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RageofMars
04-23-11, 04:47 PM
Hello everyone,

Here are some discoveries I've made in the first few days of playing Zoo Story, and I'd like to share it with you all. Now, these are just observations and conclusions I've drawn on my own, therefore I can't call it a Guide. If they are incorrect, unclear, or need more elaboration, please let me know.


Energy Problems

For those of you that are experiencing energy problems. There is a simple solution: just simply make more neighbors. You get +2 energy and +2 experience when you visit your neighbor daily. (+1 energy and +1 experience at first in the lower levels.) If you make 50 friends, that's 100 energy extra you can have a day, which should be plentiful to do all the tasks you would need to harvest crops, constructing buildings, and cashing out on animals/buildings.

Unfortunately, like all TeamLava games, this is a social game. You will need to spend some time acquiring ID's, befriending neighbors, and visiting them to benefit from "almost limitless" energy daily.

Energy Regeneration

Also, another thing to know is that you get +1 energy every 3 minutes. (It was 4/5 minutes at first, then 2 minutes yesterday, and now updated to 3 minutes today)


Crop Allowance

There is a 10,000 crop unit limit. (Source: Thread: 5000 crops limited? (http://forums.teamlava.com/showthread.php?11184-5000-crops-limited))


Profit of Animals

As some of you have discovered, if you play more often than casually, you may run into a problem where you never seem to grow enough food to feed your animals. So, this is where choosing which animals to feed and profit from will get the most return from energy and food invested.

Below I've drafted two charts. One is profit per food cost without the animal being tended and the second chart is where the animal is tended (i.e. tipped/cleaned by visitors, +20 coin bonus).

Animals NOT Tended
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/1171/zsanimals01.jpg

Animals Tended by Visitors
http://img41.imageshack.us/img41/5822/zsanimals02.jpg

The conclusion: As of 4/24/11, the toured bonus have been changed to +20 coins (down from +100 coins), making the toured bonus not as much of a factor in collecting from animals anymore.


Breeding

You can now have more than 4 animals of one type. (Source: Thread: Anyone having trouble breeding animals today? (http://forums.teamlava.com/showthread.php?11164-Anyone-having-trouble-breeding-animals-today))

Animals bought with Gems may need additional Gems to breed. (Source: Thread: Cant Breed my tigers! (http://forums.teamlava.com/showthread.php?11193-Cant-Breed-my-tigers!))


Gifting

I've had some of the same neighbors spamming me multiple times a day asking for building parts. What they don't know is that just like all TeamLava gifting works in other games, you can only request ONE gift from each neighbor per day. This means that -

1. If you have received 20 gifts today, your building part requests will not be answered, even if your neighbors answer to them and they have not sent you a gift today yet. They'll receive a message that says, "player has received maximum number of gifts today."

2. If your neighbor has sent you a gift already, and you accepted, then that neighbor cannot answer your building part request even if you have not received all 20 gifts total. This is because you can only receive one gift per neighbor, per day, maximum 20.

3. You can decline a gift if it is not something you want (i.e. a tree, extra energy, or a building part you don't need). This will not take a count away from your 20 gifts a day limit. However, that player that sent you the gift will not be able to answer your building part request. For example, if you have 40 friends, 12 of them sent you gifts you do not want and you decline, you can still request building parts from 28 of the rest of your friends, but you will not be able to get parts from the original 12 that have already sent gifts.

4. If you have received all 20 gifts for the day, there's absolutely no point in sending building part requests to any of your neighbors anymore for the day. It'll just spam them and even if they answer, you won't get the item. Just wait for the next day.

5. When I send out building part requests to my neighbors, I split it up. For example, names A - G I sent request for Welcoming Mats, names H - M I send request for Bricks, etc. That way I only send ONE request per neighbor that day. No point in spamming them.


A suggestion to TeamLava:
Please fix building parts requests and gifting system. (Thread: Building Part request spams from Neighbors (http://forums.teamlava.com/showthread.php?11180-Building-Part-request-spams-from-Neighbors))


Thanks for reading, everyone. I hope you all find this to be useful.


Edited 4/25/11: Added information on Energy regeneration and maximum crop allowance. Changed Chart 2 to reflect the changes to Toured Bonus (+20 coins).

Rachael98
04-23-11, 04:53 PM
Hello everyone,

Here are some discoveries I've made in the first few days of playing Zoo Story, and I'd like to share it with you all. Now, these are just observations and conclusions I've drawn on my own, therefore I can't call it a Guide. If they are incorrect, unclear, or need more elaboration, please let me know.


Energy Problems

For those of you that are experiencing energy problems. There is a simple solution: just simply make more neighbors. You get +2 energy and +2 experience when you visit your neighbor daily. (+1 energy and +1 experience at first in the lower levels.) If you make 50 friends, that's 100 energy extra you can have a day, which should be plentiful to do all the tasks you would need to harvest crops, constructing attractions, and cashing out on animals/attractions.

Unfortunately, like all TeamLava games, this is a social game. You will need to spend some time acquiring ID's, befriending neighbors, and visiting them to benefit from "almost limitless" energy daily.


Profit of Animals

As some of you have discovered, if you play more often than casually, you may run into a problem where you never seem to grow enough food to feed your animals. So, this is where choosing which animals to feed and profit from will get the most return from energy and food invested.

Below I've drafted two charts. One is profit per food cost without the animal being tended and the second chart is where the animal is tended (i.e. tipped/cleaned by visitors, 100 coin bonus).

Animals NOT Tended
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/1171/zsanimals01.jpg

Animals Tended by Visitors
http://img815.imageshack.us/img815/5822/zsanimals02.jpg

The conclusion: Obviously if you have visitors frequently visiting your zoo, and you have plenty of energy, then keeping your "cheaper" animals fed is the best way to profit. The more of one type of animal you have, the margin of profit from the Tended bonus becomes narrower.

Other factors that can be related to this calculation that I did not include are:
1. How plentiful is your energy?
2. Spending energy cashing out on Attractions (Food stands, Ferris Wheel, First Aid station, etc.)
3. Energy and Tending bonus for planting and harvesting crops


Gifting

I've had some of the same neighbors spamming me multiple times a day asking for building parts. What they don't know is that just like all TeamLava gifting works in other games, you can only request ONE gift from each neighbor per day. This means that -

1. If you have received 20 gifts today, your building part requests will not be answered, even if your neighbors answer to them and they have not sent you a gift today yet. They'll receive a message that says, "player has received maximum number of gifts today."

2. If your neighbor has sent you a gift already, and you accepted, then that neighbor cannot answer your building part request even if you have not received all 20 gifts total. This is because you can only receive one gift per neighbor, per day, maximum 20.

3. You can decline a gift if it is not something you want (i.e. a tree, extra energy, or a building part you don't need). This will not take a count away from your 20 gifts a day limit. However, that player that sent you the gift will not be able to answer your building part request. For example, if you have 40 friends, 12 of them sent you gifts you do not want and you decline, you can still request building parts from 28 of the rest of your friends, but you will not be able to get parts from the original 12 that have already sent gifts.

4. If you have received all 20 gifts for the day, there's absolutely no point in sending building part requests to any of your neighbors anymore for the day. It'll just spam them and even if they answer, you won't get the item. Just wait for the next day.

5. When I send out building part requests to my neighbors, I split it up. For example, names A - G I sent request for Welcoming Mats, names H - M I send request for Bricks, etc. That way I only send ONE request per neighbor that day. No point in spamming them.


A suggestion to TeamLava:

I have been spammed by the same neighbors daily for multiple building parts several times a day.

I understand that if I reply to their request, they will receive a maximum of one gift from me per day, as any additional ones I respond to that same neighbor will only result in the message, "player has already received maximum of gifts for today", regardless of if they've reached their 20 gift cap.

Please fix it so that when a neighbor already responded to a gifting request, or have already sent a gift for the day, that their name will not show up on the list to request building parts from when a player clicks on the building that needs completion. This will limit all the spams.


Thanks for reading, everyone. I hope you all find this to be useful.

Thank you for this, it has been very useful. See you with the Senior Members soon if you keep doing great things like this.

TheFluffySlipper
04-23-11, 05:26 PM
Great work on the charts rage and some really helpful tips.

I'd like to add something I've seen a few questions about: your animal enclosure quota is raised per service added. Next to each building listed in the 'services' is a little blurb that states +1 or +2 animal. This means you can purchase that amount of seperate animal enclosures per service. You start off with 6. This applies only to the amount of enclosures because you can have numerous of the same type of animal per enclosure, but a limited amount of enclosures.

Does anyone know if there is a limit on animals per enclosure?

Rachael98
04-23-11, 05:34 PM
Great work on the charts rage and some really helpful tips.

I'd like to add something I've seen a few questions about: your animal enclosure quota is raised per service added. Next to each building listed in the 'services' is a little blurb that states +1 or +2 animal. This means you can purchase that amount of seperate animal enclosures per service. You start off with 6. This applies only to the amount of enclosures because you can have numerous of the same type of animal per enclosure, but a limited amount of enclosures.

Does anyone know if there is a limit on animals per enclosure?

As far as I can tell, even by breeding, you must pay 20s for more than 4.

sehana
04-23-11, 05:42 PM
Very informative, thanks!

RageofMars
04-23-11, 05:57 PM
Does anyone know if there is a limit on animals per enclosure?


As far as I can tell, even by breeding, you must pay 20s for more than 4.

I have not been able to reach the enclosure max yet, but according to Thread: Anyone having trouble breeding animals today? (http://forums.teamlava.com/showthread.php?11164-Anyone-having-trouble-breeding-animals-today), you can't have more than 4 per enclosure from breeding (without paying gems).

At that time if you wish to have more than 4 of one type of animal, I'm sure you can build a separate pen for them.

TheFluffySlipper
04-23-11, 06:00 PM
So two babies and two adults?

celshark
04-23-11, 08:33 PM
This is very helpful thanks, I had most of that figured out. Getting as many neighbors as you can is the key. It allows you to control your energy and your gifts better.

I just wish we could make money while not being in the game...you gotta put in some serious time in order to make lots of money.

Nice job OP

ahshan
04-24-11, 08:16 AM
Also, another thing to know is that you get +1 energy every 3 minutes. (It was 4/5 minutes at first, then 2 minutes yesterday, and now updated to 3 minutes today)

RageofMars
04-24-11, 06:27 PM
So two babies and two adults?

It seems that now you get more than 4 animals per pen via breeding. I don't know what the hard cap is yet, though.

Alasala
04-27-11, 04:02 AM
Great charts RageOfMars - however, I notice TL must have tweaked the food prices a bit... elephants are now much cheaper to feed... I notice mine have gone down from 780 for 4 elephants to 440 for 4. Quite a difference. Rhinocerous is now 95 per animal, Gila Monster is now 135 per animal. Not sure if the cash payout has changed as I'm out of food at the moment so can't feed them to find out.

RageofMars
04-28-11, 11:06 AM
Great charts RageOfMars - however, I notice TL must have tweaked the food prices a bit... elephants are now much cheaper to feed... I notice mine have gone down from 780 for 4 elephants to 440 for 4. Quite a difference. Rhinocerous is now 95 per animal, Gila Monster is now 135 per animal. Not sure if the cash payout has changed as I'm out of food at the moment so can't feed them to find out.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

Yeah, I noticed over the past two days that there's been many more small fixes. The costs to feed animals have been changed on the market to reflect what you've mentioned above, as well as some collecting timers extended. As far as I can tell right now the payout has not changed. I'll be updating the food pricing chart soon.

Elephant 195 food (15 min) -> 110 food (30 min)
Rhino 170 food (10 min) -> 95 food (30 min)
Monkey 90 food ( 5 min) -> 90 food (30 min)
Llama 130 food (10 min) -> 130 food (60 min)
Owl 35 food ( 3 min) -> 35 food (10 min)
Gila M. 215 food (15 min) -> 135 food (60 min)
Python 110 food (10 min) -> 110 food (30 min)