Great Caldera Safari Tips?

[NordicNugz]

Can anyone give me some advice on the Great Caldera Safari zoo in the career? I'm having a hell of a time with it. I managed to last 8 years on my first try before I went into the negative. My second try, I went in with a Battle Plan!!! ... only lasted 3 years. lol

I'm really only having financial issues. So far, I haven't been having disease issues like i've been reading about online. I've managed to get up to silver star, but can't last long enough to get that gold.

Any advice would be amazing! Thanks!

[Noctriun]

Hey, I'll just tell you what helped me a lot to complete this mission :
Water filters are a bit buggy here so to avoid your animals to drink dirty water, You can just move the animals that are with the elephants (i think its zebras but i cant remember sorry) to the other enclosure with the giraffes. The elephants are the only ones that need a water body in their enclosure so they will be the only ones polluting it if they are alone.
Once that is done, make sure to build fences in the giraffe enclose to block any access to the lake so your animals cant get sick ! And happy animals make happy visitors which donate happy educated money :D
That what worked for me, I cant remember having other problems with the rest of the missions, build your cheetah and lion pens where you have space etc. It should be fine !

[XrystalBelle]

What I recall of my time playing this scenario split up into 2 segments .. Try and identify where you went wrong each time and how you can stop it the next time round. That helped me in every scenario with at least 3 failed attempts on each one ( apart from the tutorial of course ) Good Luck.

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The basic end result ..
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I ended up at a 20k loss after 11 years but managed to hit my maximum visitor count of 2800 in time to get gold. But my previous attempts resulting in money loss before I was ready to lose money. The loss is likely due to the last minute marketing campaign to get more visitors into the zoo.

Visitor happiness was at 68% and staff happiness at 98% and animal welfare at 4 stars.

I also put $0.50 price on the ATMs. I don't recall adding any stores at all, especially not in the new area I had set up in the end. But I did utilise all the exhibit space and filled them with breeding pairs and used them to keep the money coming in while I worked on the rest of the requirements.

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The details as I remember it, some of it may be faulty memory.
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The first thing I did was correct the habitats to suit their animals. I moved the zebras into the giraffe habitat as they get a welfare boost then. Leaving the elephants on their own. This included making sure the minimal sex ratio was applied as well.

I then made sure that the staff had work groups and the right buildings to work with. I didn't raise their training either. At least not until I was making enough profit to cover the rise in wages. Not all were trained, mainly those working in the big habitats handling more work.

You want to boost the education and conservation points too. I think solar panels are available from the get go but if not research power stations straight away as replacing as much of those generators with solar panels will help boost that conservation score.

Get the cheetahs and lions when you are able to and start on their enclosures in the available area when funds permit. You want these set up near to where you plan to place a 4x4 vehicle station. Even if you haven't got the animals yet plan their habitats to fit that vehicle ride so that they can go through the habitat.

Make sure you have enough breedable animals as you need to breed at least 8 species for gold.


The main problem I noticed ( pre patch 1.0.3 so may be less problematic now ) is that the water was almost constantly bad for the animals and I was repeatedly sending them off in their droves to the vet.

I used the opposite area of the lake to house another set of staff buildings for the new habitats and 4x4 station and primarily to repair the solar panels/ wind turbines and water filters I placed to make sure that something was always working on the lake.

Thankfully animal/staff and visitor happiness isn't a factor for the goals but it helps to keep the visitors happy to get them to give you money. Visitors are happy if the animals are.

[NordicNugz]

I think I have a decent handle on money income now. (hopefully I don't jinx myself.) lol

I think my problem was that I was trying to play it safe. Cut out unnecessary expenditures, unneeded staff and shops; and boost money income with donation boxes. And cut down the amount of animals in the park to cut down food costs Then wait for money to rise before making any real movements to improve the park and exhibits.

This was the wrong move.

The park is not set up to be fiscally sustainable from the beginning. The sheer amount of food cost is enough to bankrupt you in 3 years.

So, I decided the best option was to make the cheetah exhibit as soon as possible before your initial money runs out. That, mixed with breeding animals like crazy and releasing them to the wild as soon as they mature, (getting a great boost for having baby animals along the way.)

So, i didn't even touch the staff and shops. The only thing I did was add in donations boxes, education boards, and atm's.

I think the dirty water thing has been patched. For me, the entire center lake has stayed clean on one filter throughout all of my play-throughs.

Thanks for taking the time to comment with tips! They are all appreciated.

[XrystalBelle]

Crossing fingers you didn't jinx yourself :) Here's hoping that you get through this fine .. psst the later ones are harder :) And I had that lake to work with rofl.

[Hyperion74]

Just finished my third try at this one. Went about $8k in the hole. I looked at the ride and it was losing money big time! No riders! Will shut them down on next try. Any ideas about getting people to ride?

[StarGirl]

Also had a hard time this one, this scenario you will suffer from a HUGE animal food costs since you are required to have lions so try and avoid buying them until the last minute when you have your habitat set up and don't need any more money. imho big animal food costs are broken right now and you just have to work around it. while you're still earning money save up a bunch to last you through a few years.

remove the water inside the underground track by the elephant and zebra exhibit by adding more water first then right clicking it out

don't keep staff rooms and utility buildings near guests if you can avoid it, it lowers happiness and will cost you thousands of dollars in refunds (also something devs said they are looking at)
if you use the areas they kind of set up for you... one of the lakes will be contaminated and you will need to place a water treatment.

sell/release all male animals except one and keep your populations managed to one alpha male and maybe a few females (all best appeal rating you can afford) i think the hyenas and wild dogs are an exception - one each gender. some water buffalo are cheap and add extra appeal to attract higher attendance

dont forget to increase your ticket entry price as you add more animals. spend the money on marketing while your zoo is still profitable and hopefully by the time you decide to add the lions it will be your last objective. once your add the lions and they start breeding your income will tank and you won't have much wiggle room except hope the lions breeding will create enough appeal to grab your attendance objective.

[NordicNugz]

Originally posted by Hyperion74:

Just finished my third try at this one. Went about $8k in the hole. I looked at the ride and it was losing money big time! No riders! Will shut them down on next try. Any ideas about getting people to ride?

Yeah man, I finished the track just to get the achievment, then immediatly turned the ride off.

Another tip is to set up 5 to 6 ATM's evenly throughout your park. Then Raise the price on the atm's to $0.50 per transaction (turning on the sync for all ATM's.) I also turn the price for the bathrooms up to about $0.40. These don't Make a huge difference, but at least these facilities won't be costing you money anymore.

The main issue with this scenario is that there is not enough education or donation boxes. Also, not enough animal attraction. So let me set up a strategy for you to try.

1 pause the game and keep it paused until noted.
2. Go to the animal list and put astricks next to all the default animal names. (ex: ***Mr.Elephant name.) (I do this on every map that already has animals. It allows you to let your animals breed, and keep track of baby animals. The moment these animals mature, release them to the wild. Babies are really important to this scenario. They really help with your animal appeal. But you have to be careful not to let them go unchecked after they mature, because they can cause havoc with your animal welfare and food costs.) Any mature animal that doesn't have an astericks I know wasn't a default animal and was bred, and needs to go.
3. Set up 5 to 6 ATM's throughout the park, Change their price to $0.50 and turn on the sync.
4. Change the bathroom price to $0.40 and turn on the Sync.
5. Set up educational boards, education speakers and donation boxes along all viewing areas of habitats. There's a LOT of viewing area to work with. (note: my spacing rule of thumb is to set out an educational speaker, and a donation box right next to it, then have education boards just on the outside of the audible distance for the speaker, and chain that along the viewing areas.)
6. Set up the Conservation educational boards around the park in places that seem natural and make sense. I probably put up around 10 or so.
7. There is one exhibit already set up, that doesnt have any exhibit information or donation boxes. Set that exhibit up with the two and then set up another exhibit in the same area with a full set up. Pick the Exhibit animal that has the highest animal rating.

At this point, I'd make a save and keep it as a backup to start from. If you go belly up again, at least you can start from a good point instead of all the way over.

8. You may now unpause the game. If you've set up the educational boards correctly, your education should bounce up higher than what you even need for the gold achievement. (honestly, those are the easiest achievements.)
9. Take some time to increase the preexisting animals welfare within the bounds of what you have available. You won't be able to get some of the enrichment needs 100% without research, but try your best, and don't wait for research yet. Also take this time to get your animals gender ratios correct. 1 male, and the rest female. (The African wild dog is completely backwards.)
10. If you get set up correctly to this point, you will still go bankrupt. That's because, other than the elephants, you don't have anything with any real attraction value. So it's critical that you get your cheetah habitat up and running with the two while you still have most of your starting money. After I set up a cheetah habitat correctly, I actually really started to make some profit.
11. Now that you should be making profit, you can complete the ride. Honestly, I think i just hit auto complete, and the turned the ride off. lol I never turned it back on again.
12 The only other animals I added after this were about 3 hippos and the lions that you need. but I also had several babies of each species. I didn't fire any staff, I only hired Keepers, 1 for each habitat I made; and i think a couple of mechanics. I did, however, go through and made sure all staff were set up with workzones. Especially your vendors. If they aren't set up correctly, you'll have shops with no vendors.

I failed this scenario 3 times, and finally managed to get gold star on my 4th try. And this was my winning strategy. I hope it helps you, or at least gives you some ideas to work with.

Let me know how it goes!

[Metasploit]

@ NordicNugz I tried countless times and kept missing gold by one or two challenges. I worked through your walkthrough and ended up coming out on top. In fact, I was making money! Almost hit $80k before I reached gold.
Just wanted to say thank you!

[grampers62]

My best tips are to get plan to have the safari tour go through the new habitats. The more variety of creatures guests see the more they will ride and pay to ride. Then get the cats into the park as quickly as possible. Those big attraction animals will lure in more guests fairly quick. After that it becomes all just managing the zoo and good use of education tools, especially speakers. Don't waste credits on adding to many extras either, stay focused on the final tasks.

[Simlish]

This worked like a charm.
There was a moment when there were no lions in the market and I had to wait. I was so worried that I was going to run out of money while waiting but I ended up with over 100k by the time they were available.
Amazing walkthrough.

[aiko25]

One of the things I did on to of all the stated comments:
Increase ticket price to $30
When starting adventure tour, raise to maximum price of $30
Adopt more species that can go well with springbok and giraffe/ elephant & zebras. so you dont have to build extra habitats

I went into negative for a while, but after that I got into the positive.