Challenge Mode - UK - Jurassic Difficulty start

This guide has a good build order to help get you through the very difficult start of this level, where you start with no money. There are also some general tips later on for Jurassic difficulty in general.

1 - Overview

UK is challenging on Jurassic Difficulty for a bunch of reasons. Storms, disease, small building space to name a few. But the biggest obstacle is starting with zero dollars and almost nothing researched. In fact, the only building you have to start with is a response center!

The remnants of the old park lay in disrepair, and you can choose to either repair some of it or sell for cash. What you repair vs sell is critical to the start. In addition, there are 4 species of dinosaur that roam the island, that are also crucial to the success of your starting park.

The first several minutes are critical to success, if your balance goes negative too long, you will get a gameover.

This is a tricky start that requires a *little* bit of RNG, so don't be frustrated if you have to restart a few times. I was able to get the park started successfully on my second try.

2 - Immediate Action Items

Here is a list of things to focus on immediately. Don't forget that R is the hotkey for the rangers. You have to move fast.

• Skip the intro. It runs in real time and you are draining money.
  
  
• Immediately launch the capture team and turn to the right, and take a photo of the two Nigersaurus. This cash will get you started. While you are flying, you can keep going to the other park area and take a photo of the Baryonyx for even more money. Take multiple photos, until you feel that the repetition penalty isn't worth your time.
  
  
  
  
  
• Repair the Command Center next. You cannot manage your staff until you do so.
  
  
• Check your staff. You need a logistics skill of 2 to proceed at a decent monthly rate. If you do not have this to start, restart. Unfortunately, starting staff skills are random and can make or break the run. If you are not a fan of restarting, you CAN fire the staff instead and hire someone else later. While you have NO staff right now, you will have ZERO expenses, which gives you breathing room to take more photographs for money.
  
  In short, find someone with 2 Logistics for less than 10k a month. Altruistic salary is the best trait to start with if you can find one.
  
  
• Sell the hatchery to the north and all the fencing. You won't need one for a long time.
  
  
• Tranq and sell the Baryonyx. It is tempting to keep but you won't have access to its feeder for a long time, so you'll be dealing with a pissed off Baryonyx very early on. You CAN choose to keep it around longer for photos, but I felt the cash was worth it early on.
  
  
• Photograph and then tranq / sell the Draocorex to your left. There are a bunch of them. Again it may be tempting to keep them, and there probably is a good build order that can keep them, but I needed the money.
  
  
• Try to do all the ranger work by hand to not consume fuel.

At this point, you should have a decent amount of money on hand and are not in serious danger of immediate bankruptcy... yet.

3 - Setting Up Your Park

Now is the part where the build order becomes critical. One wrong investment and you likely will run into a wall and not be able to proceed. Here is what I did, that worked well.

• Repair the small rectangular enclosure next to your entrance.
  
  
• Repair the viewing gallery on the larger enclosure north of you. Once it is repaired, move it to the small enclosure you just repaired. (You cannot build them yourself yet)
  
  
• Repair the starting generator. If you are very lucky, you will get an event early on during a repair that will give you free repairs of all buildings on the island. I got this once on both of my starts, at different times. It will save you a big chunk of change, especially on the generator. If not, you can still continue with photo income. Don't repair the generator by the old incubator yet.
  
  
• Periodically take more photos for money. There is a group of small carnivores to the far north you can photograph too.
  
  
• Tranq the Nigersaurus' and place them in the starting enclosure. Make them comfortable etc. You now have dinosaurs with a viewing gallery, so you should be generating income!
  
  
• Repair the shop if you wish but deactivate it until you can get at least 100 guests in it to break even.
  
  
• Save for and build the science center. Once built, immediately research core guest comfort buildings (Hotel, shelter, etc). This is where my first run ended, I focused on other things. You NEED this ASAP.
  
  
• Build a hotel immediately next to the Nigersaurus enclosure to get an appeal boost, and increase your accomodation rating.
  
  
• Around this time you should be getting contracts. Early contracts like guest comfort increases are the best. Save often, and if you get an impossible contract, highly recommend you reload because the money is critical early on.
  
  
• At this point, the two largest early threats are coming. Storms and disease. If you do not have a shelter built prior to the first storm, the lawyer fees might break you. I've found it can be about 70k a minute in expenses, which is enough to wreck your run. Build a shelter!
  
  
• Start repairing the larger enclosure above you. Tranq the Nasutos and bring them there, make them happy.
  
  
• Increase your logistics to at least 4 now. Remember, do not hire people that are expensive. 10k salary or less.
  
  
• Research the basic electric fence, then research viewing gallery.
  
  
• String down some fences from the new larger enclosure into the power bubble by your generator. This will save you from having to move your generator (Expensive) or use a second one.
  
  
• DO NOT let your generator run out of fuel. Keep a cash reserve at all times and keep it stocked. If you run out of power and don't have enough to add fuel, it's game over.
  
  
• Build a viewing gallery for the nasutos.
  
  
• Research and build a staff center, so you can rest your staff. They are probably nearing burnout at this point.
  
  
• You will probably get a disease outbreak soon, so research the Paleomedical facility when able. You cannot let your dinosaurs die, so even if you cannot research a cure yet, being able to boost their health with the ambulance is critical.
  
  
• Build a restroom if you haven't.
  
  
• At this point you should have enough appeal and guest count to support the 3 basic ammenities... food, drink, shopping. Have one of each and configure them correctly. (Fountain, fossil, fish tank usually work great if you are lazy)
  
  
• Your park should be self sustaining now! The hard part is over! Build a powerplant once you think that the cost per minute increase is worth it from having to restock the generator.
  
  

4 - Expanding Your Park

If you are playing on Jurassic difficulty, you should generally know what to do next. A lot of this part probably applies to most Jurassic difficulty levels.

The par time is very long, 11 hours. If are trying to beat par, you shouldn't need to worry at all. Take your time, do not over expand.

• Dealing with storms
  
  I only had one tornado my entire 5 hour run, but lots of extremely damaging regular storms. Early on with little money, focus on fixing fences first. Every storm you are better off driving the rangers by hand to quickly fix everything. This level really sucks for pathing for your rangers, especially as your park expands.
  
  Open the shelter IMMEDIATELY before a storm even starts to avoid the most lawyer fees.
  
  
• Expanding staff
  
  Continue to only hire cheap staff. Altruistic salary should always catch your eye. Other extremely useful early game perks are cheaper research and cheaper expedition. You will also occasionally find logistics expert / genetic expert etc that has a very cheap salary. Good grabs.
  
  Make it a habit of keeping one slot open in hiring so you can check who is available, and once you are given the monthly review, check to see what new staff are available. It refreshes monthly.
  
  Make sure you hire a decent dedicated doctor quickly. You will need someone with decent welfare skill to help research all the treatments you will need. Don't be afraid to fire staff that you determine are less than ideal. You have to min-max early on.
  
  
• Dealing with disease
  
  You should already have a medical facility, if not build one ASAP. Build a quarantine pen somewhere. Doesn't have to be big. If a dinosaur comes down with common cold, tranq them and move them to the quarantine pen to contain it before it spreads, since it's untreatable. Pneumonia develops from the cold and it's a pain to deal with when it spreads to an entire enclosure.
  
  Be ready to research treatments for avian pox, salmonella, e coli, etc. All of these are very common outbreaks.
  
  
• Make the most of the small space
  
  Mixed exhibits is key. I put 2 Kentrasaurus with the Nigersaurus, and a bunch of Gallimimus with the Nasutos, since they shared a lot of the same area. Make a large enclosure for Sauropods, and make about 5-6 Apatosaurus when you can afford them. I also made a small Ceratosaurus enclosure, and fit 4 of them in there comfortably.
  
  Remember to avoid fights with carnivore exhibits, make sure there is a dedicated alpha. If you make a batch of 2 Ceratos for example and both are aggressive, they will both have the same dominance and fight over and over. Ideally you want 1 aggressive dinosaur (Or social) and the rest without that.
  
  If they do start fighting, don't just sit there and pay the expenses to fix them up over and over, just sell the troublemakers and try to fix the problem. I see a lot of people complaining that paying for medical expenses is bankrupting them.
  
  

5 - Winning Your Park

How you expand from here is up to you, but if you keep a heavy cash reserve on hand (Never less than 1 million) and take your time expanding, it's hard to lose. I personally made a large lagoon and spammed ten of the swordfish things that I forget the name of, built a large exhibit of 4 Baryonyx, one exhibit of 3 Carnotaurus and 8+ Compies, and was working on a Gigantosaurus exhibit when I achieved 5 stars.

• Why is my star rating not going up?
  
  Star rating is simply raw income per minute. You must earn more money.
  
  
• How do I earn more money?
  
  Entirely by selling more overpriced vegan burgers and keychains. And guest ticket sales. Make sure you place all 3 main amenities near all your viewing attractions. Don't build a new one if it can't sustain at least 150+ guests.
  
  Small amenities earn more money than larger ones, but take up more space (to build multiple)
  
  
• How do I increase guest count?
  
  Guest count is ultimately driven by your park appeal + guest comfort + dino welfare. If guest comfort and dino welfare are not near 100%, you will have less guests in your park than you should, and you will be making less than you should. You can check all these numbers on the park management screen.
  
  If they are near 100%, then to increase guest count you just need to increase appeal, which means more dinosaurs. (Or attractions, but I feel that attractions suck for how big of space they take up).
  
  Also, make sure you use wider paths when you have them researched. Path capacity is also a bottleneck for guest count.

Here are my end game stats and final park. I hope this guide helps some of you! I really am enjoying challenge mode in this game -- it is far more difficult and sensible than Evolution 1 IMO, and doesn't just devolve into a race to spamming Sauropods.

Please leave a comment if you feel I am missing anything or something didn't work for you. This is the first guide I've ever written, so feedback is appreciated!

[Sarsgamer]

I feel like challenges may be easier nowadays. Half way through step 3 and at 17 minutes into the play and at 74k profit even with a single staff pay of almost 30k (he's 6 logistics specialist so didn't want to get rid of him) and with 550k balance. Now I need to expand quickly cause my paths aren't enough to hold any more guests, I'm bascialy getting half the guests that I could be getting.

[brad7611]

your a genious

[grape muncher gaming]

my brain hurts

[revanravenstar]

I photo the celo and Bary and sell them. Any herbies Im keeping

[Slowpokeking]

Thanks for the guide! I sold most of the Baryonyx and most of the Draocorex to get started, the rest of it was ok. Gonna Save/load to make sure the storm don't do too much damage.

Only NW USA left.

[nyaos]

Thanks for all the comments guys. I really enjoyed this challenge, it made me think a lot more about how to build the park. I hope they add more challenges in the future that really flex your knowledge of the game. I'm enjoying reading the other build orders you are all sharing!

[Shouting at Clouds]

Great guide - thanks!

I’m playing this map now and steps 1-3 were really helpful, especially the part about repairing the viewing gallery and then transferring it to a different paddock.

I’ve done things slightly different to you - rather than putting the Nasutos in the second paddock, I researched basic fences a bit earlier, expanded the Nigersaurus paddock and put the Nasutos in with them. I also managed to round up the Dracorexes and put them in there too, although it was a close call getting my medical facilities up and running in time.

Having a single, high appeal (for the early game) paddock has been helpful in giving me a nice compact park and a decent early game income to chew through the early tech tree.

All down to this guide in the end though - thanks again!

[FatherMC]

Thanks for this.
now I can conquer the british

[MasterKroket]

Let me see who i 'used'. ( i DID read part 3 not 4-5)
I went with the same 2 dinosaurs. Also eventually gave the coelophysis a small habitat south of the niger / north of the staff / east of the monorail. They dont need a lot of space.
I went with a kentro / olorotitan combo east of nigersaurus cause they share the same foliage needs.. Then to the north east carnotaurus. 300 appeal large habitat i got 4 of em and could have added more / would have if i needed a bumb at the end. Later added compys there for the 13 dinosaur goal. Northwest i had Nodosaurus / Homolocephale ( i was also looking at which species i still had to unlock / hadnt used ) Another good combo.

then on the second area i build ichtyosaurus and to the right i got ourano and chungkinosaur again 2 i didnt have yet and go well together.

In the 3rd area towards the very back i got a baryonyx habitat. Finally in the larger area there i got a tylosaurus which send me towards the appeal goal and the victory.

[MasterKroket]

Thanks! Very useful! I am sure there is various ways to do it but this one worked well.
first run i had to restart cause of bad logistics, 2nd run i got a cheap research 2 star one for 7250.
I never read part 3-5 of your walkthrough i felt i could get by after that start just find and sure enough: after the initial start it was smooth sailing and way easier than the first two missions for me finishing at 07:21 with 16M in the bank.