(Just to note, whenever I mention 'we' in this guide, I'm referring to myself and other Discord users who contribute to figuring stuff out ^.^)

Mostly speculation, but these are what we think the various icons visitors display over their heads mean. While some of them are self-explanatory, some are best guesses based on the icon image and what the visitor is doing at the time. The queue ones, in particular, are 'best guesses'.


Note that the 'bad' effects from things like too much caffeine/sugar/heat in your foods haven't been implemented yet, so you can crank up that heat level without having to worry about giving your guests heart attacks - for now!

This is again largely theorycrafting but it's how a bunch of us have experienced this working, so it's a'best guess'.


If you see a building or staff member at 100%, it means (we think) that they're operating at maximum capacity, and you should probably consider hiring more staff or building additional buildings in order to ease their load. Staff at 100% utilization seem to lose work ethic more quickly.

Rosia has about as much work ethic as I'd expect for someone who gets bombarded by people every day

The Population Manager will, once a day at the beginning of every day, visit any of their zoned enclosures that are crowded, and auto-donate excess animals, from oldest to youngest, until that enclosure is back within acceptable space limits. Note that they will only do this at the start of the day, so any enclosures that become crowded on a Tuesday will be dealt with on the following Wednesday morning.

The Population Manager's means of operation also conveniently solves the problem of your elderly animals dying in your zoo and your visitors yelling at you for *daring* to 'let' the ancient decrepit animal die, you monster.


Your population manager building needs to be enabled, and enclosures need to be zoned. You'll also need to make sure your enclosure is sized appropriately to the number of animals you want to keep in that enclosure.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18_uj01QFNKTAFSZx73BNu31_2VF1XqQkJ8lgjAxodTk/edit?usp=sharing

This is to accompany the population manager, since that building relies on having accurate enclosure sizes specific to the number of animals you want to keep in that enclosure.


To use it, just change the number in the '# of animals' column, and the 'Space Required' number will update to show you how many squares big your enclosure needs to be in order to comfortably house that many animals.

There are two Sandbox modes available; the 'in-universe' mode that is in keeping with the narration of the game, and the 'cheat mode' version.

NON-CHEAT SANDBOX:


Open your world map, and click the blue Transport icon top-left.


You'll see a second zoo available on the map, and at the top, the amount of 'Investment Funds' you have. You get $1 of Investment Funds for every $1000 you accrue in your normal zoo (cumulatively - not how much money you have in your account at any one time).

It costs $2500 Investment Funds to buy the sandbox zoo. After purchasing and selecting to travel there, you'll play out the rest of your day in your normal mode zoo, and at the end of the day after the game has saved, a super cute little aeroplane will fly you over to your new sandbox zoo.

This non-cheat sandbox zoo has everything you've researched, and all animals from zoo transfers you've unlocked, from your main zoo. Anything you have NOT unlocked on your main zoo will NOT be included in your sandbox zoo, but WILL unlock there once you research it in your main zoo.

Note that you will not be able to research, or unlock new zoo animal transfers from your sandbox mode zoo, so to progress with any unfinished research/animal transfers you'll have to go back to your normal-mode zoo.

CHEAT MODE SANDBOX:

See this video from Springloaded on how to enable cheat-mode sandbox;


Cheat-mode sandbox has everything available from the get-go without needing to research anything.

A few of us have experienced problems with janitor zoning where at some point they'll start struggling and trash will start to pile up.

We've found that disabling janitor zoning, and letting your janitors run wild and free as nature intended, solves this problem.

• You should have one unzoned janitor for every plot of land you own, and pick up a couple of extra on top of that for ever few land plots you buy.
  
• One bin per sector is technically *enough*, or one normal + one recycling bin until you unlock the research upgrade that lets all of your bins function as recycling bins.
  
• If you're struggling with trash piling up, check the optimization levels of your furnace / recycling plant. If they're close to 100%, they're almost at capacity, so build more.

Just a quick tip on this. Always have the biggest busses you can afford running your routes, and *replace* the small busses with big ones, taking the small ones out of service. The small busses actually hold up your big ones, which results in your visitors getting dropped off more slowly, which in turn results in less money for you as there are fewer visitors coming through your gates.

It's also worth keeping an eye on your trash levels too and burning/recycling as much trash as you can, because the garbage collection trucks similarly hold up the busses.

Posting this just as a bonus; occasionally people ask for easy-to-manage grid-based zoo layouts, so here's how I do mine.

Each sector of land is completely enclosed - this means that subways are essential, but that in turn means that your visitors will spend less time walking, and thus have more energy to spend in your zoo.


So, each sector has a subway, a toilet, a water pump, a rubbish bin, and a bench, This covers the basics. You can then split your enclosures into four corner enclosures for animals with small space requirements, two half-size enclosures for the bigger animals, and one wrap-around three-quarters enclosure for the biggest animals.


It's MUCH easier to lay the paths down first and then build the enclosures in the empty space around the path. I usually set the tile brush to 3x3 (with the + key) and draw the basic cross;


Then drop back down to a 1x1 brush size and fill in the middle bit;


Then it's easy to use the path as a guideline for your enclosure;


As you research more decorations and your decoration bonuses kick in, you'll have plenty of room to get 100% lighting and decor per zone, including the decorations placed inside your enclosures.

For 100% lighting, I place two either side of the subway and toilet entrance for four lights, four around the bigger middle bit, and one in the very middle.


Note that some lights give off a higher percentage of illumination, like the glowing winter ice statues, so you may not need as many lights in your sector ^.^

A bonus of using this design is that it's *very* easy to move enclosures, since they all follow the same basic construction layout. This makes it easy to start arranging your enclosures by type (like grouping all the arctic enclosures together) when you unlock new species.