----+----1----+----2----+----3----+----4----+----5----+----6----+----7----+----8 FAQ/STRATEGY GUIDE FOR ZOO TYCOON 2 game by BLUE FANG and Microsoft this guide written by SOLDYNE Version 1.00 VERSION HISTORY: 1.00 - First creation. Does not include Marine Shows, Challenge list, Buildings/Objects list, expansion scenerio walkthroughs, and some other items. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TABLE OF CONTENTS (TO GO TO ANY SECTION USE THE FIND COMMAND AND TYPE IN THE ROMAN NUMERAL, THE LETTER OR THE NUMBER WITH BRACKETS OR PERIODS AND GO TO THE SECTION (DO NOT PASS GO DO NOT COLLECT $200) I. INTRODUCTION II. THE GAME BASICS A. PROFILE B. FREE FORM MODE C. CHALLENGE MODE D. CAMPAIGN MODE E. LOAD SAVED GAME F. EXIT GAME G. GAME OPTIONS H. DOWNLOADS III. EXPANSIONS A. ENDANGERED SPECIES B. AFRICAN ADVENTURES C. ZOOKEEPER COLLECTION D. MARINE MANIA E. EXTINCT ANIMALS IV. STRATEGY AND MAKING MONEY A. ZOO SIZE AND LOCATION B. ZOO LAYOUT C. STAFF D. BUILDINGS AND OBJECTS E. INCOME and EXPENSES F. ZOO FAME G. ANIMAL HAPPINESS H. GUEST HAPPINESS I. AWARDS J. SHOWS K. TOURS V. MINI GAMES A. TRAINING B. FOSSIL HUNTING C. FOSSIL BUILDING D. DNA MANIPULATION E. CURING DISEASES F. DINO RAMPAGE G. GUEST MODE H. PHOTO MODE VI. TERRAFORMING TIPS VII. SCENARIOS/CHALLENGES A. ZOOKEEPER IN TRAINING B. TROUBLED ZOOS C. PREVENT ANIMAL ABUSE D. THE GLOBE E. CONSERVATION PROGRAMS F. THE MYSTERIOUS PANDA G. AFRICAN ADVENTRUE H. TRANSPORTATION I. PHOTO SAFARI J. ENDANGERED SPECIES K. MARINE ANIMALS L. MARINE SHOWS M. EXTINCT ANIMALS N. EXTINCT EXPLORATION O. THE DINOSAUR ZOO P. CHALLENGE LISTING VIII.APPENDIX A: LIST OF ANIMALS IX. APPENDIX B: LIST OF BUILDINGS/OBJECTS/ETC X. APPENDIX c: MY PHOTO POSTING GUIDE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I. INTRODUCTION Welcome to my guide on ZOO TYCOON 2 (ZT2). I would first like to give BLUE FANG and all the other companies who had a hand in this game a "Thank You" for producing this game with detailed graphics and great sound and music. at your earliest moment please take a chance to visit the lovely official web site for ZT2 at: http://zootycoon.com/default.htm and please register for the forum and join us to discuss this wonderful game. I would like to say that this is my third FAQ/STRATEGY guide (see also Mall Tycoon 2 and Prison Tycoon guides on Game FAQS) and that all info contained herein is a culmination of hours of trial and error, observation, and shear dumb luck. I would also like to thank the many fan sites and forums as well as the large community of ZT2 fans. For those that have read my other guides you are probably noticing a pattern with the introduction... Please note that I am writting this guide with all current expansions installed with the game so if you only have a few expansions then some of the data may seem to be a little different, please keep this in mind. If anyone finds that any info in this guide is erroneous, my explainations are difficult to understand, or you just have some new info to add then drop me a line at Soldyne@Yahoo.com and have the subject read: ABOUT YOUR GUIDE or ZOO TYCOON 2 This is because I have many filters on my email account and this will let me know that your email is worth opening. I should not have to say this but, PLEASE make sure you computer is clean of viruses and such before sending me any messages. Thank You! Now for some legal stuff: This guide is Copyrighted under law and cannot be reproduced by others without express writen permission from me. You may not link directly to this document or display a copy of it on any website. I worked long and hard to get this information and I would like to be credited for my work. If you don't beleive me then check out the Copyright Act of 1976 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Copyright_Act_of_1976 A Note About Pronouns: I will tend to use masculine pronouns throughout my document. This is not intended to disrespect or in any way ostrisize the female population. It is just how I write. Thank you for your understanding in this matter. OK, now onto the good stuff! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ II. THE GAME BASICS ZT2 is a strategy/simulation resource managment game. The overall objective is to build a zoological garden containing a vast array of animal species from all over the world while at the same time entertaining your guests and making a profit. sounds like fun, so lets get started! This game is designed for younger audiences and for families, although, serious strategy/simulation players can find quit a bit about the game to give them hours of fun and enjoyment. portions of the profits for the sale of this game and its expansions go to the World Wildlife Fund. The game is not only fun but it is educational and helps real zoos and animals. Once you have the game installed and running you will eventually find yourself at the main menu. this will have a nice random background with some kind of theme song playing. the theme song and background will be determined by which of the expansion packs you have installed at the moment. some of the new features of the second installment of Zoo Tycoon include a fully three dimensional environment with the ability to zoom in and out. You can also go into zoo guest mode and walk around your zoo on foot. while in this mode you can take over some of the jobs of your zookeepers by raking poo, filling water troughs and cleaning your animals. you can even clean up after the guests if you janitors are getting lazy. there is even a photo safari mode where you can take pictures of your zoo and put them into a photo album. you can access your photos outside of the game so you can post them on the net or do whatever you want with them. A. PROFILE At the top of the screen is your profile. Profiles are important if you are sharing your game with someone else. each profile will keep track of numerous things such as progress in a campaign, challenges completed and what items have been unlocked. of course, if you choose to work together with someone then a single profile will do. The profile will also keep track of pictures taken and saved games. you can find your profile and access your pictures by going to: C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name\Application Data\Microsoft Games\ Zoo Tycoon 2\Profile Name When you switch profiles or start a new one the screen may flicker a few times while the game resets everything. don't worry though all the hard work you put into your other profiles will still be there. B. FREE FORM MODE This is the shovel and pail button in the middle of the screen. In a FF game you have unlimited cash and all animals, buildings and objects are open to you from the start. the only things which you do not have access to are the locked items which must be opened by completing campaigns and challenges. There is no way to lose in FF mode no matter how bad you are, there is also no way to win. FF mode is great for building extravagant zoos or, better yet, experimenting. Since FF mode is so open and free I will not cover it much beyond this small introcution. C. CHALLENGE MODE This is the pile of money and watch button in the middle of the screen. In Challenge mode you get your choice of zoo size and global location. the location of your zoo will determine what biome (discussed more in detail later) and what background ambient noises you will have when you first start out. A few maps will have preset mountains, rivers, foliage and some will even have conservation areas set aside. A conservation area is a part of the map that you will not have any control over. you will not be able to manipulate the terrain, disturb the foliage or change the area in any way, shape or form. the only thing you can do with it is add animals to make it an exhibit. Before you start you game you can choose the level of cash you can start with. In a challenge game there are no winning conditions but you do need to watch your money. every so often the game will give you challenges which you can accept or decline. by succeeding at the challenges you can gain temporary prizes or even unlock various objects for use in other maps (discussed later). one of the biggest differences between FF and Challenge/Campaign mode is that many objects, buildings and animals will not be available from the start of the game. in order to gain access to many of the items and animals in this mode you must increase you zoo's fame level (also discussed later). as your zoo's fame increases you will be able to purchase better objects and buildings and more interesting animals. another difference is that you will not have access to all animals at once. instead you will be given a small list of possible animals from which you can adopt a limited number of male and female specimens. you can choose to decline the choices and the game will randomly choose a new animal for you to adopt which is in line with your zoo's fame level. you can continue to decline adoption until you get what you want so it can be annoying at times. I really don't see much of a point to it, but, it is the way it is. Challenge mode is great for the more serious tycoon player who wants to build a great zoo but also wants the thrill and satisfaction of managing the resources to make it run well. D. CAMPAIGN MODE This is the lock and key button in the middle of the screen. In Campaign mode you will be given a list of scenerios. each set of scenerios will have a sublist of games which must be played in order. once all of the sub games are completed you will unlock a special prize which could be a new object or more scenerios. the objects unlocked in this manner will be available throughout the game within the current profile. you can always replay a scenerio if you want to, but, other than fun and experience there are no further benefits. Each scenerio will be different having different starting conditions such as different levels of cash, pre-built zoos, conservation areas, and fame levels. just like in Challenge mode you must increase your zoo's fame level in order to gain access to new objects buildings and animals. on the more difficult games (discussed later) you must adopt certain animals in order to win, however, the game will only give you a random choice so you must continuously decline adoption until the winning animal appears which can be very annoying. one of the benifits of Campaign mode is that you can learn the basics of the game by playing the tutorials. after the tutorials you can increase your skills by playing the other scenerios while at the same time opening up new items. Also, ZT2 offers so many different ways to play that many people get over whelmed with the possibilities and end up doing the same things over and over. By playing through the scenerios you will get the chance to experience all the things that ZT2 has to offer and perhaps learn a few tricks along the way. Campaign mode is great for learning and building your skills within the game. E. LOAD SAVED GAME this is the folder with an arrow button in the middle of the screen. This will allow you to return to a previously saved game which was saved within the current profile. if you saved a game under profile "X" then you must be in profile "X" in order to load that saved game. F. EXIT GAME This is the big red "X" button in the middle of the screen. this one is obvious, do you really need a guide to tell you what it does? G. GAME OPTIONS This is the computer monitor and keyboard button in the middle of the screen. This will open up all the options such as sound and graphics for the game. Microsoft and Bluefang were very good about this part, as the game will automatically set itself for what it believes is optimum settings. if you feel you can tweak the settings for better performance or graphics then go ahead and open up the advanced settings. I will not get into details about all the graphics options here, that could be a guide unto itself. if you want to know more about all that stuff, well, you could always post your questions on the official Zoo Tycoon forums and everyone there will be glad to offer some adivce. My suggestion is, if you don't know what you are doing, then leave this area alone. H. DOWNLOADS This is the section of the game where you can download official content from the Zoo Tycoon website. except for Dino Danger which costs $4.99 all other downloads are free of charge and are highly recommended. (Dino Danger Pack is no longer available as a seperate download as it is included in the Extinct Animals Expansion Pack). as of the writting of this guide the current list of downloads is: Black Leopard and Stuffed Prey Dummy - adds a new animal and new item for your carnivores to play with Holiday Pack - adds christmas themed objects for your zoo Musk Ox and Tundra Theme Pack - my personal favorite, it adds a new animal which is available at the start of all zoos and adds a ton of new buildings and objects which require no research to obtain Challenge Pack 1 - adds new challenges for challenge mode play Scenery Pack - more scenery (don't you love the subtle titles?) Asian Elephant - another animal (can't have enough of them!) Spring Beautification Pack - lots of new flowers for decorating with Guest Fun Pack - lots of new objects to entertain guests with Addax - you have to go to the website in order to download this new animal Updates for Dino Danger - free updates for the premium Dino Danger pack (included in the Zookeeper Collection Expansion Pack) BE WARNED! Dino Danger pack is included for free if you buy the Extinct Animals expansion pack (EA XP). Dino Danger was offered long before the EA XP was released so there was a time when it was worth it to spend the $5. However, there is no refund for people who purchased the download and then also purchase the EA XP. you were warned. Also, if you purchase the Zookeeper Collection then all the downloads except for the Addax will already be included in the CD set, so, for those of you with slow internet connections this is the best way to go. There is also a patch available at the official site. the patch is also packaged with the Zookeeper Collection Expansion Set. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ III. EXPANSIONS This section, not surprisingly, will list the expansions and give a brief summary of what they offer and why you should buy them. of course you can always go to the official Zoo Tycoon website and see all the wonderful adds for the expansions yourself with wonderful pictures and sound effects. (no, I do not work for Blue Fang or Microsoft, they just made a good product so I want to help them out with a little advertising...) With so much content added by so many expansion packs the submenus for objects buildings and animals can be filtered by clicking on the triangle button in the bottom middle window. you can filter by expansion pack, biome, threat level, object/building type and other criteria. it makes finding things so much easier. A. ENDANGERED SPECIES This was the first expansion pack (ES XP) to be released for ZT2. it has 20 animals to add to your zoo and a lot of new challenges and scenerios which revolve around endangered animals. scenerios and challenges include breeding endangered species and creating habitats and zoos worthy of housing some of the worlds most critically endanged animals. ES XP also added a ton of new concepts such as Jeep vehicle tours, Sky Tram tours and elevated paths. New buildings, themes, challenges, scenerios and also new guests and improved guest AI were added with this expansion pack. Items added by ES XP will be marked with a green leaf. B. AFRICAN ADVENTURES This was the second xp (AA XP) to be released. This XP was not as full as ES, however, it did add 20 more animals (which are always good for a zoo) as well as new skins for the Jeep vehicles, new themes and of course Africa centric challenges and scenerios. probably the best addition with this XP other than the new animals was an improved animal AI which introduced realistic herding, hunting and pack behavior among animals in large groups. Items added by AA XP will be marked with an orange stamp of Africa. C. ZOOKEEPER COLLECTION This is basically a re-release of the first two expansion packs along with all the free downloads and the main game all wrapped neatly in a single package. It came out at the same time as the next XP as a way to bolster sales and help regerate wanning interest in the game. it worked! the Zookeeper Collection is what got me into the game and I have been hooked ever since (heck I'm writting the FAQ aren't I?). this collection also included the code patch. D. MARINE MANIA This is the thrid XP for the series and is pretty much the same thing as the Zoo Tycoon 1 version, only better. This is just as it sounds, it adds 20 new marine animals (fish, mammals, birds) as well as new water filled exhibits to house them in. MM also added 4 new biomes to properly match up with the marine type habitats. in addition to new animals MM XP also introduces the water show. You can train certain marine animals to do tricks which can then be employed to enterain guests. the trick training can be done automatically with new hired trainers or you can play various minigames to train your animals yourself. Trainers are slow but will work without any interference from you. the mini games are quick but you will have to leave your zoo unattended for a time while you do your training. Another cool feature is the ability to swim with your animals and even ride on the backs of many of your marine animals (ever wanted to swim with dolphins?) like the other XPs this one also adds new themed buildings and objects as well as new challenges and scenerios. Items added by MM XP will be marked with a blue sea shell. Trainable animals will have a yellow star inside the shell. E. EXTINCT ANIMALS This is the fourth XP for the game and is one of the most exciting and fresh XPs yet. This XP brings back the dinosaurs but also introduces players to other extinct animals from earths history such as the dodo, wooly rhino, quagga, and protarchaeopteryx. This XP adds 30 new animals (10 more than the standard XP) and includes the Dino Danger pack premium download (no refund if you already purchased it seperately). This pack also adds 5 new mini games which include: Searching for fossils, building fossil puzzles, combining DNA, stopping rampaging dinos, and even curing new and strange diseases. There are also new staff members such as entertainers and paleontologists as well as the standard new themes, objects, buildings, challenges and scenerios. Items added by EA XP will be marked with two crossed bones. Items from the Dino Danger pack will be marked with a yellow dinosaur skull. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ IV. STRATEGY AND MAKING MONEY This is the section that most of you have opened this guide for. everyone wants to know how to make money. Before we move on with this section I need to set a few ground rules and assumptions: 1. I assume that you have access to and have read the game manuals. this means that you know how to build exhibits, what a biome is and the difference between a guest and an animal. I will not rehash the manual. if you do not have the manual handy you can always go to the offical website and download a .pdf version of all of the manuals, so no excuses, get reading! 2. The in game tutorials (found in the scenerios section) are very well done and very informative. I actually replay some of them just to remind myself of the basics from time to time. I strongly suggest and indeed assume that you have played the tutorials and understand all the basic concepts contained within them. 3. The intent of this section is to build upon the basics which you should know from reading the manuals and playing the tutorials. If you find that some of the concepts I talk about seem a little advanced, then go back to the manual and the tutorials to refresh yourself (no shame in that). Although, I may get a little basic from time to time just so we are all on the same page, just don't expect me to hold your hand. 4. This section will focus mostly on Challenge mode. The ideas discussed here can be used in campaign mode but each scenerio has differnet winning conditions and each sub game is disscussed in its own section below. There is no money or strategy involved in Free Form mode since there is no way you can win or lose. I do suggest that if you have an idea you want to test out then use FF mode as a proving ground to experiment in before going blind into the other modes. A. ZOO SIZE AND LOCATION When you first start out in Challenge mode you will be given a long list of possible locations and sizes for your zoo. the list of zoos is on the left hand side of the screen with the zoo size in parenthesis; (S) is small, (M) is medium and (L) is large. Junior zoos are small in size and have paths and fences already set up to help out those people who might not know what direction they want to go in yet. The globe in the middle of the screen will give you an idea as to where in the world the zoo is located. you can click and drag the mouse to rotate the globe. its a nice toy, but has no other use. on the right hand side of the screen you will see a thumbnail of the zoo, followed by a short description and then a dollar figure with two arrows. You can choose the amount of money you start with in challenge mode. you can really challenge yourself by putting the figure as low as $5,000 (not recommended) or you can increase the figure by factors of $100. I have brought the figure as high as $10,000,000 and have gone over that while playing the game. I do not know how high the figure goes, but, if you are going to start a zoo with more than $500,000 then you might as well go play Free Form mode. There are three sizes of Zoos that you can make use of in the game: small, medium and large. The small zoo is 52x52. The medium zoo is 70x70. The large zoo is 92x92. I think that all of these sizes are much too small for any kind of great zoo, especially when you consider how many animals and biomes there are in the game. even with these small sizes the entry way takes up even more space. I am terrible at ASCII art so I won't try to demonstrate what I mean, but, you should be able to tell the amount of space lost just by looking at any random map. All I can say about zoo size is to make sure you make the most of your space. plan ahead, use minimum exhibit sizes (see appendix A for details), make use of raised paths and just get used to the idea that you will most likely not be able to have every animal in your zoo at the same time. I am not saying that such a zoo is impossible, what I am saying is that it is not practical. some good ideas for zoo planning are to concentrate on one theme or idea. create multiple zoos where each one concentrates on one biome or one region of the world (like an asian zoo or desert zoo). No one ever said that you can only have one zoo! B. ZOO LAYOUT The way you layout your zoo is entirely up to you, however, if you would like an efficient zoo which will help increase your income, fame and guest happiness levels then I have a few ideas to share. Your zoo is first and foremost a business. you must think about profit and income. Guests are your only source of income (except for a few rocks and trees at the start of the game that you can recycle for cash). guests will only give your zoo money if they are happy and entertained. guests will only show up if you have animals in exhibits. to make guests happy you need happy animals, food, drink, restrooms and entertainment/decorations. any zoo design with animals will attract guests. but keeping the guests in the zoo and getting them to spend all their money is a matter of efficient park design. Guests will only walk on paths (sometimes a random guest will go where they are not supposed to, but, the majority of them stay on the paths). so an efficient zoo needs an efficient path layout. - PATH PLACEMENT There are various kinds of paths you can use in your zoos but they all cost the same amount and the guests really don't care so long as the paths lead to food, enteratinment and exhibits. I use three sizes of paths for most of my parks; 3 tiles, 5 tiles, and 6 tiles. I would not go less than 3 or more than 6. I use 3 tiles mainly during scenerio games when money is tight. more tiles means more money invested. I like 3 tiles over the suggested 2 tiles for a few reasons. 1) the middle tile can act as a place to put lots of objects such as donation boxes, decorations and food carts. this then keeps the two tiles on either side free and clear for guests to observe the animals without bumping into stuff all the time. also, if a bench is 1 tile from the exhibit the guests on the bench can still see the animals thus letting them rest and observe at the same time. 2) Arches are one of the games best decorations. every guest that walks under and archway will gain some entertainment value. arches are 3 tiles wide with 1 tile underneath for passing through, so, this makes the perfect decoration for a 3 tile wide path. The only arch that is 4 tiles wide is the extinct themed arch. 3) Donation boxes can be expensive, so, by placing a donation box in the middle tile you can essentially use one box for two exhibts. rotate the box so that the front is paralell with the path (not facing an exhibit) this way guests on either side of the box can access it with equal ease. 4) the middle row is great for putting in the occasional gift or food cart. like the donation box, make sure the front is not facing an exhibt and you should have plenty of customers. 5) by putting all your benches and other objects in the middle of the path you can also place observation areas on either side of the path which further increase guest happiness. I use the 5 tile wide pathway when I play FF or Challenge mode (since money is less of an issue). the principles are still the same as with the 3 tile path, but now you have more room to play with. with 5 tiles you can put in bigger decorations, fountains, statues, and even some nice landscaping. remember though that if a bench is more than 1 tile from an exhibit then the guests can't see the animals. 6 tiles are what I use for the main entryway path. there are two reasons for this: 1) the entry way itself is 2 tiles wide so an odd numbered path is impossible to center (I like things centered). 2) with 6 tiles you can place two arches next to each other very neatly. Here is a pic of a 3 tile wide path and some object placement: http://img267.imageshack.us/my.php?image=3tileswidemx3.jpg - EXHIBIT CREATION Now that you have your path set up you need to attract some guests. The only way to attract guests is with animals which must be enclosed in exhibits. Exhibits are going to be, without a doubt, the largest things in your zoo. figuring out how big to make them is going to be the main focus of most zoo designs. there are some things to consider when building exhibits: 1) the type and number of animal(s) you plan to place in the exhibit. 2) guest visibility to the animals. 3) animal privacy. The first point is complicated as each species of animal requires different amounts of space. This will be discussed in more detail in section G. ANIMAL HAPPINESS and you can reference size requirements for each animal in APPENDIX A below. The second and third points will be discussed here. Guest visibility while on a path is 10 tiles in all directions from the point they are standing. guests can only see into an exhibit if they are standing on a tile next to an exhibit or at most 1 tile away (which will give them visibility of 9 tiles into the exhibit). Binoculars can increase this visibility range to 22 tiles but only in a confined arc (about 60 degrees) as opposed to 180 degrees. Also, binoculars do not allow visibility to things in the exhibit that are in the first tile (those items are too close for the binoculars to focus on). Elevated paths only give visibility to an exhibit if the edge of the path extends beyond the fencing into the exhibit. visibility is sill only 10 tiles away from the path, and the guests cannot see anything that is underneath the path or 1 tile from the path (because of the angle). Even though the elevated paths do not increase the visual radius of the guest they do allow the guest to go further into the exhibit without reducing the size of the exhibit. this can help save on space at the expense of extra cost to build. with this knowledge I generally try to keep most of my exhibits 10 tiles deep or less. I don't use binoculars too often because only one guest can use them at a time. if you want to go with elaborate exhibits with mixed animals (say for example the ever popular savannah exhibit) then perhaps 22 tiles deep with a few strategic elevated paths would be ideal. Animal privacy can also be a concern. many of the more endangered and solitary animals (carnivores for example) require more privacy than other animals. for the most part privacy can be easily achieved by providing some kind of shelter for your animals to sleep in. however, one way to provide cheap privacy is by limiting the view of your guests into the exhibits. any area which guests cannot view is considered a privacy area for your animals (but only if the animals move into that area). this can be acheived by using solid fencing, or by extending the depth of the exhibit beyond the visual range of the guests. animals that can swim can use deep water as a privacy area, unless you are using marine tank walls which allow guests to see into deep water. due to size limitations I would suggest researching any shelters and using those instead of increasing the size. the shelter will provide privacy and sleep and your guests can still be entertained when they see your animals using the shelters. This also keeps your exhibits smaller thus saving your overall zoo space and saving money on extra fencing. - FENCING while we are on the subject of fences lets get into some more details. Fencing is going to be your number one expenditure. fencing is not cheap and you will need a lot of it. when you just start out chain link fence is really going to be your best and pretty much only option. due to cost, you will most likely be using chain link fence for most of your zoo tycoon career. The best way to reduce fencing cost is to put your exhibits on the outer edge of the zoo. the zoo boundary fence will act as exhibit fencing and is free. also, if you put two exhibits next to each other they can share the fencing between them thus reducing costs even more. sharing fencing between multiple exhibits is also a good idea when hiring zookeepers, but, we will save that discussion for later. Chain link fencing is not a good idea for animals that can climb such as chimps, lemures and koalas. you will have to use some other kind of fencing for them. The best fencing for decoration and saftey is the widowed fencing (themed if you want to decorate). this is also the most expensive. The most secure fencing is the electrified dinosaur fencing (from EA XP). this is not the most decorative fencing but it will keep pretty much anything inside except a rampaging dino. another good fencing with plenty of visibility is the marine wall which comes with MM XP. so long as you don't make the entire exhibit out of marine walls then the exhibit will not fill with water. you can use marine walls as part of your viewing area and it will be like a giant wall of glass. it looks quite nice and is less costly than the average windowed fence, but, more pricey than standard chain link. This is a pic of the standard 10x10 fence exhibit: http://img263.imageshack.us/my.php?image=fencexbtby5.jpg a version of the standard exhibit is the indented exhibit. this is basically the same land exhibit mentioned above with a small pocket 1 or 2 tiles deep into the exhibit where the guests can go further into the area to view the animals. if you surround the rest of the exhibit with solid fencing this can give the aniamals some areas in the corners where they can have some privacy. the disadvantage here is that the viewing area takes up space from the animals home so it requires a little more planning. take a look at this basic indented exhibit: http://img257.imageshack.us/my.php?image=indentxbtwr3.jpg here is the same exhibit from guest view with marine wall viewing area: http://img267.imageshack.us/my.php?image=marinewallviewjt4.jpg fencing is good for saving space since it does not take up any space itself. all fencing is on the edge of a tile. however, no fencing is perfect and many animals have ways of bypassing many kinds of fencing. chimps and other climbers can climb many kinds of fence. meerkats and other tunnelers can dig under most all fences and no fence is strong enough to contain an angry dino. an alternative to fencing is to use cliffs. The game comes with an array of easy and free to use landscaping tools. The cliff, ditch and flatten tools are extremely useful. when you use the cliff or ditch tool a single click on the mouse button will raise or lower the terrain by one unit. most animals can easily climb a cliff that is 1 unit high. 2 units high should be enough for most animals. some animals (such as the Ibex) are natural mountain climbers and may requrie cliffs that are up to 3 or 4 units high. Cliffs are cheap to make and (if they are high enough) 100% safe for all animals Dinos cannot rampage through a cliff, chimps cant climb it and meerkats cant dig through it. the problem with a cliff is that it is hard to create and takes up precious space. There are two ways to use cliffs to make exhibits: the ditch exhibit or the cliff wall exhibit. first you should know that from the default level of the entrance you can go two units down with the ditch tool or 4 units up with the cliff tool. this is important to know if you want to make such exhibits for your mountain animals (as they will need more than two units of cliffs to contain). The ditch exhibit is generally the cheapest and easier of the two (IMHO). to create a ditch exhibit first design your exhibit using the cheapest fence possible; low chain link fence. once it is enclosed, use the ditch tool and dig a ditch anywhere in the exhibit to the lowest level. then use the flatten terrain tool inside the ditch (its easiest to use when it is at 100% size) and then flatten all the terrain inside the exhibit. notice that you can get all the way up to the fence and the terrain will not flatten. this is because fencing on enclosed exhibits will lock terrain at the level where the fencing is at which allows you to create vertical cliff walls of any height. when the ditch is done, paint your biome on the inside and on the walls. you can also now recycle the fencing on any side that will not be next to a path. any side of the exhibit that will be next to a path must have at least a low fence. this is so your guests don't fall into the exhibit (they are not very bright or careful when it comes to the animals). if you are going to put another ditch exhibit next to this one then you must replace the recycled fence on the cliff edge before creating the new ditch or you will lose your cliff wall. remember that land will be locked to a level that a fence is occupying. The problem with cliff walls is that they take up 1 tile of space on each side of the cliff wall. thus if you planned a 10x10 exhibit with your low chain fence and built a ditch exhibit you will only have room in the exhibit for 8x8 tiles. this may not seem like a difference until you compare the areas: 10x10 = 100 tiles 8x8 = 64 tiles that is nearly a 40% decline in available space! if you want a 10x10 exhibit you must plan out a 12x12 area before you dig. remember to add 2 extra tiles in each direction to compensate for the loss of space. another disadvantage of ditch exhibits is that zookeepers have no way in or out of the ditch since the walls are too steep. you could build a small ramp which can provide access, but, that requires some more skill and planning to create with the terrain tools. or you could just clean up after your animals yourself but this can get tedious if you have many exhibits. another idea is to have 1 zookeeper per ditch. the keepers do not need to leave the exhibit but if you have a lot of ditches then this can get expensive. here is a pic of a simple ditch exhibit: http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=ditchxbtmi7.jpg For the cliff wall exhibit you will still need a regular fence on the path facing sides of the exhibit. for the other sides you must first raise the ground with your cliff tool and then place your fence where you want your wall to be. then use the flatten terrain tool to trim the wall against the fence. when the wall is trimmed you can recycle your fence. this also takes up extra space, but, it can give your exhibits a more natural look. cliff wall exhibits are the least practical and the most difficult to plan with, but, IMHO, they are the best looking. I would only suggest using cliff wall exhibits if you are a skilled planner and terraformer. if you watch the openning movie carefully you will see that cliff wall exhibits are being used for most of the animals and you can see how natural it makes the exhibits look. this is a pic of a simple cliff exhibit from guest view: http://img206.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cliffxbtmw3.jpg this is a pic of a professional cliff exhibit with water fall: http://img266.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cliffxptxbtkg8.jpg this is a pic of the professional cliff exhibit from guest view: http://img267.imageshack.us/my.php?image=cliffguestviewqn0.jpg so to sum up your fencing options: 1) fence exhibit - most expensive. least space required. must use right kind of fence to contian certain animals. meerkats are the worst as they can dig their way out under any fence. 2) ditch exhibit - least expensive, most space required. can contain all but your mountain climbing animals such as the Ibex. also prevents staff access. 3) Cliff wall - moderate expense, moderate space, requires the most skill to create and is not fool proof as fencing is still required on at least one side, but, is arguably the best looking. another option is the marine walls. with marine walls added by MM XP you can create waterfilled exhibits for your marine animals. what makes the marine walls so special is that the land does not lock in place at the base of a marine wall. this allows you to lower the land on the outer edge and allow your guests to see into the water filled tank to watch your animals swim around. this is a standard marine exhibit: http://img206.imageshack.us/my.php?image=marinexbtha8.jpg you can also combine marine walls with other exhibit fencing to create hybrid exhibits. a hybrid exhibit is one where there is land and water. the land part can be contained with regular fencing and the water part can be contained with marine walls. by doing this you can lower the land around the tank walls and make a small ditch for your guests so they can see your animals swim, or, go up the path to see them on land. take a look at this hybrid exhibit with california sea lions: http://img210.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hybridxbtnk2.jpg as mentioned before you can also use marine walls as part of a regular exhibit in order to give a full windowed view. Do not use moats, especially water moats. about half the animals in the game can swim so water moats are pointless. if you just use a dry moat without any fencing around it then both guests and animals will fall into it causing all kinds of happiness issues and will ultimately be very annoying. with proper use of fencing moats can be a nice visual addition but they provide no practical use to contain animals. - AMENITIES You have animals in exhibits. then the guests arrive. the guests see the animals and are happy. but, they won't stay happy for long. eventually guests will get hungry, thirsty, tired, whiney and bored (just like real people). This section is mainly to discuss the overall layout of your zoo. there is a section below, GUEST HAPPINESS, which goes into more detail about how to keep your guests in a state of eternal bliss (or at least learn how to to ignore them efficiently). what we will discuss here is the basic overall strategy for using the buildings and objects in your zoo for maximum effeciency. I have found that in the games that I play the best way to use the buildings and to increase overall guest satisfaction is to build guest areas which specialize in catering to all of your guests needs all in one place. every so often, evenly spaced and distant you should build small areas that contain food and drink stalls with a family restroom and atm. the area should be large enough to have about 6 stalls (2 food, 2 drink, 2 desert), 1 family restroom and 4-6 tables, 4 trash/recycle bins, 1 ATM and a few decorations. do not allow guests to view animals while in the guest areas otherwise these areas will clog up and decrease happiness. I like to put guest areas in the corners and in the center of the zoo depending on the zoo size. gift carts should be strategically placed along the paths (remember the middle tile?). place marine carts near marine animals and shows and place extinct carts near extinct animals. Gift carts should be placed about every 20 tiles or so inbetween your guest areas. for larger zoos you can use restaurants instead of stalls for the guest areas, but, you will still need decorations and restrooms. gift shops can also be placed in guest areas (if room permits) but they do best near the entrance, or somewhere along the 6 tile main entry way. even if you are goig to use a restaurant you should still have a few guest areas with stalls and carts to provide more of a variety. also, a gift shop is not a replacement for well placed gift carts. don't try to put food and drink stalls in the middle of the paths. this will just create more problems then they solve. stalls and carts in the paths will cause people to complain about no tables to sit at, trash will begin to pile up very quickly. also your maintenance workers will be running ragged trying to keep up with all the trash all over the zoo. if you keep your trash contained to guest areas then it makes clean up a lot easier. here is an example of a small guest area: http://img264.imageshack.us/my.php?image=guestareaam5.jpg - PARK DESIGNS so we have paths and we have exhibits and we have guest areas. so how do we put it all together? there are many ways to build a park but only a few ways that make the park efficient. in my experience with this game (and Zoo Tycoon 1 as well as other similar games) I find that there are three basic types of parks that you can put together: Grid, Single Entry, and Wild Animal Park. 1. The Grid. in the grid design you will be concentrating on making everything square. you can use a combination of 6 tile entry way and 3 or 5 tile side paths. your exhibits will be square, your paths will be square. everything will be evenly spaced. this style makes very efficient use of space and provides ample room for many small individual exhibits as well as guest areas. Grids almost plan themselves. they are easy to use and quick to get going. Of the three designs presented here the grid is the best for water shows and marine animals. some disadvantages of this design are that many people think it is too square. the grid is not organic enough and just does not look nice. also, there is not a lot of room for tours which can be an important part of many successful zoos. profitable tours are possible, they are just wont be very interesting. I use the Grid mostly when playing campaign games since efficiency is the key to winning scenerios. take a look at this sample grid layout: http://img218.imageshack.us/my.php?image=gridmapdg0.jpg 2. Single Entry. This is a modified Grid style where the only path is the main entry path. all exhibits are extremely deep and very large. this style has the advantage of being easy to design (only one path and big exhibits). there will also be fewer guest areas as guests will all be herded into one general area, the center. this map also screams for jeep and sky tours as well as giving perfect excuses for elevated paths. Because all of your guests will be crammed into the center isle I would suggest making the single path 12 tiles wide instead of 6. With some creative exhibit planning you can throw in a water show or two, but, this design more easily accomodates land based exhibits. the big disadvanatge with this design is that there is not a lot of room in the center for a variety of buildings and guest entertainment could suffer. elevated paths can relieve that burden, but, it will increase the overall cost of the design. I used this design on a few campaigns and I think it makes a great challenge game as well. 3. The Wild Animal Park. This is a modified version of the single entry design. Instead of having the main entry path extend through the entire park to the other side, it only goes about one quarter of the way. surround the path with fencing and all of a sudden your entire park is one big exhibit! with an exhibit this big you can recreate the african savannah, the amazon rainforest or what ever your heart desires. this also has the advantage of keeping all the guests in one nice and easy spot. you can use elevated paths to add more buildings, but, the main attractions are the tours. here is your chance to design some really amazing jeep and sky tram tours. this design does not really support water shows or marine animals very well, however, a creative player can make anything possible. the disadvantages with this design are that animals have so much area to get lost in. if guests cant see the animals then they will leave your zoo before they are finished spending all of thier money. also, with so many animals and so much space your zookeepers will have a hard time keeping up with the mess. I do not suggest this design for most scenerios, although it can certainly be fun to do in a challenge game. These designs were just some of my more efficient ideas which I have had much success with in the past. there really is no wrong way to design your zoo so long as it has happy guests, happy animals, happy money and a happy player. C. STAFF MAINTENANCE WORKER Cost: $200/mo These guys are basically like zookeepers for your guests. they clean up litter, take out the trash and recycle bins and clean your water filters (if you have MM installed). These guys work best if you use the guest area idea from the last section. if you have a large zoo then it might be a good idea to make specialists. this means having each worker only do one job such as only sweeping litter, or only taking out the trash. this way they don't get distracted with lots of other jobs all the time. for a small zoo I would suggest only having one worker per guest area. you can also enter guest mode and help out your janitors but this can be time consuming. you have more important things to do with your time than sweep the floor. EDUCATOR Cost: $200/mo with podium: $225/mo These employees require an educator podium in order to do their work. place the podium in a very high traffic area near a popular exhibit. This is another great reason for having an odd numbered path width. educators will stand at the podium talking about whatever animals are nearby. the guests standing nearby will stand for a bit to listen to the educator and will gain some entertainment value. educators also provide a slight increase to the educational value of your exhibits. In all of my playing I have not noticed much of an increase in educational donations by adding an educator and podium. if you want to increase your education donations then invest in a Discovery Kiosk. These kiosks will add a significant amount to your educational donations. I would suggest putting in a few educators at the same interval as a gift cart, perhaps at the corner of two exhibits. if you have more than one podium and more than one educator then they will switch podiums every now and again. Zookeeper cost: $500/mo These employees will take care of all of your animals. they will clean the poo, fill the water, replace food, clean the animals and heal the sick. this is why they get paid more. You can of course do all of these things yourself in guest mode, but, for a large zoo, you will not have the time. It is very important to keep exhibits clean. neither guests nor aniamls like seeing lots of poo in an exhibit. you also need to make sure that animals are always fed and watered. if not they will become unhappy which then makes your guests unhappy. The thing about zookeepers is that they do not need access to the guest areas. you can lock them inside an exhibit and they will continue to work without complaint. if you have any exhibit touching another exhibit you can put a staff gate on the shared fence between them and the zookeeper can move between the exhibits without ever needing to go outside. The strategy I use for my zookeepers is to assign a zookeeper to no more than 4 small exhibits (where there are about 4 animals per exhibit) or 1 large exhibit (like that ever popular savannah exhibit). if you find that an exhibit is not getting clean enough then assign a second zookeeper to help out. it is always recommended to ASSIGN a keeper to an exhibit. If a keeper is unassigned to any exhibit then they will attempt to do any zookeeper job that is in your zoo. this can cause a lot of annoying messages that pop up saying that zookeeper so-and-so can't reach the poo. by assigning keepers only to exhibits that they can access then you reduce these messages. if the exhibit is large (such as the wild animal park design) then you will still get these messages because if a zookeeper takes too long to reach a job then the game thinks that the job can't be reached and posts the message. assign a keeper to an exhibit by selecting the keeper and then selecting the tab with a clipboard and paper on it. on this subscreen select the assignment button (yellow plus sign with clipboard). it will change your cursor to a pole with a flag. position this pole inside any exhibit and click the mouse. the ground will begin to fill with a green grid, ignore this. all that grid tells you is which exhibit is being selected. The assignment will then appear in the subscreen in a list as "assignment #". once a keeper is assigned to an exhibit they will only notice and respond to jobs that are in that exhibit. I have not found a limit to the number of assignments a keeper can have, but, as I said earlier, there is an efficient limit of about 20 total animals per keeper (4-5 animals in 4-5 exhibits). In a small zoo or one that is just starting you can save a lot of money by taking care of the animals yourself. however once you get 3 or so exhibits going, you should think about hiring a zookeeper to take care of all those menial tasks. TRAINER Cost: $500/mo (occasionally you will hire a trainer and their salary will only be $350/mo, this seems random though) The trainer was added with MM XP. these empoyees will slowly train your trainable marine animals provided that the tank wall has a tank entrance and a rather large training area. Trainers create thier own training areas in a tank and you can assign more than one animals to a trainer. a trainer can only train one animal at a time but will switch between them while working. Trainers are very slow when it comes to training your animals. they will try to train one trick with one animal at a time and then cycle through all of the other trainable animals that they are assigned to before continuing the training on the first animal. this can be very inefficient. they are also not very effective at training. the advantage to having trainers is that your animals can be trained while you are doing other work and guests enjoy watching animals get trained (so make sure guests can see them in action. also, you can train animals yourself while your trainer is training other animals. you can also train more than one animal at the same time if you have multiple staff entrances and multiple trainers in the same exhibit. if you are going to have shows with more than one trainable animal then it is recommended to have at least one trainer per tank. they may be slow at training but it is better than nothing. there is more information about training and shows below. PALEONTOLOGIST Cost: $500/mo These employees were added with EA XP. They serve two functions but each function requires a building to make full use of. The first function is to search for fossils. a paleontonlogist will begin searching for fossils as their primary function. they will walk around with a fossile finder (fully upgraded too) and mark areas for fossils. you must go into zoo guest mode in order to dig them up. this is a great feature of this employee. if you have ever searched for fossils on your own, you will know how time consuming it can be. every once in a while you will get a message that you have discovered a fossil, which implies that the paleontologist does occasionally get his hands dirty with digging, but, for most of the fossils you must dig them up yourself. the only way to make use of the fossils is to have an extinct research lab. you can still dig them up, you just can't use them until you build the lab. the second activity requires an extinct education center. every so often the paleontologist will stop this search for fossils and go to the extinct education center and start lecturing about extinct animals. this performs the same fuction as the educator above, however, the "podium" is much larger. You can have more than one paleontologist walking around which can really increase the speed at which fossils are found. you can even go into zoo guest mode and look for fossils yourself at the same time. if you plan to make use of fossils and the extinct research lab then I highly recommend paleontologists. however, since they are expensive, I would only recommend them for an established zoo with decent income. ENTERTAINERS Cost: $200/mo These employees were added with EA XP. there are two types: saber-toothed cat, and dinosaur. both do the same thing, entertain guests. each one has slightly different animations which can be fun to watch from time to time. entertainers can be used in any zoo regardless of whether you are making use of extinct animals or not. they will walk around randomly and every so often put on a show. any guests in the area will turn to watch the entertainer and when the show is over the guests will get a large boost to their enterainment value. Entertainers can be made more productive with the use of a stage. they can enterain larger groups of people and are less likely to sit on a bench if a stage is present in your zoo. without a stage they can still perform but they are less efficient and more lazy. you can have more than one stage and more than one entertainer in your zoo at any time. if your zoo is large and you have a lot of guests (and/or you are getting lots of messages about your guests not being entertained enough) then get one or two entertainers. put the stage in or near a guest area if you can fit it, or put it by the entrance for greatest effect. If you have enough decorations and shows then you may not need entertainers as the only function they provide is to increase the enterainment level of your guests. if your guests are satisfied then don't spend the money, unless of course you want to watch the show yourself. DINO CAPTURE TEAM BUNKER Cost: $5000 (to buy) $500/mo upkeep although technically a building these guys can be found in the staff section. the bunker basically acts like a large statue until you have a rampaging dino on the loose. then the statue will lift up and a team of highly trained dino capture specialists will come out of an underground bunker and begin working their magic. these guys take a while to capture the dinosaur but are enteraing to watch. you can very easily capture a dino yourself much faster by going into zoo guest mode. you can even reduce the damage a rampaging dino does by puting all your dinos into ditch exhibits (described above). the dino capture team is fun to watch but I do not use them myself. rampaging dinos are rare and are easily contained. STAFF CENTER Cost: $500 (to buy) $50/mo upkeep this is not an employee but it is related to them. if a staff member is waiting for a job (because there is nothing for them to do) then they will try to go to the nearest staff center to "take a break". this is a complete waste of time and money. your staff do not need to take breaks! they will work 24 hours a day without rest for as long as you can pay them. the staff center does not provide any benefit other than keeping your staff from sitting on the benches and taking space away from the guests. so long as you keep your staff busy the staff center is not needed. D. BUILDINGS AND OBJECTS There are way too many buildings and objects in ZT2 to discuss them all here. This section will basically be concerned with the buildings and objects which I believe have the greatest value. if you think that there is a building or object in ZT2 which I have not listed here and has some great stategic value to the game then please let me know. you can rotate buildings and objects by using the < and > keys. you will be able to rotate in 8 different orrientations. some buildings and objects can be moved after they are placed. to move a moveable object double click the object to pick it up. there may come a day when I feel ambitious enough to catalog every building and object and create a nice neat chart. that day has not yet arrived. if someone else wishes to do this then please feel free. Before we start talking about the buildings and objects lets discuss research/ fame. when you start a challenge or campaign game you will not have access to all the items and animals right away. first you will need to raise your fame (see FAME section below) and then once you have the reputation needed to gain access to certain items you may be required to do further research. research is an interesting concept in a game like ZT2. don't think of research as you needing to hire scientists to figure out how to build something. instead think of research as more of an administrative task. as the FAME section says, fame is a matter of reputation among suppliers and other zoos. when your reputation is high enough suppliers will want to do more business with your zoo. sometimes reputation is not enough. perhaps your zoo has heard about a certain item that is only available to zoos with a certain renown, but, once you achieve that fame level no one is offering you this item for sale. so research is basically money and time that your zoo spends looking through advertisements, catalogs and calling up suppliers to see if you can find someone who can supply this item to you. So, Fame is the reputation and trust you build with suppliers and other zoos which convinces them to offer you better equipment and more exotic animals. however, not all suppliers offer the same equipment so research is your zoo spending time and money to find a supplier which does offer the specific item you are looking for as well as setting up contracts and negotiating fair prices. - THEMES there are many differnet themes in ZT2 which you can use to create themed areas. I have not seen any great advantage to this in game but I have heard rumors that themed areas provide a boost to guest enterainment values. themed areas also look nicer for the player and are just as as easy to create as a non themed area. you can use as many themes as you can fit in your zoo, but, if you are going to use multiple themes I would suggest keeping each area as one theme. don't mix your themes in the same area (just in case there is a bonus). of course you can decorate as you wish and really when it comes to decorating your zoo all decorations will add some level of entertainment value and in the end what matters is the players enjoyment of the game. Themed buidings cost more to upkeep than default buildings, however, default buildings all need to be researched (except the ones you start with). even with the higher maintenance cost it is still a more economic desicion to use themed buildings since you must take into account the high initial cost of the research. for example: if a default building costs $400 to research and the themed version is $25 more per month it would take you 16 game months before the default building would even pay for itself. most scenerios will not last longer than 5 game months. so save yourself a lot of money and use themed buildings whenever you can. - FENCES we already discussed exhibit bulding above, but, there are many different kinds of fences which can be used to build the exhibits. There are low fences and high fences. low fences are good for small animals which cannot jump, climb or are not tall enough to walk over the fence (like a giraffe for example). low fences can also keep your guests from walking over a cliff. even if you are not designing an exhibit you should still use fences to keep guests from wandering over a tall ledge or into some deep water. Low fences can also be used as decoration if you going for a themed area. High fences are generally the best for containing most animals. chain fence is going to be your "bread and butter" fence for most of your ZT2 career. the only animals that this fence will not contain are climbers (chimps, etc), meerkats (they dig under it), and dinos (they are too strong). With other high fences you must be certain that the guests can see through it. some high fences are solid which gives no visiblity to what is on the other side. this is good for giving animals privacy as well as decoration. the most expensive and best kind of fence for exhibits is the high fence with window. as a rule of thumb, if you can see through the fence in guest mode then your guests can see through it too. you can also use the "eye" tool which can be found by clicking on the arrow to far left of the user interface. clicking on the eye with an x through it will change your cursor to an eye. when placed on a path in front of an exhibit you will see shiny glitter in the exhibit which denotes the visibility range of the guest at that spot. if you cant see any glitter than the guest can't see thorugh the fence. some times it takes the game a few seconds to calculate the view area. just click on the path a few times and move the cursor around a bit. if after about 5 seconds you still don't see any glitter then you should consider a new fence type. you should also understand that the glitter is yellow so it might not show up very well against a yellow ground color (desert and savannah for example). Not all fences can be used to contain animals however. if you are ever not sure if a fence can be used for an animal then just click on the animal and select the zookeeper recommendations button (picture of a zookeeper in the far right corner of the animal subscreen). with this you can get a list of just about anything that can be used for that animal including fence types, food, enrichment objects, shelters, biome and other stuff. The dino, extinct themed and iron bar fence are the only fences rated for containing large dinos. rampanging dinos can still break the fence. Dino fence is not very pretty so I often choose to use a ditch exhibit for my big lizards. - FOOD AND DRINK STALLS Food and Drink stalls come in different forms. there are permanent stalls and carts. carts can be picked up and placed anywhere in your zoo. stalls cannot be moved once they are placed. Food and drink buildings come in all the various theme styles so you can create a truly immersive themed area. when creating guest areas remember to include one meal stall, one drink stall and one desert cart. different types of food and drink appeal to different types of customers (see below for more information). each stand can only service one guest at a time so you should add more when you start seeing long lines form. There are also three types of restaurants; family, regular and fancy. each one sells differnet types of food for different prices. each one sells a meal, drink and dessert all at the same time and provides a place for guests to sit and rest. restaurants do not provide restrooms and so you should provide a family restroom next to all of your restaurants. ATMs and gift shops also work well next to a restaurant. - RESTROOMS all zoos will need these if you want your guests to remain happy. restrooms come in all available themes. the small restroom is cheap and only takes up two squares, but, only one guest can use it at a time. I always try to add two small restrooms to a new zoo so lines don't get too long. the family restroom is amazing. it is availabe at 2 fame stars (see FAME section below for details). this will take up a 2x2 area and is more expensive than the small restroom but it can service any number of guests at once. you will never have a line at the restroom again with a family restroom. - STAFF CENTER See STAFF section above - DINO CAPTURE TEAM BUNKER See STAFF section above - COMPOST BUILDING this is a great building which was also in ZT1. if you have a medium or large zoo with lots of poo raking going on then the compost building more than pays for itself. the only disadvantage is that you must find a place away from guest areas and paths or guests will start to complain about the smell. animals might complain as well so be careful where you put it. the compost building does not need path access in order to function. unfortunately, my testing was inconclusive as to how much money one gets from raking poo, but, it will be more than enough to pay for the buildings upkeep and still give a decent income. this building is highly recommended once it becomes available. - ATM this is a very handy item. when guests run out of money they will start looking for an ATM to withdraw more. they will keep doing this so long as they are happy. this is good since they will be spending that money in your zoo. if they run out of money and cannot find an ATM they will leave. this can be bad since they may decide to do this when they are on the far side of the zoo. if so they must walk all the way out of the zoo (not spending money the whole time) before a new guest can arrive to replace them. place 1 ATM in every guest area and at every restroom. this should help retain the maximum number of guests and help keep income high. you might want to wait until you have a medium sized zoo however as ATMs do cost upkeep. - EXTINCT RESEARCH LAB if you are going to use extinct animals a lot then you will want one of these. this building gives 3 minigames which can be quite a boon to any zoo. the first is the ability to put together fossils you find in your zoo (see paleontologist in the staff section or mini games below). once you get a fossil together you will be able to create that extinct animal through a DNA mainipulation minigame. if you are successful you get a free extinct animal (for more details see mini games below) which is quite a gift for a new zoo with little money. the final use of the building is to cure special diseases. when you are using extinct animals there is a chance that they can contract strange ailments. the only way to cure them is to have an extinct research lab and to play the disease curing mini game. if you are not going to be making use of extinct animals then don't get this building. it is expensive to buy and keep, as well as taking up lots of valuable space. - EXTINCT EDUCATION CENTER and PLAY DIG PIT this was mentioned briefly in the staff section above under the paleontologist entry. this is a rather bulky building that allows your paleontologist to teach and entertain guests about extinct animals. when a paleontologist is not present, guests can educate themselves by reading the plaques that are around the building. when used in conjunction with a play dig pit guests can dig up fossils and place them on the edcuation center display area (this is automatic). after a while of fossil collecting you will get a statue of an extinct animal. there are 4 statues in all and each one is placeable anywhere in your zoo. in FF and challenge mode, completing a fossil statue is cosidered an award. these two buildings in combination are a great addition to any zoo but they do cost a bit to upkeep and take a lot of space. I would suggest these for a medium or large zoo. - KIOSKS, HOUSES and AQUARIUMS these are all small additions you can place in your zoo to increase guest entertainment. they all have interesting animations and can service multilpe guests at the same time. they do have upkeep costs so make sure to place them sparingly. of note is the Education Kiosk. this will not only entertain your guests but it will also increase thier education dontations for a short time. without an education kiosk I saw a ratio of 1/5 for education dontaions to regular donations. with a kiosk the nearby donation boxes saw an increase to this ratio of 2/3. I strongly recommend using education kiosks in areas of high traffic near popular exhibits. you will see a noticeable increase in donations. - GIFT CARTS and SHOPS There are regualar carts, marine carts, and extinct carts as well as a gift shop. When placed correctly they can provide quite a bit of income. the regular gift carts should be placed near popular exhibits. you should not need more than one cart every 2 or so exhibits. marine carts should be placed next to marine animals and shows and extinct carts should be next to extinct animals. guests will buy items relating to animals that they are seeing. so if they see a shark they will go looking for a shark gift to buy. gift shops sell everything, but, they are expensive and take up lots of space. they are best placed near the entrance or on the main entry path. Gift shops are also best placed with restaurants and ATM machines. - DONTATION BOXES these are your most prized possession. donations are your number one source of income. these come in all your favorite themes so you can decorate your zoo as you like. place these in the middle of your paths so they can service more than one exhibit at a time. you can place more if you like as they do not cost upkeep, however, you want to keep the path clear for guests to walk unhindered. if you find that a dontation box is not in a good spot you can double click on it to pick it up and move it. - TRASH AND RECYCLING BINS these are important for keeping your zoo clean. a littered zoo will make your guests unhappy. trash usually comes from food and drink stalls. make sure to place an equal number of trash and recycle bins in every guest area or near every set of food and drink stalls. you can move bins by double clicking to pick them up. bins are very small and only take up half of a square (triangle). recycling bins are unique in that some trash (drinks mostly) must be recycled. when they are recycled in a proper bin you will gain $1 for your recycling efforts. that is not bad considering that a recycling bin has no upkeep cost. maitenance workers can empty trash and recycling bins when they are nearing full as can you in zoo guest mode. - BENCHES, TABLES and GAZEBOS as do most other objects these come in a variety of themes. benches are best used in the center of your path no further than 1 tile from an exhibit. this allows guests to sit, relax and view animals at the same time. tables are best used near food and drink stalls. when a guest buys food or drink they prefer to sit while they consume it. if no benches or tables are provided guests will complain. benches and tables are moveable, so if you find you need to rearrange your areas dont delete them, just move them. Gazebos are not moveable and only have a few themes but can provide relaxation for a large number of guests. - OBSERVATION AREAS like most things these objects come in different themes. Guests enjoy observing animals from under an observation area. it will increase their entertainment value. you can't put anything under an observation area so this gives another reason for having at least 3 spaces for your paths (an observation area for each exhibit on each side of the path and a free tile in the middle for benches and donation boxes). these can be expensive to use so wait until you have a decent income before you start setting them up. these can be moved however so don't worry if you put it in the wrong place. - ARCHES these also come in many different themes. arches are one of the best decorations in the game. every arch except for the extinct themed arch is three tiles wide which makes a 3 tile path the perfect place for them. every guest that walks under an arch will gain entertainment. if you place arches at major intersections with lots of traffic you should have no problem keeping guests entertained. please note, however, arches cannot be moved! if you find you need to move an arch later then you must sell it and buy a new one. it is a small price to pay for such a great item. - STATUES AND FOUNTAINS Another great set of decorations. guests love to look and comment on statues and will toss coins into fountains to make a wish (you don't get any income from fountains). I always like to place a fountain next to the entrance so that guests are entertained as soon as they walk in. these decorations are wonderful at keeping guests happy but have a high initial cost and cannot be moved once they are placed. plan carefully and make sure you have plenty of money before you start to decorate. - ZOO MAP this provides a bit of enterainment but its main function is to help guests find what they are looking for in your zoo. for a small zoo with few turns the map serves little purpose. but for a large grid style or a zoo with a more random layout the map helps guests find the animals they want to see and helps them find food and drink stalls faster. this will help prevent guests from walking around randomly (thus not doing anything to spend money on). a map placed near the entrance and at every major intersection will be the most effective. - BINOCULARS binoculars are useful if you have exhibits that are deeper than 10 tiles. binoculars provide 1 guest at a time with a visual range of 22 tiles, although, they still cannot see past large objects such as trees, boulders, or other such things. - KOI This was an item added with MM XP. koi are fish that like to live outdoors in ponds and lakes. they can make a great addition as a natural looking decorative area with streams and waterfalls. Koi do not live very long however and will need to be replaced from time to time. if you have a vision for a beautiful zoo then by all means use them (guests will be enteratined by them), however, due to their cost and life span they are not recommended for a scenerio or small zoo. Koi must be placed in deep water. - PLAYGROUNDS there are many types of playground equipment such as bouncy rides, climbing bars and trampolines. children are not as entertianed by statues as the adults are so if you want to keep kids happy you must provide the occasional playground. one or two bouncy rides is really all it takes to keep the kids happy. if you have the room or have a vision to create then you are free to add in the other objects. be careful when placing the gorilla climbing bars, if you place the exit of the bars next to a wall the kids might get stuck trying to get out. - MUSIC ROCKS I like music rocks. each one plays a different theme. you can hear the music when you zoom in close to the rock or get close to it in zoo guest mode. guests near the rock will also start to dance which can be fun to watch. most music rocks are small and provide a decent amount of entertainment. - TOUR OBJECTS ES XP added tours and tour objects. these are found at the far right of the object list. tour objects have the greatest impact when used in an exhibit near a tour line. however, they can also be used as decorations outside of exhibits for a moderate enteratinment boost. E. INCOME and EXPENSES I know what you are thinking, "It's about time we started talking about money!" In order to start talking about money I had to make sure you understood the basics of building a decent zoo and know about the strategies for making your zoo more efficient. without proper planning and knowledge the information in the following sections would have been much less useful. Before you can make money you have to spend money. Lets begin by discussing the games many forms of expenditures: Construction Costs and Adoption Fees Staff Salaries Maintenance Fees Animal Upkeep Research Construction Costs and Adoption Fees go hand in hand. before you can do anything in a new zoo you must build exhibits, lay down paths, and adopt animals. you will also want to place a few decorations, benches, and amenities before the first guest arrives since you will not know what they will want when they get there. on a side note, you will not get any income from putting your animals up for adoption, unlike in Zoo Tycoon 1. When I build a new zoo I tend to start out with at least 1 decent exhibit with about 3-4 animals (2 species, male and female each). then I build a 3 tile path to the exhibit with one or two benches, a donation box and one small guest area near the entrance. Maintenance Fees are the result of buying amenities for your guests. all buildings have some kind of monthly fee which can be thought of as a restocking fee for food and drink or just a general cleaning and repair bill for the case of restrooms or kiosks. Themed buildings cost more to maintain than normal buildings. the monthly cost for a themed building or cart is usually twice the cost for a regular version. however, regular buildings must be researched and themed buildings only require fame. Staff Salaries are paid on a monthly basis and when you first hire an employee. it is best to wait until the beginning of a new month to hire any new people. if you hire them at the end of the month then you will end up paying double for the staff member; once when you hire them and again at the first of the month. Animal upkeep occurs whenever you need to refill food and water. this is obviously a variable expense as it fully depends on how many animals you have, how much they eat, and what they eat. from my experiments it seems that restocking a food item will cost a variable amount depending on how much food is still left in the container. you can find out the food level by clicking on the food. if the food item is empty it will cost the same amount to refill it as it would to buy an new one. if the food item is half full then it will cost half. theoretically, one could recycle an empty food item and then buy a fresh one to save on money, but, with a very large zoo, this is quite impracticle. if anyone has other information about this please let me know. Researching is available in scenerio and challenge mode. you don't need to research anything in FF mode. Researching is completley avoidable unlike the other forms of expenditures. however, in order to get the best items for use in your zoo there will be some research needed. for more details on researching you can see BUILDINGS AND OBJECTS section above. if you spend money too quickly you might actually go into debt at the first of the month when your zoo automatically pays out all the staff salaries and maintenance fees at the same time. don't worry about it, you won't lose the game if you go in to debt, however, if you are not making an overall profit then you will not be able to buy anything either. if you find that you are in debt and staying in debt then you should look at all of your buildings which are costing you upkeep and recycle all the ones which are not making a profit or which are not generating income. Now that we can see where our money is going, lets take a look at where our funds are comming from: Entrance Fees Recycling Food and Drink Sales Gift Sales Donations Entrance Fees will be one of your zoos first forms of income. everytime a guest appears at the front gate you will get your entrance fee. Entrance fees can be set to 4 different levels; free, $10, $20, and $50. the default is $20. I like to keep the fee at the default level for a new zoo. once your zoo is up and running the entrance fee income will be small change compared to the rest of your zoos income. with a famous zoo you could charge $50 and still have quite a lot of guests show up, however, each guest only shows up with a set amount of money (which can be increased if they visit an ATM). one idea is to make the entrance fee free instead of raising it so your guests can spend that money on other things such as dontations. really there is no right strategy for the entrance fee. set it do default for a new zoo, and then do what you like once you become famous. Recycling income happens anytime you delete something. you can get recycling income from the rocks and trees that come as part of a new map or even for objects that you had bought previously. recycling income is usually the first income one gets when starting a new scenerio. recycling bins also give $1 of income for every water bottle your guests put into it. the best source of recycling income is the compost building. this building (discussed in BUILDINGS AND OBJECTS section above) costs $50 a month in upkeep, but, can produce a large amount of income even for a small zoo. get one of these as soon as you can. By the way, you can recycle almost anything except staff, animals and guests. trash and poo can be recycled with the compost building. Food and Drink Sales are a very large part of your zoos income. guests get hungry and thirsty all the time. if you follow the suggestions of the previous sections and build guest areas then guests will have access to all kinds of food, drink and desserts which they will be more than happy to spend thier money on. of course these stalls and carts do come with monthly restocking fees but in a well planned zoo with guest areas the income is generally much greater than the outgo. you can check a buildings profit by clicking on it and going to the money tab (picture of money). if a building is making profit, then you can keep it. if it is a cart, and the profit is low then consider moving it to a better location. if a building is losing money then delete or move it as soon as possible and consider revising your plan. Gift carts are similar to food and drink stalls except that guests dont get hungry for gifts, or do they... when a guest sees an aniaml which entertains them they get excited and want to buy a gift of that animal. if it is a marine or extinct animal then they will need access to a marine or extinct animal gift cart, otherwise, a standard cart will do. the gift shop can sell all items. the best strategy with these is to place them near exhibits so guests can fullfill their material desires at the drop of a hat. I rarely ever have any trouble with gift carts, if you do, just pick it up and move it. Donations, donations, donations; these are the number one source of income for any zoo. there are four kinds of dontations; regular, education, tour, and show. Tour and show donations happen very simply after a guest has been on a tour or seen a marine show. the more spectacular the tour or show, the higher the donations. tour and show donations are generally very high, but, so is the cost of setting up and running tours and shows (see below for more detials on tours and shows). educational and regular donations occur every so often when a guest has had a happy experience with an animal. donation boxes must be readily accessible or the guest will complain that they wanted to donate but could not find a box. boxes cost very little to buy and have no upkeep, so donations are essentially free money! If the exhibit the guest is viewing is educational then there is a small chance that the guest will make an educational donation. educational donations are used mostly for challenge and scenerio goals as well as unlocking certain objects. Educators can have a small indirect increase on educational donations, but, the best tool for increasing these donations is with the discovery kiosk. At this point, if you have followed along with zoo planning and layout, and understand the different exhibit designs and use of guest areas and path planning then you should have no problem making money. the biggest problem you might have at this point is to make money fast enough to do what you want to do in a reasonable amount of time. don't worry if you go into debt, just wait for a few minuets while your guests continue to buy food and give donations. if you set your zoo up correctly you should be out of debt in no time. F. ZOO FAME OK, so what is this zoo fame I keep talking about? well, a new feature in ZT2 is that of fame. basically, when your zoo is new you are not very famous and so you will not have access to many different buildings, objects or animals. as your zoo grows you will be given more and more items and animals to choose from. For example, as a new zoo you will not have the ability to build a family restroom, but, you can build a small restroom. Think of zoo fame as your reputation in the business and animal conservation world. if you are just starting out then other zoos and wildlife conservationists do not know you well enough to trust you with a javan rhino or a flock of flamingos. you need to build up your reputation in order to adopt more interesting, endangered and expensive animals. the same idea goes for buildings and objects. you need to have a reputation among suppliers and contractors as a reliable and money savvy zoo director before they will sell you the more expensive, bigger, and fancier equipment. suppliers are not going to sell you that huge fountain and install it for you if they don't think your zoo has the income to cover the cost. Zoo Fame comes in the form of stars. there are 5 stars at half star increments. every half star increment will "unlock" a new set of buildings and objects as well as new animals. The following concepts all contribute to your total fame score: The number of animals you have The number of different species you have the average happiness of your animals the educational value of your habitats the entertainment value of your animals the average happiness of your guests the number of animals you have released to the wild *the number of awards and challenges you have overcome during the current game *award and challenge goals only affect fame in a FF or challenge game. scenerio games do not have challenges or current awards so this is not counted toward fame during a campaign game. The first three are fairly simple. the more animals you have and the more diverse your animals are the higher your fame goes. you will need 35 animals to max out the first requirement. you will need 20 different species to max out the second. the third requirement is a little tricky since animal happiness is always in constant flux, but, if you do your best to keep them happy you should have no trouble here. This score takes time to rise for new animals. in other words, the game measures animal happiness over the course of a long time period and not as an exact measurement of current happiness. the next three are a little more challenging. educational habitats require exhibits which contain animals in their native biomes. most animals can live perfectly happy in many different biomes, but, if they are not in their native biome it will hinder your educational score. creating habitats with multiple animals as well as native flora and rocks can also add to the educational score. educators with podiums are also useful for increasing this value. this will also rise over time. the more guests that are educated by your exhibits the higher the score will go, you just need to wait for it. in order for you to acquire fame for entertaining animals then you need to offer enrichment items to your animals and they must use them within the view of nearby guests. marine shows are great for increasing this but you can get by without them. the best enrichment objects are the scratching post and the big pink ball. for more information on enrichment items see ANIMAL HAPPINESS below. the next fame measurement is guest happiness. guests are very fickle and capricious (look those words up if you don't know what they mean). you need to provide for every possible need of every guest that comes into your zoo. even if you provide guest areas and happy animals you may still only have a 50% guest happiness score. in order to keep guests as happy as possible you will need to go below to the GUEST HAPPINESS section. yes, keeping guests happy requires its own section. this is just like animal happiness in that it takes time for this score to raise. the last 6 measurements are all in constant flux, but, once you have a decent zoo going they will pretty much all stay rather high. the next two measurements are fixed. once you get these maxed out you never have to worry about them. the first one is concerned with releasing animals to the wild. this is can be easy but it requires that the animal be in perfect bliss. in otherwords, all of the animals basic and advanaced needs must be in the green. for a FF game this is very easy, since you can adopt an animal and immediately release it to the wild without much fuss. in a challenge or campaign game this is more difficult since the animals cost money. for a new zoo, you do not want to release animals right away. when you do this you loose some of your "number of aniamls" measurement, the value of the animal, and you have one less animal to attract guests to your zoo with. the best time to release an animal is to wait until some of your animals begin to breed. when they give birth you can think of releasing some of the parents to the wild. Birds are great for releasing to the wild (peafowls especially) since they breed quickly. Herd animals are also good for this. don't wait until an exhibit is overcrowed before making the decision to release. if the exhibit is overcrowded then the habitat rating for all animals in the exhibit will go to red and you will not be able to release any of them to the wild. the only option you will have that point is to put some up for adoption which gives you nothing in return. in order to max out this measurement you need to release 10 animals to the wild. however, there are 4 awards which deal with releasing animals. you get an award for releasing 1 animal, 10 animals, 25 animals and for releasing 10 endangered species (which you can be done at the same time as the other awards). so don't stop releasing animals when you have reached 10, keep going for the awards. while we are on the subject of awards you will need a combination of any 20 awards and challenges to max out this measurement. only the challenges and awards earned during the current game will count toward this measurement. even if you have maxed out your awards and challenges as far as fame goes, you should still continue to achieve awards. each challenge and award comes with added bonuses. some bonuses are small such as increased guest attendance (which does bring in more money over a longer period of time). some bonuses bring cash awards and some even unlock all new buildings and objects. some challenges will even unlock persistant game awards which will allow you to use new themes or buildings in any zoo within the current profile! Normally FF mode will give you access to all objects and buildings except those which need to be unlocked through persistant game awards. for a complete list of awards see the AWARDS section below. G. ANIMAL HAPPINESS We have been talking a lot about money, mechanics and architecture, but, not a lot of information about the animals. this section is dedicated to understanding what makes aniamls tick and how best to maximize their happiness. for a complete list of all animals and their statistics please see APPENDIX A below. The easiest way to find out what biome, flora, food, fencing and items are best for an animal is to click on the animal and then click on Zookeeper recommendations. this will bring up another subwindow which will have all the items you could ever want which are useful for that animal. Every animal has two sets of needs; basic and advanced. the basic needs are Biome, Hunger, Thirst, Sleep and Exersize. The advanced needs are Privacy, Hygene, social and entertainment to see an animals current needs status click on the animal and click on the tab with a heart. here you can see all the needs of the animal as icons in boxes. you can mouse over each icon to know what each one represents. as each need becomes less satisfied over time the box will fill with a color overlay. No color means that the need is completely satisfied. green means that the need is satisfied just not perfect. yellow means that the need could use a little work but the animal is still ok. red means that the need requires attention and the animal is not happy. if any of the basic needs are yellow or red then the animal is not happy. unhappy animals will create unhappy guests. advanced needs are a little different. advanced needs can be yellow or red and the animal can still be happy. Advanced needs are requireed for advanced activites such as breeding, releasing to the wild and creating entertaining animal exhibits. note that in order to breed or release an animal to the wild you must meet all of the animals needs (green or no color). Lets begin discussing each need in more detail. - The Biome First and foremost, animals need a place to live. All animals must be contained in an exhibit or else the guests will not be able to view them properly. exhibit construction was discussed earlier but to sum up what was discussed you will need the proper kind of fencing or some kind of steep cliff to contain the animal. their exhibit needs to be the proper size for their species. each additional animal of the same species will require more space but will not need as much space as the first. the exhibit can be of any shape you desire. if an animal needs 100 squares of space you can build a 10x10 space or a 2x50 space. you could make it round, octangonal, or even some irregular shape. the shape of the exhibit does not matter when it comes to happiness, it is the amount of space (squares) that matter. the shape of your exhibits will be determined by the design and layout of your zoo. if you are really counting every square then you should know that even half squares count toward the total. so, if you round off the corners of a square exhibit then you are essentially removing two squares (4 half squares makes two squares). one thing to keep in mind for space is to plan ahead for breeding. baby animals take up just as much space as adult animals, so, figure out ahead of time how many differnet species and how big you want each family to be then use the chart in APPENDIX A to determine how many squares you will need. keep in mind the view distance of 10 squares for your guests and design away. also note, that eggs do not require space, they will only needs space once they hatch. after you have an enclosure that is big enough you must now fill it with the proper biome. a biome is a collection of plants, aniamls, rocks, and climate. each animal has a native biome which is an area of the world in which it is normally found. some animals can be happy in many biomes. many animals can tolerate biomes that are dissimilar to their native biome. by tolerate I mean that the biome need will be yellow. and of course every animal has a set of biomes which they cannot live in (biome need will be red). each animals native biome is listed in the Zoopedia and in APPENDIX A. making sure that an animal is in their native biome is important as this will increase the amount of money you get from educational donations as well as giving you more points toward a more famous zoo. note though, that if you have many animals that are native to the same biome then you can put them all in the same exhibit (space permitting). even if they come from differnet countries they will still be happy and you will still get the educational exhibit bonus. all that matters is that the animals are in their native biome. Trees, flowers and rocks from the same biome can also help increase the educational score as can educators with podiums. it is also possible to mix biomes in the same exhibit, but, this gets tricky as the number of animals which can live happily in the exhibit decreases for every biome you have in the exhibit. you don't want to mix tundra and desert together as there are no animals which can live in both biomes happily. mixed biome exhibits also have a problem with educational score since if an animal wanders off into a biome that is not their native biome then the score will fall temporarily until they wander back to their native biome. mixed exhibits are not recommended for a beginner. another consideration when laying down the biome is that of water. all animals can wade through shallow water without any difficulty (not that I have seen anyway). deep water is a different story. not all animals can swim. if an animal wanders into deep water and cannot swim you will get a warning message that your animal is drowning and you must rescue it. the best thing to do is to not add deep water to exhibits with animals that can't swim. all exhibits should have some shallow water, even if it is just a small spot. all animals from what I have seen so far, can drink water from shallow water. you do not need to buy water dishes and troughs if you provide shallow water. zookeepers may, on thier own, put down a water dish, but, you should not need to do it yourself if you provide shallow water. for animals that do not swim, deep water also subtracts from the amount of available space in the exhibit. for example, in a 10x10 exhibit with 50 squares of deep water a zebra (for example) will only have 50 squares which it considers livable, where as a lion will consider all 100 squares livable since the lion can swim and the zebra cannot. you do not need to provide deep or shallow water for any non-marine animal even if they normally prefer it. for example, crocodiles and hippos love to swim but they do not require water to be happy, just the proper biome and space. - Hunger once you have the biome set you need to think about keeping your animals alive. this is done simply by feeding them. every animal has a set of food types which they can eat. herbivores prefer hay, leaves, lettuce and branches. carnivores prefer meat or fish. birds like berries, and primates like bananas. however, don't assume that an animal likes berries just because it is a bird. before placing food make sure to check the zookeeper recommendations, you might be surprised to find that some birds eat shrimp and fish and some carnivores will also eat berries! just putting down some food is not enough to keep the animal happy and alive. over time the animal will eat the food and it must be replenished. you can do this in guest mode or your zookeepers will do this automatically when the food gets to a certain level. it will cost upkeep to replenish the food, but, the cost is low so it should not be too much of a burden. another consideration of food is how the food is presented to the animal. take berries for example, you can put berries on the ground, in a dish, in a log, on a platform or even burried in substrate. generally the more expensive the food type the more interesting the food will be for the animal. the more involved an animal is with its food or the more realistic it is the more entertainment the animal (and the guests) will be when they eat it. the best foods are usually the most expensive, so, for berries the food in a log, in substrate or on a raised platform would be the best. however, for a new zoo, placing food directly on the ground will do. also, the more expensive food sources require higher fame levels as well as research. so long as the proper food is present and the animal is able to reach it then the hunger need can be satisfied. - Thirst we already mentioned this a little in the biome section. water is the only source of fluids your animals will get in this game (no milk or other treats are available to give). just like with food, there are many ways to provide water; in a bowl, in a trough or from shallow water. shallow water is free to place and all animals that I have seen can make use of shallow water as a source for drinking. zookeepers will occasionally place down water bowls. if you don't want water bowls then you can move them or recycle them. shallow water does not always make sense though, especially if you are designing an arid exhibit (such as a desert or scurb land exhibit). in those cases you can use water dishes for just about any animal, however, dishes only have a small amount of water in them. there are water troughs but not all of your smaller animals can get up to the trough to drink from it. if you are unsure as to how to offer water to your animals then simply check out the zookeeper recommendations. - Sleep For the most part animals can sleep anywhere, anytime. when they want to doze off they simply lay down and go to sleep. some things that may interfere with this sleep cycle are other animals in the exhibit or nearby exhibits that might bother the animal. carnivores are notorious for chasing and scaring other animals, never giving them a moments rest for example. shelters can provide a nice quiet place for an animal to sleep but these will be covered in more detail in the Privacy section just below. - Exersize again, like sleep, this is pretty simple for a happy healthy animal. most animals when they are happy will run around their exhibit and prance and play. this counts as exersize. swimming in deep water, playing with friends, and using certain enrichment objects also counts as exersize. for the most part though you should not need to do anything to keep this green. if you find that a certain animal is in need of exersize you can always provide an enrichment object such as a ball, a log or a nice big tire. - Privacy this is one of the advanced needs. animals don't need privacy to be happy but it can help. the cheap way to provide privacy is to create areas in the exhibit where guests cannot see. this can be done by providing deep water for swimmers (guests cannot see into deep water unless it is a marine or hybrid exhibit) and by creating exhibits which are deeper than 10 tiles. you can also reduce the visible area of the exhibit by only providing a small window of veiwing space such as with the indented exhibit suggested earlier. the best way to provide privacy is to offer some kind of shelter. every type of animal has a certain kind of shelter which suits it. if a shelter is available in the exhibit an animal will choose to sleep in it as opposed to sleeping on the bare ground. all shelters, including the shade structure, provide privacy, even if the shelter does not appear to hide the animal from view. if a guest can see an animal sleeping in its structure then the guests will acutally find that amusing. even if the animal can be seen sleeping in the structure it will still count as privacy for the animal. I always provide at least one structure for all my aniamls since it makes both the animals and the guests happier. - Hygene This is another advanced need. most animals are very good about keeping themselves clean. they groom themselves mostly and if they are in an exhibit with others of their kind they can groom each other. if you provide a nice sized area of shallow water this can help increase the hygene of most animals. Elephants especially love to use shallow water to bathe in. swimming in deep water can also act as taking a bath. if you go into guest mode you can bathe and groom the animals yourself. this is probably the easiest and cheapest advanced need you can provide for your animals. if an animal gets distracted they can let their hygene slide. your zookeepers will notice this when the hygene bar become red and they will wash your animals with a bubble bath spray. if your animals get too dirty for too long they can get sick. you or your zookeepers can cure this disease easily. Extinct animals are a different matter however. EA XP added extinct diseases to the game. these diseases are more difficult to cure than a simple medical kit can handle. you will need to play a strange mini game to cure an extinct disease. for more details see the MINI GAMES section below. marine animals are a little different when it comes to hygene. the animals themselves do not get dirty but the water does. you can clean the water yourself in guest mode. you can also buy a water filter (found under marine show tab in the construction box) but you will need a maintenance worker to keep the filter running in top condition. - Social Social is another advanced need, it is also the most costly to provide. in order to accomodate the social needs of your animals you must provide other animals in the exhibit with which they can socialize. the best option here is to build an exhibit which can house two of the same species. the cost is in making bigger exhibits, providing more food, and purchasing extra animals. aniamls can socialize with animals of different species so long as they are not carnivores. herd animals especially love to socialize with other herd animals. zebras, gazelles and giraffes for example get along splendidly. animals gain more of a benefit if they have others of their own kind to socialize with and it would be better still if they were of the opposite sex. be cautious about putting a male and female together however as this can most obviously lead to babies. babies are not bad at all. they can provide your zoo with many benefits such as free animals, extra fame, and happier guests. the problem is that babies take up more space, eat more food and create more poo. if you are going to breed your animals make sure to plan ahead. Carnivores are the harder ones to satisfy this need for. generally in the wild carnivores are solitary hunters (with a few exceptions such as lions). carnivores would rather chase, harrass and eat other animals than socialize with them. even if carnivores are fed and happy they can still attack and kill other animals just for something do. be very cautious about keeping carnivores in exhibits with other animals. in my experience if you put two different species of carnivore in an exhibit they will attack each other regardless of how happy they are. if you are very cautious and keep your animals in perfect bliss you can keep one carnivore species in an exhibit with other herbivores, the herbivores might not get much sleep, but, you can still pull it off. as an example, I had 2 lions and 2 cheetahs in a large exhibit together. there was plenty of food for everyone and plenty of space (room for 4 of each). after a time the lions started to chase the cheetahs all the time and eventually I lost two cheetahs to lion attacks. the lions were perfectly happy and were not hungry. eventually I had to seperate my cheetahs into a seperate exhibit. I also had a hard time keeping crocodiles and monitors together. you have been warned. - Entertainment This is another advanced need. entertainment is mainly provided in the form of enrichment objects such as salt licks, scratching posts, big pink bouncing balls and large swinging tires. basically these are toys for your animals. guests absolutely love seeing animals play with toys and infact, when lots of guests see animals playing with toys your zoo will gain extra fame in the form of entertaining exhibits. some animals don't need toys to have fun. herd animals especially can entertain themselves simply by playing and sociallizing with each other. if you have not figured it out yet, herd animals do best when put in exhibits with other herd animals. they will talk to each other, play chase each other, play fight with each other, groom each other, and do all kinds of neat things. a lot of the fun of this whole game is just seeing how animals interact with each other. Trainable animals are especially easy to keep entertained if they are being trained for a show. the show is also a great way to entertain guests. the down side of shows though is that they can be exhausting for animals and very costly to run and maintain. - Final Points A few final notes on keeping animals happy: Carnivores are generally more difficult to keep happy than herd animals and birds. this is because they are usually solitary animals in the wild. they like their privacy, they don't get along well with others and they tend to be rather picky about things. also, the more endanged an animal is the more needy they are. pandas are the worst. they only eat a certain type of food, they require a ton of privacy and they will only sleep in a very special kind of shelter. the high needs of endangered animals is countered by the increased donations and higher guest attraction the animals produce. Always remember to be cautious about keeping carnivores and herbivores together in the same exhibit. you have been warned. H. GUEST HAPPINESS Guests are just like aniamls, only worse. they are more demanding and more difficult to keep happy than a cranky panda. that is why this section is here, to help you understand the mystery that is the customer and to help you squeeze as much money out them as possible and then make them want an ATM so they can give you more. The number one thing you need in your zoo for guests to be happy is animals. this is what draws them in and keeps them there. guests will be made happier if they see: - happy animals. the happier the animals the happier the guest - animals that are eating. when you place food and water in an exhibit place the dish/pile near the guest viewing area. this will force the animals to come into view every time they get hungry and they are always hungry. do not place food or water dishes up against the edge of the fence, this can cause glitches where animals get stuck or can't reach the food/water. - animals that are playing. just like with food and water put the animal toys next to the viewing area so eveyone can get a good look at them. - animals that are sleeping. shelters are big and bulky so you don't want them near the viewing area, however, you should put them somewhere within the guests viewing range. if an exhibit is no deeper than 10 tiles, you can put it in the back and still reap these benefits. - animals that are socializing. try to put multiple animals in the same exhibit. guests are able to sense when an animals advanced needs are not met. Just like animals, guests have needs. when the needs are met they are happy and this is a good thing. guest needs are hunger, thirst, rest, amusement, and bathroom. just like with animals you can view a particular guests needs by clicking on them and then selecting the tab with the heart. when you do this you will actually see 6 boxes, the first one is the general level of happiness which is an average of the other 5 boxes. just as with the animals if the box is colorless it is satisfied, green is happy, yellow is ok but not great, and red is unhappy or in urgent need of care. - Hunger Unlike with animals you can't just place random food on the floor for people to eat. guests are more sophisticated and have more refined tastes than animals, you know, like hamburgers, shishkabob and candy canes! for guests you need to purchase food stalls and desert carts. when a guests hunger level reaches yellow or red they will start to seek out a food stall for a bite to eat. there are many different kinds of food stalls and each one has a different effect on the guest. you can always look in the zoopedia during the game if you want to know more about a building. Also please note that not all buildings are availabe right from the start. for a new zoo only hot dogs and pretzles will be available. also, every stand and cart comes in all available themes. other than the hot dog and pretzle carts all default themed food stands will have to be researched. for more information about buildings and objects, please see APPENDIX B bleow (this is if I have gotten around to writting it yet). Hot Dogs - this is most popular with kids, but, adults will eat them too. Hamburgers - this is a more well liked choice for the whole family but requires more fame than hot dogs Shish Kebab - this is a more pricey food stand but adults enjoy the more exotic foods and will gladly the pay the fee. children would prefer a hot dog or hamburger however. Sub Sandwiches - this is a prefered option for male adults. Sushi - this is another fancy food that costs more but adult females really enjoy it. Salad - this is a standard food option which is good for female adults. Desert Carts - it should be said for all desert carts that after a guest has eaten their meal most of them will start looking for a desert, this means more money for you. all deserts come in the form of a cart which is moveable. candy canes - most popular with kids. this must be researched in campaign or scenerio mode which will cost $800. cheesecake - this is most popular with adult males. Cotton Candy - another treat popular with kids. Fruit Cup - this will appeal mostly to your aduld female guests. Ice Cream - a cool treat which is great for kids. Popcorn - not technically a desert cart but it can serve as a quick snack. it is most popular with adult males. Pretzles - also not exactly a desert, it is more of a quick snack. this is most popular with the adult females. Restaurants work a little different than stands and carts. first of all they are much bigger, they are also more expensive and require a high fame level to acquire. the benefit of a restaurant is that it can satisfy hunger, thirst and rest and it provides desert as well all for one simple cost to the guest. the restaurant does not satisfy the bathroom need. also, there is never a line for a restaurant as there is for a stand or cart, restaurants can service an unlimited number of guests at the same time. when they become available I like to make a large guest area with all three restaurants, a gift shop, an ATM and a family restroom. Restaurants do not come in different themes. Restaurant - this is the cheapest option for your guests serving bottled water, hot dogs, and a fruit cup. Family Restaurant - this is also a good option for cheap dinning serving soda, ice cream and a hamburger. Fancy Restaurant - this is a more pricey and exotic dining experience which is popular with the adults. it serves shish kebab, coffee and cheesecake. - Thirst Just like with hunger there are various stands for getting drinks. however, the choices are fewer here. there are no drink carts only stalls. Soda - available at the beginning. this is most popular with kids but adults like it too. Coffee - more popular with adults, but, kids will give it go too from time to time. Water - most popular with adults. the water bottle is recycleable which if put into a recycling bin will net you $1 in recycling income. I use water stands every where when they become availabe. - Rest This is most easily satisfied by providing benches and tables for your guests to sit down and relax on. benches and tables have no maintenance cost and can be moved after purchase. other than taking up a square of space, you can't have enough of these. both tables and benches can be purchased in any theme available. themed versions will cost more than the regular ones. tables are best used in guest areas so that guests can buy food and drink and then sit at a table to enjoy it. benches are best used near exhibits so that guests can sit and watch animals while they relax. if you don't provide tables near food and water, guests will complain that they have no where to sit and eat. this does not directly make them unhappy, but it is more efficient to have them fulfill three needs all at the same time; hunger, thirst, and rest. staff members will occasionally sit on a bench or table if they have no work to do which can take space away from your guests. Gazebos can also provide relaxation for your guests but are expensive and take up a lot of room. - Amusement this is one of the most expensive needs to satisfy but can be done rather easily if you know how it works. decorations are the key to affecting a guests amusement rating. guests are also entertained by animals that are playing with toys, but, animals are not always playing with toys so decorations will be your number one entertainment choice. the best decorations are arches. if you build your paths with an odd number of tiles wide (3 or 5 are the best). arches are generally 3 tiles wide with 1 tile in the middle for guests to pass underneath (the extinct themed arch is 4 tiles which makes it difficult to use). every guest that passes under an arch will be entertained by it. when you place them at all major intersections and along well used paths, you will be entertaining a lot of guests with very little cost. another great decoration idea is to put a fountain or some thing large near the front gate. this will cause most new arrivals to be entertained right as they walk in. statues also work well at intersections when you have the space. Themed areas also promote entertainment. if you have any themes available it is recommended to use them as opposed to using the default. this is a good idea for both entertainment and saving money in the short term. other forms of entertainment are playgrounds. Kids will require more entertainment than adults as they get bored faster. bouncy rides, trampolines, gorilla bars and other equipment really make the difference. you don't need to create a single play ground area (unless you want to). putting one or two bouncy rides here or there is really all you need to keep the kids happy. - Bathroom This is can be difficult for a small or new zoo, more famous zoos (2 stars) will have no trouble in this arena. when you first start out you will only have access to the small restroom. this can only serve one guest at a time. if you have a lot of guests then this can lead to long lines. long lines make guests angry (since they are not satisfying any of their needs while they wait). they are also not spending money (like with donations). if the lines get too long you will get people complaining and eventually overall guest happiness will fall. to prevent long lines with a small restroom just build more of them. I always plop down at least two small restrooms for a new zoo. this seems to help long enough for my zoo to acquire a family restroom. the family restroom is one of the best buildings in the game. it costs more to purchase and maintain than a small restroom but it can serve an unlimited number of people at once; no more lines at the restroom. I put one of these at every guest area and any where I think I might have some space. both bathroom sizes are available in different themes. - Miscellaneous one of the reasons guests are harder to keep happy than animals is that their happiness is not all about keeping their needs satisfied. here is a small list of some of the things that make guests unhappy: - Seeing trash, a full trash can, or animal poo. - Not being able to find an ATM when they run out of money - Not being able to find a donation box when they want to donate money - Not being able to see any animals - Standing in a line for too long - seeing an unhappy or sick animal There are other things which displease guests, but you get the idea. If you want to know more about what a guest is thinking or why they are not happy you can click on a guest and select the thought bubble tab to the far right. this will give an idea of what they are thinking and what they want. once a guest has made the decision to leave there is no stopping them. the idea is to keep them in the zoo for as long as possible and give them every opportunity to spend their money. if you have a decent zoo then a new guest will arrive shortly after the current guest has left, but, the current guest must completely leave the zoo before a new one can arrive. other than happiness a guest will leave the zoo if they have no money left. that is where ATMs come in to play. I put ATMs in guest areas and near restrooms. ATMs are expensive to buy and maintain, although they are available from the very beginning. they can be moved but the upkeep is steep, be cautious about buying too many. if you need to get rid of a few expenses click on all of your ATMs and look at its Lifetime Users stat. if this number seems low either move it or recycle it. remember it is better to keep a guest in your zoo once they have arrived then to let a guest leave and be replaced by another. this is because a guest that is leaving must walk all the way through your zoo to get out and all the while he is not spending money and bringing down your zoo guest happiness score. the new guest will also not have any idea where anything is and will spend some time trying to find what it is they want (all the while not spending money). next to animal happiness, guest happiness is your number one priority. Even if you feel you have provided for all of your guests needs and you are certain that there is nothing more you can do you may still get a few guests who just can't be happy. this is normal. you can't expect to keep everyone happy all the time. in a large zoo you will inevitably get messages such as "guest cannot find a place to sit and eat" or "guests are starving" or "guests need more restrooms". well all I can say about that is "guests are dumb." what you really need know about guest happiness is in the fame section. if your overall guest happiness is 75% or higher then don't worry about it unless you really want to. I. AWARDS This section will be dedicated to listing and talking about all the different kinds of awards you can achieve during the game. there are two kinds of awards; persistant and current game awards. persistant awards are those that are unlocked for an entire profile. this means that once you achieve them, they are unlocked for all future games under the same profile. any new buildings or objects that come as part of that will also be available during any other future games. most persistant awards are achieved by completing scenerios, but, a few of them are gained by completing challenges which encourages you to play both modes. persistant awards are useful in that the buildings and objects they unlock are not even available in FF mode until you acquire them. if you want to play FF mode (or any mode) with all the available content then you must finish all scenerios and most challenges in the game. Current game awards are only available in challenge and FF modes. some awards can only be achieved in challenge mode, however. those awards will be noted below in the listing. your awards can be seen by clicking on the front gate and selecting the Zoo Awards Tab (picture of a trophy). here there are two subscreens; current game awards and persistant awards. there are no current game awards available for a scenerio game, but, persistant awards are available in all games. only current game awards count towards your fame metric. awards are not counted as part of your fame during a scenerio. the awards below will be listed in the same order they appear in the game and by the item you unlock when you achieve the award. - PERSISTANT AWARDS Flower Arch - Complete the Troubled Zoos campaign. this is one of my favorite arches for decoration. very much worth the effort. Desert Theme - Complete the African Adventure campaign. I love themes and this is my favorite one. Sundial - Complete the Prevent Animal Abuse Campaign. This is an interesting decoration which can be nice to have. Globe - Complete the Globe Campaign. another interesting decoration. Gilded Panda Statue - Complete the Mysterious Panda Campaign. this is a little anti-climactic. you actually have to complete the Conservation Programs campaign in order to unlock the Mysterious Panda Campaign and even then its just a statue. Flower Post - Complete the Zoo Keeper in Training campaign. I don't use posts much in this game, they are expensive and very small, although this one is a nice looking one. Extinct Theme - Complete the Extinct Campaign. yep, its another theme to decorate your zoo with. I dont like the 4 tile wide arch but other wise it is nice to have more themes. Cat Climber - Complete the photo safari campaign. this is a nice object for to keep your cats happy and engaged. Conservation Breeding Center - Complete the Endangered Species campaign. This is a very nice building which increases the likelyhood of endangered species breeding. this can be very helpful in other campaigns that require baby animals to be bred. Decorated Tour Gate - complete the Transportation campaign. this award is rather small. a tour gate is a gate that is created when a jeep tour route crosses through an exhibit fence. it has very little impact on your game. I think it is rather dissapointing. Blue Whale Hall - Complete the Marine Animals campaign. this is a great guest entertainment object. it is big but very cool I think. Upgraded Show Platform - Complete the Marine Shows Campaign. this is nice if you intend to create a lot of marine shows. otherwise it is not very useful. Brachiosaurus Slide - Complete the Extinct Exploration campaign. This is one of the biggest items you can build. it is a playground slide the size of a brachiosaurus! very cool I think. Quagga - Release one of each extinct animal to the wild. This can be done very easily an quickly in Free Form mode. it seems like cheating but I think they intended it to be that way. this is the only award that gives you a new animal. Quagga is adoptable once your zoo reaches 1.5 fame stars. one of the best persistant awards in the game. Jungle Theme - complete 5 Photo Challenges in challenge mode. what else can I say, its another cool theme set. Safari Theme - complete 5 Game Challenges in challenge mode. wow, even more themed buildings and objects. Endangered Species Theme - Complete 2 endangered species challenges...and the themes keep on comming. Tuna Live Food - Complete 2 Marine Animal Challenges. this is an interesting item as it is one of three animals in the game which are not counted as an exhibitable animal. the other two are koi and live lizard food. this fish along with the koi and the lizard will live for a time before being eaten or die of old age. Big Screen TV - Complete 2 Marine Show Challenges. this is an addition to your marine shows which adds to their star rating. this is a great addition to marine shows, but, if you are not a show person, then it is pretty useless. - CURRENT GAME AWARDS Current game awards are only offered in FF mode and challenge games. these awards will count toward your fame level. some awards are only available in challenge mode as they will unlock certain buildings and objects which are already unlocked in FF mode. this list is in the order they appear in the game under the rewards tab of the Zoo Status subscreen. awards which are not available in FF mode will be noted in the description. Africa Tycoon Award - Have more than 10 african species in your zoo - unlocks new jeep vehicle skin - challenge mode only Conservation Effort Award - release 1 animal to the wild - increases award fame Conservation Achievement Award - release 10 animals to the wild - maxes out released animal fame Conservation Excellence Award - release 25 animals to the wild - increases award fame Anniversary Awards - these happen at 1, 5, 10 and 20 years - each award increases award fame Alfred Windsor Photography Award of Merit - complete the appropriate photo challenge - increases award fame, helps unlock jungle theme persistant award - only availabe in challenge mode Animal Conservation Image Award - complete the appropriate photo challenge - increases award fame, helps unlock jungle theme persistant award - only availabe in challenge mode Beckenspot Charitable Foundation Photographic Portfolio Award - complete the appropriate photo challenge - increases award fame, helps unlock jungle theme persistant award - only availabe in challenge mode Wildlife Magazine Amature Photographer Award - complete the appropriate photo challenge - increases award fame, helps unlock jungle theme persistant award - only availabe in challenge mode Crafty Creation Award - complete the appropriate challenge - increases award fame - only available in challenge mode Dino Saftey Award - stop a Dino rampage by yourself - increases award fame Scholars Achievement Award - raise $25,000 in education donations - increases award fame - only available in challenge mode Educational Donation Award - raise $125,000 in education donations - increases award fame and unlocks headset kiosk - only available in challenge mode Endangered Babies Award - breed 10 different endangered, critical species - increases award fame, unlock endangered babies statue Endangered Species release effort - release 10 different endangered or critical species to the wild - increases award fame, unlocks decorative zoo wall caps Endangered Species Photographer Award - complete 4 ES photo challenges - increases award fame, unlocks the photo kiosk - only available in challenge mode Endangered Species Award - have 20 different endangered species in your zoo - increases award fame, unlocks decorative zoo wall columns Exemplary Entertainment Award - raise $100,000 in donations - increases zoo fame - only available in challenge mode Entertainment Donation Achievement award - raise $250,000 in donations - increase award fame, unlocks the face painting kiosk - only available in challenge mode Novice Fossil Builder - put together one fossile puzzle - increase award fame Expert Fossil Builder - put together 10 fossile puzzle - increase award fame Master Fossil Builder - put together 25 fossile puzzle - increase award fame Extinct Education Center Awards - must have the play dig pit and Extinct Education Center in your zoo then you must wait for the guests to build each complete animal fossil. - increase award fame, each complete fossil will give you a statue of the completed fossile which you can place anywhere in the zoo. you can complete each fossil statue more than once. Pail and Shovel Award - find all level 1 fossils - increase award fame Durable Digger Award - find all level 2 and level 3 fossils - increase award fame Perfect Paleontologist Award - find all the fossils - increase award fame My First Super Award - create 1 super animal (perfect score on DNA minigame) - increase award fame Red Hot Research Award - create 10 super animals (they can all be the same animal) - increase award fame Super Scientist award - create 25 super animals (they can all be the same animal) _ increase award fame Habitat Achievement Award - represent all the biomes (MM biomes dont count) in your zoo (each exhibit must have an appropriate animal - increases award fame Global Achievement Award - have an animal from North America, Asia, Africa and Australia in your zoo - increases award fame Zoo Attendance Awards - these are awarded at 100, 1000, 5000, and 10000 guests. the number of guests is cumulative so if a guest leaves it still counts. - increases award fame Zoo Attendance Award - 20,000 total guests - increases award fame, unlocks Zoo Attendance Statue Jeep Tycoon Award - $25,000 in tour donations - increase award fame, unlock the Jeep Liberty for your jeep tours - only availabe in challenge mode Marine Animal Tycoon Award level 1 - $5000 in donations for MM animals specifically - increase award fame, unlock dolphin arch - only available in challenge mode Marine Animal Tycoon Award level 2 - $20000 in donations for MM animals specifically - increase award fame, unlock sea horsey bouncy ride - only available in challenge mode Marine Animal Tycoon Award level 3 - $100000 in donations for MM animals specifically - increase award fame, unlock marine fountain - only available in challenge mode Marine Animal Tycoon Award level 4 - $200000 in donations for MM animals specifically - increase award fame, unlock marine zoo entrance - only available in challenge mode Marine Show Tycoon level 1 - $25000 in donations for MM shows specifically - increase award fame, unlock medium upgraded grandstand - only available in challenge mode Marine Show Tycoon level 2 - $100000 in donations for MM shows specifically - increase award fame, unlock large upgraded grandstand - only available in challenge mode Marine Star Tycoon level 1 - make a 1 star marine show - increase award fame, unlock the tank light - only available in challenge mode Marine Star Tycoon level 2 - make a 3 star marine show - increase award fame, unlock the show fence - only available in challenge mode Marine Star Tycoon level 3 - make a 5 star marine show - increase award fame, unlock the marine themed tank wall - only available in challenge mode Marine Training Tycoon level 1 - get one 100% score on training - increase award fame Marine Training Tycoon level 2 - get 10 100% score on training (can be for the same trick) - increase award fame Marine Training Tycoon level 3 - get 100 100% score on training (can be for the same trick) - increase award fame, unlock marine training statue Medical Marvel Award - cure 3 extinct diseases - increase award fame Childrens Reader Photo Award - complete the appropriate photo challenge - increases award fame, helps unlock jungle theme persistant award - only availabe in challenge mode Jeep Vehicle Tour Achievment Rating Award - run a 5 Star vehicle tour - Increase award fame - only availabe in challenge mode Sky Tour Achievement Rating award - run a 5 star sky tram tour - increase award fame - only availabe in challenge mode Tour Rating Achievement Award - have both a 5 star sky tram and a 5 star jeep tour in your zoo - increase award fame, unlock sky tower building - only available in challenge mode Tour Tycoon Level 1 - $25,000 in tour donations - increase award fame, unlock Jeep Commanders for vehicle tours - only available in challenge mode Tour Tycoon Level 2 - $250,000 in tour donations - increase award fame, unlock Jeep vehicle skins - only available in challenge mode Transportation Tycoon level 1 - move 100 guests on any tour - increase award fame, unlock 2 seater sky tram seat - only available in challenge mode Transportation Tycoon level 2 - move 500 guests on any tour - increase award fame, unlock 4 seater sky tram seat - only available in challenge mode Transportation Tycoon level 3 - move 1000 guests on any tour - increase award fame, unlock decorated sky tram seat - only available in challenge mode Zoo Tycoon Award - have $1,000,000 in your bank account - increase zoo award fame, unlock best zoo front entrance. this can be achieved automatically if you start the challenge game with 1 million dollars. - only available in challenge mode J. SHOWS This section requires a lot of research which I have yet to do. it will be updated in a future release. K. TOURS What can be said about tours? apparently quite a bit. so much so that I will actually tell you to read someone elses guide on the subject. There is a ZT2 fansite called Zoo Tycoon Unleased which is just full of great ideas and lots of specific research. one of the members has done an amazing job of researching the tour system in ZT2. why should I redo this person's efforts when I could not do it better myself. the member's name is Anyajoy and the guide comes in 4 parts. Tour Guide Part 1: http://zoxaeus.com/ZTForums/index.php?showtopic=5944 Tour Guide Part 2: http://zoxaeus.com/ZTForums/index.php?showtopic=6081 Tour Guide part 3 http://zoxaeus.com/ZTForums/index.php?showtopic=6089 Tour Guide Part 4: http://zoxaeus.com/ZTForums/index.php?showtopic=6096 I will not attempt to summarize this detailed work. it comes complete with pictures and examples. and while you are on the forums why not register to become a memeber and contribute to the community. I do apologize to my readers for not providing any direct information about tours in this guide. however, this information is only a click away and you wont regret reading it. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ V. MINI GAMES Except for the Curing Diseases mini game all of these parts of ZT2 are optional. however, if you choose to partake in these games you will undoubtedly reap quite a few benefits. most of these mini games were added by EA XP. A. TRAINING With MM XP came marine shows. but, to put on a show you must have a marine animal capable of performing tricks. in order for animals to perform tricks they must be trained. before I begin there is another excellent guide written by Anyajoy (the same great author who brought us the Tour Guides). you can see it here: http://zoxaeus.com/ZTForums/index.php?showtopic=7218 but the guide is short, so, I will also provide some input. There are two ways you can train your animals, with trainers or you can do it yourself! Trainers are covered in the staff section above. They are slow to train and are not very accurate and cost a lot of money. however, if you have a large show zoo going on with lots of different show animals they can help train your animals while you do other things. if you choose to train animals yourself you will need a few things. 1. First you need a trainable animal in a well maintained exhibit: Sea Otter California Sea Lion Orca False Killer Whale Pacific Walrus Bottlenosed Dolphin Beluga Short Finned Pilot Whale 2. You need a Training Area which must fit in your animals exhibit. the training area is standard sized for all animals: 10x3. in order to fit it, you must have a tank that is 12x5 in size and you cannot have any other object within that 10x3 area including flora, toys or food. 3. You do not need to have a show tank connected to the exhibit to start training your animal. although for an animal to participate in a show it must live in a tank that is connected to the show tank. 4. you will need a really good mouse and a steady hand as well as smooth graphics. if your mouse cursor is jumpy or your game is choppy then you will not do well in the training minigame. once you have all of this set up you can begin training your animal. to begin you must select the animal you wish to train. then select the training tab (picture of a red ball). This will bring up the training sub menu. if you do not already have a training area, clicking the training tab will turn your cursor into a training area so you can place one for $200. here you will see a grid of pictures. each picture is a trick that your animal already knows. to the left of each picture are 5 dots. this tells you how experienced this animal is with this particular trick. 5 full dots means that the animal is a master of this trick. Below each picture you will see Lock Icons. these are tricks which must be unlocked before you can start to train your animal in them. to unlock an new trick you must first master one of the current tricks. you either do this with a trainer (slowly) or you can do it yourself (much faster and free). when you are ready to start training click on a trick and you will be taken to the training area. at this point you must wait for your animal to swim over to the training area, this could take a few seconds depending on what they were doing and where they were when you decided to start, just be patient. When your animal arrives you will be asked to "click your tracer to start the training." at the far left of the yellow line you will see a circle with a picture of your animal in it. click your mouse in the circle and then follow along as the circle moves along the yellow line. at certain points along the yellow line you may be required to click the mouse button or hit the arrow keys on certain spots. these spots will be shown on the yellow line. if you follow along with the circle and hit the buttons at just the right time then you will gain a score up to 100% depending on how accurate you were with the minigame. the more accurate you are the better your animal learns the trick. after you have completed the game, your animal will then perform the trick and then you must reward your animal with a fish by pressing the space bar (when the game prompts you to do so). if you do not reward your animal it will not learn. obviously, higher scores will result in faster learning. it is interesting to note that your animal will perform the trick as well as you played the minigame. if you score high you animal will perform very well if you score low or even score below 60% then your animal will still try to perform the trick but will screw it up in some way. each time you successfully complete the minigame and your aniaml learns the trick better the game will get harder. it will get faster, the circle will get smaller and the number of buttons needed will increase. don't worry if you don't get a perfect score. 60% or higher is all that is needed for your animal to learn from the session. Be warned, some of the more advanced tricks get very tough, they curve in on themselves and have multiple button presses. if you get less than 60% your animal will get angry and may splash around and pout. this has no lasting effect on your animals true happiness, it is just a temporary result of giving bad training. I have yet to see any permanent results from continuous failure. if you just can't seem to succeed at a certain training game then just take a break and come back to it later. you need to rest and take a break just as much as your animal does. you can continue to train your animal until your animal has mastered the trick, you get tired or you choose to train a different animal or a different trick. once an animal has mastered a trick you can no longer train that animal in that trick. each animal must learn its own tricks. you can train your animal in a different trick at any time, you do not need to master any trick unless you want to unlock the advanced tricks. my best advice for this minigame is to practice it in FF mode. In order to understand a tricks impact on a show you should consult the SHOW section above. please note that while you are in a mini game time is still flowing in your zoo (the game does not pause). don't lose yourself in a minigame at the expense of your zoo. Here is a list of all the tricks listed by animal: (to be completed in a future release, sorry...) B. FOSSIL HUNTING This is a game that was added by EA XP. like with the training game you don't have to find the fossils on your own, you can hire a paleontologist to do this for you. unlike the trainer, a paleontologist is actually worth the money when it comes to finding fossils, however, for those of you that wish to get your hands dirty then read on. In order to find fossils at all you must first purchase and maintain an Extinct Research Lab. once you have one of these (they are expensive so be prepared), you go into zoo guest mode and click the right mouse button. here you can select fossil finding from the right side of the screen. when you do you will be given a red fossil finding radar gun! at this point you just need to start walking around. when a fossil is nearby in front of you, your radar gun will begin to beep and you will see a set of colored bars build up on the fossil guns miniscreen. the closer you get the more bars there are and the faster it beeps. if you turn too much to one side the fossil finder will not see the fossil. you need proximity and direction to find fossils. continue to move in the direction that gives you more bars or gives you more beeps. eventually a fossil dig area will show up, its big and orange. when this happens you can approach the area and press the space bar. this will allow you to dig in the area. most of the time you will find a fossil piece. the game will give a short message to tell you that you have found a fossil and to what animal the fossil goes to. sometimes however, you will find other things such as food, animal toys or even hats and t-shirts. some fossil gun huh? the food and toys can be recycled or they can be used by your animals, the other stuff will be automatically recycled for a few lousy bucks. when you find a fossil it will be taken to the Extinct Research lab automatically. when you have found all the pieces of a particular animal you can then play the Fossil Puzzle mini game (see below). The fossil gun has 5 levels of power. each level can only detect certain fossils. once you have found all the fossils at the current level it will be ready for an upgrade. to upgrade your gun you must increase the fame level of your zoo. if your zoo is already at a high fame level then the gun will upgrade automatically when you have found all the fossils. There is absolutely no way to fail this game, just walk around and search for dig sites. the game does get challenging near the end of each level though. each dig site seems to be determined randomly every time you find a new site. this means that you can pass over one area and not find anything and later in the same level you can pass over that area again and this time there will be a fossil, or the fossil gun is more sensitive to direction then I thought. be warned. the dig sites pop up fairly quickly when a level begins because there are so many fossils to find, however, when you only have a few fossils left it can be very difficult to locate them. remember that any area of ground is fair game for a fossil. it could be on a path, in an exhibit, shallow water, deep water, the edge of a steep cliff or out in the middle of nowhere. don't rule anything out. I have never found a fossile under a building or object, however, so don't tear apart your zoo if you are having no luck because fossils don't hide under rocks or anything else for that matter. if you are having trouble you can always hire a paleontologist to help out. so long as you do not have an extinct education center then the paleontologist will prefer to search for fossils. he will mark some dig sites or he may randomly dig them up for you, so, make sure to zoom out every once in a while and look for any marked dig sites you may have missed. There is a fossil for each extinct animal from EA XP and Dino Danger Pack. even the elusive Quagga can be temporarily unlocked for the current game if you find its fossils. It is interesting to note that the paleontologist will still search for fossils even if you do not have a Research Lab. but to play the game yourself, you will need the lab. If you recycle your Lab for any reason you will not lose the fossils you found. your staff can even continue looking for fossils if you lose your lab (which can make searching for fossils much cheaper). also, if you zoom in on the paleontologist you will see that he is using a fully upgraded fossil finder! those guys are good! LEVEL 1 - There are 7 animals each with 6 fossil pieces for a total of 42 fossils, .5 stars needed. Dodo Styracosaurs Bluebuck Protarcheaopteryx Sivatherium Velociraptor Aurachs LEVEL 2 - There are 7 animals each with 9 fossil pieces for a total of 63 fossils, 1.5 stars needed Diprotodon Doedicurus Kentrosaurus Quagga Stokesasaurs Giant Camel Bush Antlered Deer LEVEL 3 - 6 animals, 12 pieces each, 72 fossils, 2.5 stars. Carnotaurus Dienonycus Thylacine Warrah Dwarf Sicillian Elephant Elephant Bird LEVEL 4 - 9 animals, 15 pieces each, 135 fossils, 3.5 stars. Triceratops Ankylosaurus Stegosaurus Giant Warthog Sabertoothed Cat Cave Lion Wooly Rhino Dimentrodon Short Faced Bear LEVEL 5 - 6 animals, 24 pieces each, 144 fossils, 4.5 stars. American Mastodon Utah Raptor Giant Ground Sloth Dienosuchus Tyrannosaurus Rex Gigantopithecus C. FOSSIL BUILDING This mini game requires two things: A completed set of fossils of any animal and an extinct research lab. once you have played the Fossil Finding mini game and found a complete fossil you can click on the research lab where you can find the Build Fossils tab (Picture of a T-Rex Skull). Here you will see list of all the complete fossils you have found. ones listed with a red icon are not yet put together, ones with a green icon are complete. simply double click on any animal and you will be transported to a small indoor workshop with a giant fossil puzzle hanging on a wall in front of you and all the individual pieces of the fossil lying all over the place. here you must click on a fossil piece to pick it up and you can rotate the piece by right clicking or using the < and > keys. place the piece in the puzzle where you think it should go. if you are right it will turn green and be frozen in place. once you have found the locations for all the pieces you are done and can move on to the DNA mini game. at first the puzzles are laughably easy with only 6 pieces. but the higher level animals have 15-24 pieces each and they can get pretty small. my best advice is start on the larger pieces and try to find the ones on the outer edge first. there is no way to fail this game unless you give up. please note that while you are in a mini game time is still flowing in your zoo (the game does not pause). don't lose yourself in a minigame at the expense of your zoo. D. DNA MANIPULATION Like the last game you will need two things for this one: a completed fossil puzzle and a research lab. click on the lab and find the Create Extinct Animals tab (picture of a strange green ... thing.) on this tab you will see another list of animals which is a list of completed fossil puzzles. double click on one of these animals and you will be taken to the DNA manipulation lab. Here you will be asked to click the mouse button or press space bar. when you do the screen will contain a set of buttons against a background picture of a DNA strand. a timer will go off counting down from 3. when the counter goes to 0 a bar will begin scanning across the screen. when the bar lines up with one of the buttons you must press it. if you get it right the button will become a star. the more stars you get the higher your accuracy. if you get 50% or better accuracy then you will create the animal. it will be in a crate outside the lab after you are done. if you get 100% then you will create a super version of the animal which is healthier and lives longer than a normal version of the animal. the sex of the animal is randomly determined. if you get below 50% but higher than 0% you will gain any one of a set of special creatures. These creatures are not normal animals which means they do not need to be kept in exhibits and guests will ignore them. they will eventually dissapear over time. some of the strange animals I have gotten: Giant Bullfrog Spring Hare Squirrle Giant Butterfly The one exception to this is the Killer Penguin. if you fail enough times you will get an egg. if you keep the egg long enough it will hatch into a killer penguin. this is no ordinary penguin mind you it is very large, with glowing eyes and rows of razor sharp teeth. for some reason, many people think the KP is a bad animal. on the contrary, if you keep the killer penguin happy in an exhibit like any other animal it can be a very nice addition to any zoo. I had a KP in a tundra exhibit with two polar bears and they lived quite happily for as long as I played that game. once the KP grows up to an adult you can put it up for adoption, release it to the wild or just keep it around if you like. the one bad thing about the KP is that it will kill all other penguins in its exhibit regaurdless of how well fed it is. just think of a KP as a psychotic version of a normal penguin. treat it well and it will treat you well. getting the KP is rare. I have yet to get two of them in the same game so I do not even know if it is possible to get more than one through this minigame. regardless of how well you do in the game the research lab will need time to clean up the mess and restock its supplies. when it is ready for another go you will be notified and you can go in and attempt another creation. you can make another of the same animal or a different animal. the difficulty of the game is determined by the level of the fossil (see the fossil minigame above for a list of aniamls and their level). level 1 animals are fairly simple. the scanner will move slowly from left to right and then again from right to left. you will have 4 buttons each way. on higher level animals the scanner will move faster, the number of buttons will increase, the number of scans will increase and some of the buttons will be blacked out so you must memorize them before the timer goes to zero. for the first two levels the minigame can be useful as a source for free extinct animals. for the higher levels it would problably be a lot easier to just save up the money and buy one. its up to you though. if you get discouraged just take a break and come back to it later. for practice I again suggest FF mode. first you should hire a bunch of paleontologists and find all the fossils really quick, then put together all the puzzles that you want to practice on. then build about 4 or 5 research labs and practice, practice, practice. please note that while you are in the research lab time is still flowing in your zoo (the game does not pause). don't lose yourself in a minigame at the expense of your zoo. E. CURING DISEASES This mini game is not just for any old disease, it is for the rare extinct diseases that come with extinct animals. These diseases require more than just a shot from a zookeeper. in fact, this is the only minigame which cannot be avoided and you must perform yourself. essentially when you start dealing with extinct animals there is a chance that one of them will come down with some kind of strange disease. when this happens you will be notified. in order to cure the disease you must have an Extinct Research Lab in your zoo. go into zoo guest mode and then approach your animal. the first thing you will need to do is right click and select Cure Disease from the right side of the screen. then approach your sick animal (it should be surrounded with a strange aura) and press space bar to take a sample. once you have a sample, now you need to find what the cause is by taking samples of the things around your animal. it could be anything, a building, a fence, a plant, a piece of food, a toy, a pile of poo, another animal a guest or even a piece of litter. if you are having trouble finding it, just ask for a hint by pressing the "H" key. sometimes the object you need is not even in your zoo yet, so, use the hint and scroll through your inventory of items to see what might be the cause, then buy it and take a sample of it. once you have the cause of the disease you must find a cure. again start taking samples. you can always get a hint if you need one. the best hint though is just the name of the disease which is usually a fair descriptor of the disease. Once you have cured a disease your zoo keepers will have the cure on hand at all times there after but only for that game. as far as I can tell, these super diseases only affect extinct animals. I would like to list all the diseases in the game, but, since they pop up fairly randomly and rarely this list will have to grow over time. if anyone out there has encountered a disease that is not on this list and remembers what they sampled to cure it please send me an update and I will give you credit: TUTORIAL LOVE Cause - Bananas Cure - Big Pink Ball CAT SCRATCH FEVER Cause - Scratching Post Cure - Aloe Vera (desert bush) LITTER BUG Cause - Trash Can with Trash Cure - Trembling Aspen (grassland tree) DIGESTIVE DIFFICULTIES Cause - Poo Cure - Compost Building with compost in it F. DINO RAMPAGE Whenever you deal with dinos in your zoo, eventually one of them will go on a rampage. unless you put them in a cliff/ditch exhibit, a rampaging dino will break through any fencing even the big dino fencing. if they do they will rampage through your zoo frightening your guests and destroying things along the way. if you like you can purchase a Dino Capture Team Bunker. this will look like a mild mannered dino statue until a dino goes berserk. then the statue will lift up and a team of highly trained experts will come out of a secret underground bunker and get to work. it can be quite entertaining to watch the team in action, however, if the team is far away it could take them some time to reach the dino and in that time the dino can do quite a bit of damage. if you are having trouble with lots of rampages then a the bunker could be a useful investment, but, if you are doing well with your dinos, I would say to skip these guys, unless of course you just want the cool looking statue. If you dont want to pay the price for the upkeep or you just like doing things yourself then this is the mini game for you. when a dino begins to rampage you will be warned and a big red symbol will pop up in the upper right corner. click the symbol and you will be taken to the rampaging dino. go into guest mode and right click to select the Rampaging Dino mode on the right side of the screen. this will bring out the dino tranquillizer gun. with the gun in hand you must target the dino and let the gun charge up. the gun will lose its charge if you lose targeting on the dino, which can be difficult if the dino is running around. when the gun is fully charged and the crosshairs are green you can fire the tranquillizer. the dino will immediately fall asleep (assuming you don't miss) and then you must put the dino into a crate. while in the crate you can repair whatever damage was done (especially to the fencing) and then put you dino back in its cage. after a short time your guests should relax and all will be well again. All dinos can rampage. unhappy dinos will rampage much more often than happy ones but even the best cared for dinos will rampage on occasion. even if the dino does not break out of the exhibit it will still scare off your guests so you need to act quickly to cull the savage beast or risk loosing all of your guests. G. GUEST MODE Although not a true mini game it can offer some benefits if you spend some time roaming your zoo in this mode. to enter Zoo Guest mode simply click the button with the picture of the tree and path on the left side of the screen. now you are in a first person mode where you can walk around your zoo as if you were a guest. you can look at the pretty decorations and even view your animals through the fencing and see what kinds of fencing offer the best view. while in this mode you can access the camera by right clicking and selecting the button with the camera on it to the left. or you can return to the overview mode by selecting the magnifying glass. if you have EA XP and a research center you can switch over to fossil finding mode on the right hand side, or dino rampage mode if you have a rampaging dino or cure disease mode if you have a sick animal. while you are walking around there are lots of things to do. you can: - clean up trash on the ground - empty trash and recycling bins - clean up animal poo - groom/clean/cure animals - refill food and water dishes - play with some animal toys (like balls) - clean marine tanks - sit in marine show bleachers - repair/clean water filters - swim with marine animals - ride on a jeep/sky tram tour The best part of this mode is that you can do all of those things just as fast as you can press the space bar. your staff members do these things but it takes them time to do each task. for example if there is a ton of litter on the ground a maintenance worker will have to go through a one or two second animation for each piece while he tries to clean it all up. you on the other hand can clean up the entire mess in just under a second by pressing the space bar really fast! while in an exhibit you can walk around and fill up water and food piles while also cleaning up your animals all in the same time that it takes a zookeeper to refill one dish! one way to save a ton of money in the beginning is to do everything yourself. this has some disadvantages though. the zoo does not pause while you are in zoo guest mode, so, things might be happening somewhere that needs your attention while you are trying to clean up after the guests. or if you are building a new exhibit you guests might be getting angry at all the litter that is pilling up. it really is best if you hire a few staff members to handle the minor work when you can afford it. your job is to build the zoo, not clean it, but, zoo guest mode can be fun sometimes so give it a try. I like to go into zoo guest mode every once in a while to help out my staff especially if I am trying to save some money for a new exhibit. if you want to move faster while in zoo guest mode hold down the Shift key and you can run. if you scroll your mouse wheel you can do a little jump. I have not found a purpose for the jump, but, I find it amusing anyway. H. PHOTO MODE Again this not really a true mini game but it has its purposes. mainly, photo mode is used to complete certain challenges or scenerios so it is a good idea to know how it works. you can enter photo mode by clicking on the button with a camera in the lower left of the screen or you can enter photo mode through zoo guest mode by right clicking and selecting the camer button. when in photo mode you will see your zoo through a camera view finder. you will have reduced visibility but you will also have a small white circle in the center of the camera to help you center your pictures. when taking a picture for a challenge or scenerio you should try to center your subject in the circle to help ensure that the picture registers for the challenge. to take a picture simply press the space key and you will get a quick view of the true image which was captured. a small picture-in-picture will also appear in the upper left corner for a few more seconds. if the picture registers for a challenge or scenerio goal you will hear a tone and you will be notified of the accomplishment. you can refresh you memory of what pics you need by right clicking and the goals will drop down from the top. don't be surprised if your movement and turning speed are reduced while in photo mode. you need to be more careful when you have the camera out as you would not want to trip and break it now would you? you can zoom in and out by scrolling the mouse wheel. the zoom is actually quite good on this camera and it does not seem to distort or blur the image in any way. some scenerios require you to take pictures from a distance so the zoom comes in handy. your camera is a digital and waterproof camera. it can hold up to 24 images at a time before filling the memory (very high megapixel camera here!). you can see your current number of pics at the top right in small green numbers. To clear the memory or save some pics you can right click and select the photo album (red book button on the left). in the photo album you will see you cameras currently stored pics at the top in thumbnail form. you can either clear the whole camera or you can delete them one at a time. the bottom of the camera will be your album which can store up to 40 pictures. you can turn the page by clicking on the bottom right or left of the photo album page. If you press the red book with a yellow plus sign you can even create new photo albums to store more pictures, or, load up a previous album. the great thing about the camera is that you can take it with you to other zoos within the same profile. for example, if you take a picture in one zoo and then exit (even if you don't save that zoo) and then enter another zoo, your camera will still have that previous picture stored in it. this way you can have pictures from multiple zoos all within in the same photo album. to find your pictures outside of the game (for example if you want to post them to the internet or a forum site) you can find them by searching this directory path in Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name\Application Data\Microsoft Games\ Zoo Tycoon 2\Profile Name one of the disadvantages of this photo method is that you cant take overhead shots of your zoo. if you want to know how to take screen shots of any game at any time and post them professionally to the internet then read my guide located in APPENDIX c below. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ VI. TERRAFORMING TIPS This section will be updated in a future release. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ VII. SCENARIOS/CHALLENGES This section will discuss the various scenarios and challenges in the game and what strategy I used to complete them. you can of course play the game however you like, but, if you are reading this then I assume you are here for a little advise or perhaps a different point of view. what I will not do is rehash what the game has to say about each scenerio. you can easily read all the in game text yourself. I will simply list the scenerios goals and what I think is the best way to achieve them and any pitfalls you might want to watch for. I will not cover the tutorial scenarios as they are all very easy and the game itself will tell you exactly what to do to finish each one. in fact, I remember quite clearly saying at the start of this guide that I assume you have already completed the tutorials, so, on we go with the rest of the game. many times during the discussion of the following scenerios I will make mention of a "sell and smooth" technique. what this means is you should put the game on pause and recycle everything you can on the map. then you should use the terrain tools to flatten the entire area. this can net you anywhere from $5000 or more of extra income before the game even starts. for scenerios this can be quite a big boost and make winning that much easier. another point of advice for scenerios is that your goal in each scenerio is to win and move on. don't worry about making the perfect zoo. all we are concerned about in each scenerio is attaining whatever goal the game gives us. once we have done that we will move on to the next goal and so on. This pretty much means that we don't need pretty zoos, just, efficient zoos. I use the grid layout on most of my scenerios along with chain fencing for most exhibits. I also try to only buy one animal of each species and I try to put multiple animals into each exhibit. I use males when I do 1 animal at a time as males tend to look more impressive than females (IMHO), although, it has no impact on the game as far I can tell. these techniques will help increase your zoo fame by increasing number of species and educational exhibit ratings while at the same time reducing overall cost. Increased zoo fame will increase the number of guests and thus increase the amount of donations (income). when creating zoo guest areas try using the themed food stands and carts as the default stands will need to be researched. eventhough themed buildings cost more to maintain you will actually save money on most of the scenerios since the games don't last long enough for the research cost to be worth it. Tundra theme is the best as it is a free download and will be available from the very beginning. - SCENARIOS A. ZOOKEEPER IN TRAINING - Reward: Flower Post - New Animal Arrivals Ok this one is the easiest one in the game (aside from the tutorials). put the polar bear in the tundra exhibit, the lion in the savannah exhibit and the hippo in the wetlands exhibit. put down some meat for the bear and lion and some hay for the hippo, then, wait one game month and, poof, you are done. the zoo starts out closed, but, you can open it if you want to. if you do you should place some donation boxes and hire a zoo keeper. - Start Up The first thing you should do here is to put your zebras in the exhibit provided after you have painted a savannah biome and recycled all the trees inside. you can keep the trees if you want but they are not native to the savannah biome. it is good practice to get into making educational exhibits. after you have placed your zebras put down some hay and water. the next step is to do as the instructions say, buy a hot dog stand and a soda stand. this is pretty easy so far. the next step is a bit tricky. here you are introduced to the photographic feature of the game. some people say that taking photos for challenges is difficult. My advise is to first make sure your zoo is running well without your immediate involvement and then go into photo mode and stalk your prey! what I mean is you are trying to take a picture of something specific, in this case a zebra using a scratching post and a zebra running around. so while you are in photo mode pick one zebra and keep that zebra in the middle of the camera (the circle). when the zebra even remotly seems like it is doing what you want it to do then take your picture. heck, take a few pictures. your camera is a digital camera. it can only hold 24 pictures at a time, but, you can always clear some pictures out to make room for more. once you have the picture for the challenge you will be immediately notified. hint: the scratching post is an enrichement item which requires research. while you are waiting for research to finish you can hunt for that running zebra photo. also, you can tell when a zebra is dirty because its color will become more grey, as the in game tip suggests a dirty zebra will be more likely to use the post, so, stalk a grey zebra and wait for that kodak moment. alright after the second pic is taken you will have one final challenge; taking care of a pair of jaguars. build a simple chain exhibit 10x10 squares in size. paint in the tropical biome and put in your cats. you should immediately meet their basic needs as most animals are in a happy state when they are first adopted. to meet their basic needs you should immediately go into guest mode and groom your cats. this should then win you the scenerio as their hygene stat is what is keeping you from meeting thier advanced needs. if this does not work then you should offer them a scratching post, a shelter, food and water and just wait, you should win this in no time. - Beyond Start Up Ah ha! Your first open ended zoo. this means you get to build your zoo your way. your only goal is $5,000 in donations. this means you will need exhibits, donation boxes and happy guests. now go and perform a sell and smooth. this should net you about $9500 of free money which is good for at least two or three decent exhibits. at this point you can build your zoo your way, but, I will go ahead and describe my technique just in case you are looking for some extra advice. I started my zoo with a sell and smooth. then I built 3 minimum sized exhibits all 10 tiles deep; 1 exhibit with a peafowl, 1 exhibit with a moose and 1 exhibit with a bongo and a dodo (both tropical animals). then I placed three donation boxes (10 tiles apart) with some benches on the path. I created a small guest area near the entrance with a hot dog and soda stand and two small restrooms. I then put staff gates to connect my three exhibits and hired 1 zookeeper and assigned him to all three areas. I also hired one maintenance worker for the guest area. I also began research on the scrathing post as it is one of the most useful enrichment items in the game. then I unpaused the game. I then continued to expand while the game was running by adding in an american bison, velociraptor and an african buffalo. At this point I had $9000 left over and 1 fame star. now just sit back and relax and wait for the win. B. TROUBLED ZOOS - Reward: Flower Arch - Waltham Animal Park Redevelopment Effort Thist zoo is a mess. you need to clean it up. first thing to do is hire 2 zookeepers and 2 maintenance workers. then go into zoo guest mode and begin cleaning up everything and anything. also make sure to visit your animals as they are all filthy and sick. refill the food and water. you can also help out your janitors with the clean up. I would also reapply the biomes in each exhibit as they are all very poorly done. this part should take you about 5 minutes. dont worry about the bad looking path it is not important, although you can lay new path over it if you like. the next part is easy as well. place one donation box next to each exhibit. then try to get a Thompson's Gazelle so you can add it to the zebra exhibit (both savannah animals). then buy shelters for your zebra/gazelle and tiger. the elephant will be a little difficult though, you will have to surround the exhibit with solid fencing and only leave a little area for viewing. buying a shade structure can work well too. now just sit back and wait for all the animals to get some privacy. I think this map took me a total of 10 minutes (with time spent writing this). - Raintree Cooperative Animal Park For this map I suggest a modified sell and smooth. recycle everything except the path, the stands, the benches and donation boxes. make sure to crate your animals before you sell off their fencing. also make sure to sell off the picket fencing and the ATM. this should get you about $13,000 of recycling income. then build 10x10 exhibits with chain link for each set of animals and fill in each biome. after that you should win pretty quick. now that I think of it, you really don't need to sell everything, but, it is a good habit to get into. - Wolverton Animal Rehabilitation Center To start off with this one go into zoo guest mode and start refilling all the food and water areas. while you are there clean and heal all of your animals. this should only take a minute. the problem is waiting for the animals to realize that there is food available. while you are waiting for the animals to feed, you can perform a modified sell and smooth on the rest of zoo. I sold the gazebo, the ATM and trimmed the path near the entrance a bit. I got about $5000 for recycling. our next task is to get a 3 star zoo. this will require more exhibits with more animals to help increase the fame level. you can get a zookeeper now if you like or you can take care of things yourself. I added a desert exhibit with a camel and a temperate exhibit with a peafowl. I put an african buffalo in with the beaver (both wetlands). by this time I was running low on cash so I just let the zoo run for a while. over time your educational and animal happiness ratings should max out. the biggest hurdle here is guest happiness. I would place an arch at the entrance and a fountain in front of the moose exhibit. remember to hire a janitor and place a few benches when you can afford it. when you reach two stars upgrade to a family restroom and put scratching posts into the zebra, camel and moose exhibits. that should help increase the entertaining animals fame. as time passes your moose and zebras should give birth. you may need to expand the exhibits to contain them which should add to your number of animals fame. C. PREVENT ANIMAL ABUSE - Reward: Sundial Decoration - African Elephant Rescue in this one you start off with a decent zoo. I started by recycling the two staff centers and any paths leading up to them as well as all the flora in the back part of the zoo. I also go rid of the ATM and the fencing around the crated elephant. if an animal is in a crate they don't need fencing. this got me about $5000 extra. also make sure to smooth out the terrain if you like in the back part of the zoo. take a look at the wetlands exhibit, its a great example of a ditch exhibit. Where you put the elephant is up to you but remember that it needs space. also, the next task is to care for a total of 4 African Elephants so make sure you can house them all in the same exhibit. check APPENDIX A below of space considerations. once they are all happy in their exhibits you can sit back and relax for 3 game months. - Combatting Cruelty This next scenario will require some planning. I chose to do a complete sell and smooth of the entire zoo. crate up your lemurs, red pandas and beaver before you begin and sell everything. you only start with $7500. after my sell and smooth I had an entire open map and $30,000 extra dollars to do with as I pleased. After you have all your animals neatly tucked away in nice habitats make sure to go in a clean and cure all of your new animals. many of them are dirty and sick. once all the basic needs of the animals are met you will get $8000 and a pack of chimps. This might be a good time to design one of those ditch exhibits I was talking about before because chimps can climb chain link. however, as soon as you place them in a nice exhibit and tend to their needs you will win, so, it is up to you as to how you want to proceed. - Smuggling Ring Exposed Ok you have a big open lot with no time to spare. well, actually don't have a time limit, but, it sounded good. sell and smooth everything. I got about $13000 from recycling. one the biggest challenges here is that you will be given all of your animals and will not be able to adopt any extra. You will get new animals one at a time in the following order: Red Kangaroo Bengal Tiger Grizzly Bear Moutain Gorilla Black Rhinoceros African Elephant Snow Leopard after you have put them all in their exhibits you will be given another of each animal and then you must release one of each back to the wild. this means you will need to satisfy all of the animals needs. this will be easy except for the snow leopard. as soon as this phase of the game begins put the game on pause and distribute the other animals. also check all of your animals and see if any of them can be release right away. Your biggest challenges will be entertainment for the snow leopards and elephants. if you can get to 2 stars of fame you can research the big pink ball, everyone loves the big pink ball. apples are worthless for entertainment. the scratching post is also a good idea for the snow leopard. D. THE GLOBE - Reward: The Globe Statue decoration - The World's Biomes This one sounds easy; create one exhibit with an animal from each biome. start off with a sell and smooth and start building. I got about $7000 from recycling. also note that MM biomes and grassland do not count in this scenerio, although, extinct animals do. with the limited funds I was able to start off with a camel, gazelle, musk ox and a small guest area with a few flower arches for decoration. I then expanded with an african buffalo, peafowl, moose, ibex, bongo and gemsbok when I had the funds. I was able to complete this by July of year 1. it just takes patience when you have a new zoo with limited funds - African Animal Empire - North American Foreign Content - Scarce Aisian Animals E. CONSERVATION PROGRAMS - Animal Adoption Program - Animal Conservation - Second Generation Animals F. THE MYSTERIOUS PANDA - The Mysterious Panda G. AFRICAN ADVENTRUE (AA XP) - A Mob of Meerkats - The Secretary Bird - The African Diversity Zoo H. TRANSPORTATION (ES XP) - Bridging the Gap - The Great Savannah - Five Star Sensation I. PHOTO SAFARI (ES XP) - The VIP's - The Javan Rhinoceros - The Cat Sanctuary J. ENDANGERED SPECIES (ES XP) - Baird's Tapir - Endangered Species Breeding Program - The Endangered Species Zoo K. MARINE ANIMALS (MM XP) - The Marine Diversity Zoo - Take the Plunge - The Ocean's Biomes - Arluq the Orca L. MARINE SHOWS (MM XP) - Marine Show Photographer - Starmaker - Double Feature - Fine Tuning - Marine Show Mogul M. EXTINCT ANIMALS (EA XP) - Paleo Island - All In A Day's Work - Back to the Ice Age N. EXTINCT EXPLORATION (EA XP) - The Hard Way - Living in Harmony - T. Rex Trouble O. THE DINOSAUR ZOO (EA XP and Dino Danger Pack premium download) - The Dinosaur Zoo P. CHALLENGE LISTING (to be updated in a future release) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ VIII.APPENDIX A: LIST OF ANIMALS The following list will not be easy to read. this is because the original list is a .xls spreadsheet with color coding and lots of nice filters and sorting abilities. Gamefaqs does not allow .xls spreadsheets on their site. if you want to view the following list in a much better way then copy the list and paste it into a blank .txt file. rename the file as a .csv extension. this will make the computer see it as a comma seperated value list which is recognized by microsoft excel. when excel reads the .csv file it will put each value into its own column and then all of a sudden the list will be nice and easy to read with the ability to sort and filter for much easier use. if you want a copy of the original file which is color coded and much nicer looking then drop me a line at: soldyne@yahoo.com with the subject specifying Zoo Tycoon 2 and just ask for the spreadsheet. while your at it you can also tell me how great my guide is or tell me how much you hate it. in order to make this list fit in the 80 character width limit for Gamefaqs I had to abbreviate a few things. first of all are the column headers: NAME - this is the name of the animal GR - grassland biome PE - pelagic biome RE - reef biome SA - savannah biome SC - scrub biome TE - temperate forest TR - tropical TU - tundra WE - wetlands AL - alpine BE - benthic BO - boreal forest CO - coastal DE - desert SWIM? - can the animal swim or is it a marine animal TL - Threat Level S1 - the amount of space required for the first animal of that species in an exhibit (number of squares) S2+ - the amount of space required for each subsequent animal of the same species in the exhibit (number of squares) AREA - the area of the world where the animal is native to FAME - how much fame your zoo needs before you can adopt this animal COST - how much money it takes to adopt this animal Biome Notes - under each biome there will be a number; 0, 1, 2, 3. 0 indicates that this biome is a native biome for this animal. 1 indicates a green biome box (happy but not native). 2 indicates the animal will tolerate the biome but will not be happy. 3 indicates that the animal will not tolerate the biome. For SWIM? the values are: S - animal can swim N - animal cannot swim M - aniaml is a marine animal T - animal is a marine show aniaml (trainable) for Threat Level the levels are: LR - Low Risk V - Vulnerable E - Endangered C - Critical X - Extinct for S1 and S2+ I spent many an hour putting aniamls into various sized exhibits and seeing how their biome need reacted. to get a perfectly accurate measure would have made me insane so I rounded up to the nearest 5 tiles. so you may find out that some animals only need 3 tiles or perhaps even 6.5 tiles. if so then great, but, I will keep my list as it is. the more space the merrier the animals. For AREA the values are: AF - Africa NA - North America AS - Asia EA - Eurasia AR - Arctic WO - Warm Ocean CO - Cold Ocean AU - Australia AN - Antarctic SA - South America EU - Europe ANIMAL,GR,PE,RE,SA,SC,TE,TR,TU,WE,AL,BE,BO,CO,DE,SWIM?,TL,S1,S2+,AREA,FAME,COST Aardvark,1,1,1,1,0,2,3,3,2,3,1,3,1,2,S,LR,75,20,AF,2.5,10000 Addax,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,3,2,2,1,1,1,0,N,C,70,10,AF,2,5500 AFn Buffalo,1,1,1,1,2,3,3,3,0,3,1,3,1,3,S,LR,40,10,AF,0.5,1250 AFn Elephant,2,3,3,0,2,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,S,E,80,20,AF,4,20000 AFn Spurred Tortoise,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,3,2,2,1,1,1,0,S,V,40,15,AF,1,2000 AFn Wild Dog,2,3,3,0,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,S,E,45,10,AF,3.5,15000 American Beaver,1,3,3,1,1,1,2,3,0,2,3,1,3,1,S,V,70,10,NA,3,10000 American Bison,0,3,3,2,2,1,2,3,1,2,3,1,3,3,S,LR,40,10,NA,0.5,1250 American Mastodon,1,3,3,3,3,1,3,1,3,1,3,0,3,3,S,X,80,20,NA,4.5,60000 Ankylosauraus,1,3,3,1,1,2,2,3,0,2,3,2,3,2,S,X,120,35,NA,4,45000 ASn Elephant,1,1,1,1,0,1,2,3,2,2,1,1,1,1,S,E,80,20,AS,3.5,15000 Aurochs,1,3,3,1,1,0,3,3,2,2,3,1,3,3,S,X,50,15,EA,1,5500 Baird's Tapir,2,3,3,3,3,2,0,3,2,3,3,2,3,3,S,E,70,10,SA,1.5,3000 Barbary Ape,1,1,1,1,2,0,3,3,2,1,1,2,1,3,N,V,50,5,AF,2.5,7500 Beluga,3,1,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,1,1,2,1,3,T,V,50,5,AR,0.5,1250 Bengal Tiger,2,3,3,3,3,2,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,S,E,70,20,AS,3.5,15000 Black Leopard,1,1,1,1,2,1,0,3,1,2,1,2,1,2,S,LR,80,25,AF,3,10000 Black Rhinoceros,2,3,3,0,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,S,C,80,20,AF,3,10000 Blacktip Reef Shark,2,1,0,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,1,2,M,LR,60,15,WO,3,10000 Blue Marlin,2,0,1,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,1,2,M,LR,50,15,WO,1,2000 Bluebuck,0,3,3,1,2,2,3,3,2,3,3,2,3,3,N,X,70,10,AF,0.5,3000 Bongo,2,1,1,3,3,2,0,3,2,3,1,3,1,3,N,LR,90,10,AF,0.5,1250 Bottlenosed Dolphin,2,1,1,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,T,V,50,15,WO,3.5,15000 Bush-Antlered Deer,1,3,3,1,1,0,3,3,2,2,3,1,3,3,S,X,70,20,EA,1.5,7500 California Sea Lion,2,1,2,2,2,3,3,1,2,2,1,2,0,2,T,LR,80,20,NA,1.5,3000 Caracal,1,1,1,1,0,3,3,3,2,3,1,3,1,1,S,LR,70,20,AF,4.5,35000 Caribou,1,3,3,2,2,1,3,0,2,1,3,1,3,3,S,V,70,10,AR,0.5,1250 Carnotaurus,2,3,3,3,3,2,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,3,N,X,125,30,SA,3,20000 Cave Lion,2,3,3,3,2,1,3,1,3,0,3,1,3,3,S,X,50,15,EU,3.5,35000 Cheetah,1,3,3,0,1,1,1,3,2,2,3,1,3,1,S,V,90,30,AF,2.5,7500 Chimpanzee,2,3,3,3,3,2,0,3,2,3,3,3,3,3,N,E,50,5,AF,3.5,15000 Common Peafowl,1,3,3,2,2,0,1,3,2,1,3,1,3,2,N,LR,25,10,AS,0.5,1250 Common Zebra,1,3,3,0,1,1,1,3,2,2,3,1,3,1,N,LR,50,5,AF,1.5,3000 Crested Gibbon,2,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,2,3,3,2,3,3,N,E,50,5,AS,4,20000 Deinonychus,1,3,3,1,2,1,0,3,1,2,3,2,3,2,N,X,45,5,NA,2.5,15000 Deinosuchus,1,3,3,1,2,1,0,3,1,2,3,2,3,2,S,X,160,35,NA,4.5,60000 Dimetrodon,1,3,3,1,1,2,2,3,0,2,3,2,3,2,S,X,40,10,NA,3.5,35000 Diprotodon,1,3,3,1,1,2,2,3,0,2,3,2,3,2,S,X,80,20,AU,2,45000 Dodo,1,3,3,1,2,1,0,3,1,2,3,2,3,2,S,X,30,10,AF,0.5,3000 Doedicurus,1,3,3,1,0,2,3,3,3,3,3,1,3,3,S,X,120,20,SA,2,10000 Dromedary Camel,1,3,3,1,1,1,2,3,2,2,3,1,3,0,N,LR,70,10,AF,0.5,1250 Dwarf Sicilian Elephant,0,3,3,1,1,0,3,3,2,1,3,0,3,3,S,X,30,10,EU,3,20000 Elephant Bird,1,3,3,1,1,2,2,3,0,2,3,2,3,2,N,X,40,5,AF,2.5,15000 Emperor Penguin,2,1,1,2,2,2,2,0,2,1,1,2,1,3,S,LR,50,5,AN,1,2000 Ethiopian Wolf,1,1,1,2,2,1,2,1,2,0,1,1,1,3,S,C,45,10,AF,5,45000 False Killer Whale,2,1,1,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,2,T,LR,50,15,WO,4,20000 Fennec Fox,2,3,3,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,3,2,3,0,N,LR,20,5,AF,2,5500 Florida Panther,2,3,3,2,3,2,3,3,0,3,3,3,3,3,S,C,70,20,NA,5,45000 Galapagos Giant Tortoise,2,3,3,2,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,1,2,S,E,40,15,SA,1.5,3000 Gelada,1,1,1,2,2,1,2,1,1,0,1,1,1,3,N,LR,40,5,AF,3.5,15000 Gemsbok,1,3,3,1,0,1,2,3,2,2,3,1,3,1,N,LR,70,10,AF,1,2000 Gerenuk,1,1,1,1,0,2,3,3,2,3,1,3,1,2,N,LR,45,15,AF,2,5500 Giant Camel,0,3,3,1,2,2,3,3,2,3,3,2,3,3,N,X,110,20,NA,1.5,7500 Giant Ground Sloth,1,3,3,1,0,2,3,3,2,3,3,3,3,2,S,X,120,30,SA,5,80000 Giant Panda,2,3,3,3,3,0,3,3,3,2,3,2,3,3,S,E,80,20,AS,5,50000 Giant Sable Antelope,2,3,3,0,2,2,2,3,3,3,3,2,3,2,N,C,70,10,AF,2,5500 Giant Warthog,2,1,1,0,2,3,3,3,3,3,1,3,1,3,S,X,60,10,AF,3.5,35000 Gigantopithicus,2,3,3,3,3,2,0,3,2,3,3,3,3,3,N,X,70,10,AS,4.5,60000 Goblin Shark,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,0,3,M,LR,50,15,WO,4,20000 Gray Wolf,1,3,3,3,3,1,3,1,3,1,3,0,3,3,S,LR,45,10,NA,2.5,7500 Greater Flamingo,1,3,3,1,1,1,1,3,0,2,3,1,3,3,S,LR,50,5,AF,1,2000 Green Sea Turtle,2,0,0,2,2,3,3,3,1,3,3,3,0,3,M,E,15,10,WO,1,2000 Grizzly Bear,2,3,3,3,3,2,3,2,3,2,3,0,3,3,S,E,80,20,NA,3.5,15000 Hippopotamus,1,3,3,1,1,1,2,3,0,2,3,1,3,1,S,V,70,10,AF,2.5,7500 Ibex,1,3,3,2,2,1,2,1,1,0,3,1,3,3,N,V,70,10,EU,1.5,3000 Jaguar,1,3,3,1,2,1,0,3,1,2,3,1,3,2,S,LR,70,20,SA,2,5500 Javan Rhinoceros,2,3,3,3,3,2,0,3,2,3,3,3,3,3,S,C,90,25,AS,3.5,15000 Kentrosaurus,1,3,3,1,1,2,2,3,0,2,3,2,3,2,N,X,120,20,AF,2,10000 Killer Penguin,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,1,1,1,3,3,S,X,100,N/A,AF,Unlock,FREE Koala,1,3,3,2,2,0,1,3,2,1,3,1,3,2,N,LR,50,5,AU,2.5,7500 Komodo Dragon,1,3,3,1,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,1,1,S,V,40,15,AS,2,5500 Leatherback Sea Turtle,1,0,1,3,2,3,3,2,2,3,1,3,1,3,M,C,20,10,WO,2.5,7500 Lion,1,3,3,0,1,1,1,3,2,2,3,1,3,1,S,V,50,15,AF,2.5,7500 Mandrill,2,1,1,3,3,2,0,3,2,3,1,3,1,3,N,V,40,5,AF,4.5,35000 Manta Ray,3,0,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,M,LR,35,10,WO,0.5,1250 Markhor,2,3,3,2,2,2,2,2,3,0,3,1,3,3,N,E,70,10,AS,2,5500 Masai Giraffe,1,1,1,0,1,1,2,3,2,2,1,2,1,1,N,LR,50,10,AF,1,2000 Meerkat,1,1,1,1,0,2,3,3,2,3,1,3,1,2,S,LR,30,10,AF,3.5,15000 Moose,1,3,3,2,2,0,2,1,0,0,3,0,3,2,S,LR,70,10,NA,0.5,1250 Mountain Gorilla,2,3,3,3,3,2,0,3,2,3,3,3,3,3,N,E,70,10,AF,4,20000 Musk Ox,2,1,1,2,2,2,3,0,2,0,1,1,1,3,S,LR,40,10,AR,0.5,1250 Narwhal,3,1,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,1,1,2,1,3,M,V,50,15,CO,3,10000 Nile Crocodile,1,3,3,1,1,1,2,3,0,2,3,1,3,1,S,LR,40,15,AF,1.5,3000 Nile Monitor,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,3,0,2,1,1,1,3,S,LR,40,15,AF,1.5,3000 Okapi,1,3,3,1,2,1,0,3,1,2,3,2,3,2,N,LR,70,15,AF,2,5500 Orangutan,2,3,3,3,3,2,0,3,2,3,3,3,3,3,N,E,50,5,AS,4.5,35000 Orca,3,0,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,1,2,3,1,3,T,LR,90,20,CO,5,50000 Ostrich,1,3,3,0,1,1,1,3,2,2,3,1,3,1,N,LR,50,5,AF,2,5500 Pacific Walrus,3,1,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,1,1,2,1,3,T,V,80,20,AR,4.5,35000 Polar Bear,1,3,3,2,2,1,3,0,1,1,3,1,3,3,S,LR,80,20,AR,3,10000 Protarchaeopteryx,1,3,3,1,1,2,2,3,0,2,3,2,3,2,N,X,60,30,AS,1,5500 Przewalski's Wild Horse,0,3,3,2,2,2,3,3,3,2,3,2,3,2,N,C,50,5,AS,3,10000 Pygmy Hippopotamus,2,1,1,3,3,2,0,3,1,3,1,3,1,3,S,C,70,20,AF,4,20000 Quagga,1,3,3,0,1,1,1,3,2,2,3,1,3,1,N,X,50,5,AF,1.5,3000 Ratel,0,1,1,0,1,2,3,3,2,1,1,2,1,3,N,LR,50,5,AF,2,5500 Red Kangaroo,2,3,3,2,0,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,N,LR,70,5,AU,2,3000 Red Panda,2,3,3,3,3,0,3,3,3,2,3,2,3,3,N,E,50,5,AS,4,20000 Reticulated Giraffe,1,3,3,0,1,1,2,3,2,2,3,2,3,1,N,LR,50,10,AF,2.5,7500 Ring Tailed Lemur,1,3,3,1,2,1,0,2,1,3,3,2,3,3,N,V,50,5,AF,3,10000 Rockhopper Penguin,1,2,3,1,2,3,3,1,3,1,1,2,0,3,M,V,50,5,AN,2,5500 Saber-toothed Cat,1,3,3,3,3,1,3,1,3,1,3,0,3,3,S,X,50,15,NA,4,20000 Scalloped Hammerhead,2,0,1,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,2,3,1,2,M,LR,75,15,WO,3,15000 Scimitar Horned Oryx,2,3,3,2,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,N,C,70,10,AF,1,2000 Sea Otter,2,1,2,2,2,3,3,0,2,2,1,2,0,3,T,E,30,15,NA,2.5,7500 Secretary Bird,0,1,1,1,1,2,3,3,2,1,1,2,1,2,N,LR,65,30,AF,3,10000 Short Faced Bear,1,3,3,2,2,1,3,0,2,1,3,1,3,3,S,X,80,20,NA,4,45000 Short Finned Pilot Whale,2,0,1,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,1,2,T,LR,50,15,WO,2,5500 Sivatherium,2,1,1,0,2,3,3,3,3,3,1,3,1,3,N,X,100,30,AF,1,5500 Snow Leopard,2,3,3,3,3,2,3,3,3,0,3,2,3,3,S,E,80,25,AS,4,20000 Spanish Lynx,2,3,3,3,3,0,3,3,3,2,3,2,3,3,S,C,70,20,EU,3.5,15000 Spectacled Bear,1,3,3,3,3,0,3,3,3,1,3,1,3,3,S,V,80,20,SA,4,20000 Stegosaurus,1,3,3,3,3,1,3,1,3,1,3,0,3,3,N,X,120,25,NA,4,45000 Stokesosaurus,1,3,3,3,3,1,3,1,3,1,3,0,3,3,N,X,145,20,NA,1.5,7500 Striped Hyena,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,3,2,2,1,1,1,0,S,LR,30,10,AF,4,20000 Styracosaurus,2,1,1,3,3,2,0,3,3,3,1,3,1,3,S,X,90,10,NA,1,5500 Thomsons Gazelle,1,3,3,0,1,1,2,3,2,2,3,1,2,1,N,LR,40,10,AF,0.5,1250 Thylacine,1,3,3,2,2,0,3,1,3,3,3,2,3,3,S,X,50,15,AU,3,20000 T-Rex,2,1,1,3,3,2,0,3,3,3,1,3,1,3,N,X,150,20,NA,5,80000 Triceratops,1,1,1,2,2,1,2,3,3,2,1,0,1,3,S,X,90,10,NA,4,45000 Utahraptor,1,3,3,3,3,1,3,1,3,1,3,0,3,3,N,X,90,30,NA,4.5,60000 Velociraptor,3,3,3,1,1,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,N,X,45,5,AS,0.5,3000 Warrah,0,3,3,1,1,2,3,3,2,3,3,2,3,3,S,X,45,10,SA,2.5,15000 Warthog,2,1,1,0,2,3,3,3,3,3,1,3,1,3,S,LR,60,10,AF,3,10000 West Indian Manatee,1,1,1,2,2,3,3,3,0,2,1,2,0,3,M,V,80,20,WO,1.5,3000 Whale Shark,2,1,1,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,2,2,M,V,100,25,WO,4.5,35000 White Rhinoceros,2,1,1,2,0,3,3,3,3,3,1,3,1,2,S,LR,80,20,AF,2.5,7500 White Shark,2,1,0,2,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,1,2,M,V,75,25,WO,5,45000 Wildebeest,2,1,1,0,2,3,3,3,3,3,1,3,1,2,S,LR,40,10,AF,1.5,3000 Wolverine,1,3,3,2,2,1,2,1,1,1,3,0,3,3,S,V,50,5,NA,3,10000 Woolly Rhinoceros,3,3,3,3,3,3,3,0,3,1,3,1,3,3,S,X,90,20,EA,3.5,35000 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ IX. APPENDIX B: LIST OF BUILDINGS/OBJECTS/ETC (To come in a much, much later release. this list will take a long time create) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ X. APPENDIX c: MY PHOTO POSTING GUIDE I thought it best to create a little tutorial for all those people out there who want to know how to post pics on forums. This guide is not the only way to post pics and I am sure that there are plenty of people out there who do things differently, but, I am the one writing the FAQ and this is how I do it. Step 1: Take the Picture! there are many ways to capture a screen shot. the obvious way is to use the in game photo feature. this however has its drawbacks such as not being able to take an overview shot and not being able to take pictures of in game charts and graphs (which people like to do for various reasons). another drawback is that the in game pics you take are notoriously difficult to find outside of the game. some people have said that it is in your profile folder, but, no one seems to know where this profile folder is. I went searching for mine and came up empty handed... The best way to take screenshots is to use third party screen capture software. there are many programs which will accomplish this task but I use FRAPS which is a great free piece of software which will also take short videos and even display your current frames per second (which is great for on line games). to get your free version of FRAPS go to: http://www.fraps.com/download.php and follow the instructions to download and install. while you are playing the game FRAPS runs quitely in the background until you press the magic button (my settings have F7 as the pic button, your settings can be set as per the sites instructions). Step 2: Prepare the Pic! Now that you have captured your wonderful moment in time you have to prepare the pic. most forums have restrictions about picture type, size, shape, and dimensions so it is good to get into the habit of preparing your pics for forums. before you can prepare your pic you must find it. if you use FRAPS your pic will be located neatly in the FRAPS directory (where ever you installed it to). however, if you are using the free version it will be created as a .bmp file. .bmp files are notoriously large and the pic itself will be of rather large resolution which is good because it will have the best detail. however, we need to make the pic forum worthy before we move on. the next piece of software you will need is a picture editing program. I use IrfanView (dont ask what the name means, I have no idea) which is available free at this site: http://www.irfanview.com again follow the directions to download and install. you could also use photoshop or any other photo editing software if you already have it. what we need to do is to first make the picture 800x600 pixels in dimensions. with IrfanView you will load your pic and then select Image-resize/reshape and select the radio button for 800x600 and select OK. don't worry about the other stuff unless you know what you are doing or want to experiment. then select file-save as-save as type JPG (at the bottom) then name your file something easy to remember and click save. now you should have a .jpg file of your pic which is 800x600 pixels in size and less than 1MB. Step 3: Hosting the Pic! now that you have a forum ready pic you need to find an image hosting website. there are many out there but only two that I would trust; Imageshack.us and Photobucket. I use Imageshack.us (do not go to Imageshack.com that is a completely different website about cameras). One of the reasons we reduced the size of the pic and the file type was to reduce the memory size of the file. Imageshack will not host pics which are larger than 1.5 MB. a jpg image is very compressed and most of your images if done using the steps above should never be more than 1MB. for imageshack.us go to: http://www.imageshack.us/ and register yourself a free account. with this account you will be able to host unlimited numbers of images for an indefinite period of time. I have over 500 pics hosted on imageshack that date back to 2005 with no problems to report. when you start out, you should be in "Modern View". in modern view you should see a thumnails of your pics on the left hand side with small icons/buttons next to them. on the right hand side there will be a box that says "*Action", below that "My Tags" and below that "Calendar". if you are in "classic view" you will see thumbnails of your pics on the left followed by 6 text boxes containing various forms of url on the right. the top of the page will be image tools and image uploader. I prefer the modern view but to each their own i guess. Step 4: Posting the Pic! once you have your pic uploaded to an offsite hosting center it is now time to post it to the forums. first we should discuss forum picture posting etiquette. when you are posting pics it can be hard to remember that many people still do not have highspeed internet connections. each picture in a thread reduces the ability of the reader to load the thread and could cause problems for many people. also remember that if you post a pic then the person after you may quote you which will post the pic again and if that person is quoted your pic will be posted three times. this gets even worse if those other people also post pics or if you posted more than 1 pic. the best thing to do to keep a thread readable and easily accessible is to not post an image directly to the thread but instead post a link to the image so that people can click on the link and download it seperatly from the thread at their own leisure. this also lets people open the thread quickly and skip images they have already seen. of course it is up to you as to how you post your pics, but, remember this is a public forum and you should be mindful of others. yes I am guilty of posting images directly on forums, but, we all make mistakes. I am trying to post links more often though. with that said: For imageshack.us users: In Modern View: click on your pics thumbnail or all the pics you want to post to the forum and then select "get code for email" under "*Action". this will give you a set of URLs you can then cut and paste into the topic. DO NOT use the Get code for Forums or Get Code for Websites as this will give you a ton of extra stuff which will make things more complicated then they need to be. you can experiment if you like of course. In Classic View: Copy and Paste the URL offered in the 3rd (Friends link) or 6th (Direct link) text box for the picture you want to display. they both start with "http:..." either one will work, you can experiment and see which you like better. at this point I suggest at least downloading the free stuff and playing around with things. you can learn a lot by experimenting. I have been using these programs for years with no ill effects. however, always be mindful when downloading from the internet and make sure to ask permission from others if you are sharing the computer at home. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Soldyne@yahoo.com Copyright all rights reserved If you don't beleive me then check out the Copyright Act of 1976 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Copyright_Act_of_1976 Version 1.00 November 2007