting up your Zoo with Animals
You do not want to make unwise investment decisions by buying animals out of your budget just for the sake of having big animals. You need to start cheap, it has a decent effect as well and as your credits and money add up, you can keep upgrading.
Buying animals requires you to go to the Animal Market. Open it and click on the cash banner where you can either sort them according to your money or Conservation Credits, you can also apply various other filters for your ease.
A good exhibition of animals for beginners would be Nile Monitors, Warthogs and Tortoises, note that these will not sell for much and you won’t get anything for setting them free. These will bring in a considerable amount of guests nonetheless.
As you put in your animals, you’ll notice that each animal has a specific requirement in terms of what kind of terrain they need and if they need things like swimmable water or not. Once you click on an animal’s info screen, you will get all the information you need and their responses to every item you introduce into their habitat. You can make swimmable water, by using the terrain tool to dig holes and use the water tool to put water in there.
Fences, you are going to need a bunch of these so that your animals do not pounce the guest and provide them with a safe viewing of said animals. Stronger animals need stronger re-enforcement. Animals that aren’t able to jump can be put in a wood log fence, while larger animals like an Elephant will need thicker brick, and animals WITH the ability to jump will need higher fence height.
Once you have enough money in Planet Zoo, you can begin research, and with research you can unlock Enrichment for your animals which are toys, and things that will bring happiness to your animals. The research will also unlock different types of food they can eat to better nourish them.
To change the quality of food, click the habitat fence to open the habitat window. Now click the Paw, and click on Habitat Contents where you can change your food quality.
Add different animals to the same pen, that are compatible with already present animals, this saves space but also requires you to manage your biome accordingly as to make both animals present, happy. This boosts the enrichment of both animals present.
Along with a separate space for animals, you need a shelter for them too where they can rest away from the eye of the public. As the number of animals in a habitat increases, you need to add more shelter so that everyone has enough space. You can use pre-made blueprints, or build something yourself by being a little creative, you can find more information on building shelters in our Building Guide.
Small Exhibit Animals
You do not want to delve into these in the start of the game but once you are all set to go with a good flux of money coming in, go ahead and put these here and there. They have a great traction to guests, but need an adequate amount of research in order to keep them satisfied.
In order to get yourself one of these, go to your Planet Zoo facilities and at the top right, click Exhibits, and place your desired exhibit at the location you deem fit. Now, you can see the animals you want, and send them to your specific exhibit. Each property of the exhibit will need to be altered with respect to each animal, this includes temperature, humidity and additional enrichment items.
Managing your Animals
Having more animals means it’s harder to manage them. You can click the Zoo tab and click the Paw tab to take a look at all your animals. You will find every information regarding them which includes their gender, their pregnancy, their age and their rating. You can select a lot of animals at once, and simply send them to the Trading Center, or simply release them all at once easily, if you want.
Breeding Animals in Planet Zoo
To earn conservation credits, you will need your animals to get the mood on. The better stats the baby of an animal has, the more rewarding it will be. Compare your animals with other of the same type and check the pink area of the bar which will show you the likelihood of the child’s stats to fall.
Animals should not be inbred, you can use a contraceptive pill for that. Animals will fight rivals, if there are too many males, they will fight each other, or if there are too many females, they will fight too. This can lead to injury, so once these babies grow up it is wise to release them into the wild or sell them to the Trade Center.
Selling and Buying Animals
While we are on the topic of selling animals, let’s go into detail. Breeding animals and getting ones with good stats means that you can sell them in the market and afford better animals. You are basically selling your animal on the online market to another existing player. Start small, and make your way up to good animals.
Try to put all animals in pairs otherwise they will die alone and you would not really get a chance to breed them.
A few factors to be looked out for while buying animals is,
- Age
- Fertility
- Diseases
Releasing Animals
Conservation Credits are awarded for releasing animals. Some animals might not be worth selling on the market due to high saturation, so if you can’t sell them or if they’re nearing old age, just release them. This will increase your Zoo’s rating and have a positive impact on the happiness of guests.
Making Paths
Making paths is a simple concept, but things can get difficulty as your amount of guests increases.
Use Staff Paths so that staff can move to and fro between the points they need to faster, it would be wise to keep these out of guests’ view.
