u/dumb_fishh

Welp, I reached a milestone in my zoo that I'm really proud of, honestly. My zoo is roughly 133 years old (as I write this) and I just crossed 1 million in the tail end of year 132. I have about 107 hours in Planet Zoo overall, with at least twenty to thirty of those hours being spent on the career mode scenarios. (this is gonna be a long and passionate ramble about my zoo lol)

This zoo that I've been tirelessly working on, was born from the idea of merging two different games in a really unique way. The idea is that, there is another game out there you've likely heard of, if not, it's called Wolfquest. I adore that game and have for years and years; so once I finally got my hands on Planet Zoo and realized they had wolves, I came up with a really fun idea. Essentially, this zoo is going to be set up as a lore place for wolves that I play in Wolfquest. If I release a wolf into the wild from this zoo, I can make that wolf in Wolfquest, and continue the story. So that's the whole reason that this zoo exists, and when I found out that planet zoo 2 was getting wildlife reserves I was SO excited, because that just leaned further into my idea.

But any who, back to this Zoo. Operating this Zoo has been a massive rollercoaster. I struggled for SO long, doing my best to figure out how to get off the ground. I started this zoo on challenging (offline) and it was hard to get it to be what it is now. I started off with Timber wolves, Red Fox, Red Deer, Arctic Fox, and Coyote. The Red Fox was giving me too many problems at first, so I put her away for a long time. Somehow managed the Arctic one okay though lol The more I spent time on my zoo, the more I realized I didn't know how to play this game in the creative sense. I hadn't quite tapped into the right mindset that I needed to be in.

I watched a lot of different youtubers and their videos for ideas; I've bought a lot of the DLC's for extra content and materials, and I've also used the workshop for pre-built things. I'm starting to branch off and build my own things, slowly but surely, I'll get better at it.

The first time I tried to remodel the zoo, I had about $200k saved up and thought it would be enough (It wasn't) and then I shut down the zoo for an insanely long time and basically screwed myself over. The second phase picture of my zoo, is after the first major remodel, after I had learned more about null barriers and began practicing with them. It was hard to recover from that, but at some point, I found my footing and was making significant financial progress.

At this point, I've been coasting and slowly building habitats, letting money pile in. I don't worry about costs anymore, just the time I have to dedicate to this beast.

The Timber Wolves are my oldest habitat animals in my entire zoo. Their habitat is the oldest and only one still standing from when I initially started the zoo. It was the first one I had built too. Their new (temporary) habitat is pretty much done, but I'm working on the surrounding area before opening it. Once they're moved there, that old habitat will be torn down and the area will be reworked for the new mega habitat. It currently stands at about 17k before any major landscaping has been done, so I'm very excited to work on that over time!

I'm also currently focused on collecting colormorphs! I've already got a melanistic wolf, and all the coat varieties for the European Fallow Deer! There's a bunch more animals coming to my zoo, but currently we have Timber Wolves, Coyote, Raccoon, Red Fox, Red Deer, and Butterflies.

Coming soon will be; Bison, European Fallow Deer, Grizzly, Cougar, Beavers, Arctic Foxes, Arctic Wolves and more!

Anywho, thanks for reading this insanely long ramble of my zoo; I'm so freaking proud of it and so happy with how far it's come. I'm so excited for Planet Zoo 2 and I'm gonna have to come back to this place even after it comes out <3

Alas, I return! I broke my hand a few weeks ago so I have been recovering from that as well as working a ton of hours. But finally, my hand is doing better and my hours are slowing down a little bit! With that, I was able to recently finish up Ghostroot's time in Hellroaring Mountain!

Ghostroot is my childfree wolf, and she is going on a Yellowstone tour with her mate Dustgrowl. This is what they experienced in Hellroaring Mountain!

For starters, Hellroaring Mountain was completely new to these two, so it was exciting to explore and understand a new place. They settled primarily in the northern region of Hellroaring Mountain, establishing a minor territory for themselves to relax in. They were quick to make enemies with neighboring packs with their consistent act of trespassing. They surprisingly never came face to face with one of the packs due to the distance between their territories.

While exploring the north, Ghostroot and Dustgrowl came across several interesting items and strange structures. They found a very flat and unwell coyote, and a pair of metal teeth embedded in the dirt. Ghostroot took shelter under a brown canopy. Dustgrowl looked uneasy about the hook hanging over the suspicious ring of rocks below it. In the fall, the pair of wolves would hear loud bangs the echoed for miles. Ghostroot had even felt something graze her body while they ran away from the sound. Thankfully, neither of them were critically injured during the fall, but they understood now, that there were certain parts of this region that were unsafe for them.

The two wolves hung out in Hellroaring until the Spring, where they decided to take on their next new adventure; Tower Fall.

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I didn't get as many achievements as I was hoping to get in Hellroaring, but it was harder to grind for achievements when the seasons passed so quickly. That's one aspect of this gameplay style that I don't like. I wish time moved slower when it's just you and your mate 😭

I was making progress on my Zoo last night, and while refreshing the wolves, I got my first ever coat mutation in the roster! :D At this point in my gameplay, I have 54 hours, which thirty of that was spent in my challenge mode Zoo, where Wolves are my primary focus. All this time, I have not come across this in any animal, so to have it in my wolves was SO exciting!! :D

I'm so conflicted as to what to do with him just yet. The bigger part of me wants to breed him for more melanistic coats, but knowing that he's coming from a breeding program, I feel horrible putting him through that even more. Which, who knows what he actually went through there. I'm just attached to my pixel animals :D But, it would feel a bit wrong to put him through that, esp because he has low fertility to begin with. But honestly, I think he's just a cool addition to have overall. I'm currently working on a mega wolf enclosure for my multi-generational pack, but I think he's gonna join them as a pseudo-uncle ! <3