Let's Build a Zoo

Let's Build a Zoo

79 ratings
Effective Enclosure Management
By WelshPixie
A few things to look out for to make sure that your Animal Keepers are working quickly and efficiently to feed your animals and clean their poop :D
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Store Room Access
The first thing to make sure you've set up correctly is that your animal keepers have fast access between your store room, where they collect food for your animals, to the enclosure itself. The less time your animal keepers have to spend walking, the more time they have to carry out their duties in a day.

Subways are a huge help here - you can have your store room anywhere in your zoo, as long as you've got a subway next to it, and subway access close to all of your enclosures.

Here, I have a subway directly opposite the store room with only a few tiles walking distance:


And then I have a subway near each enclosure or cluster of enclosures, with the gate to the enclosure placed close to the subway exit for optimal Keeper access:


Item Placement and Collision Map
If your animal keepers can't get to the poop, they can't clean it :D

One of the most fun aspects of the game is decorating your animal enclosures, but be careful not to place structures in a way that blocks off access.

You can check your collision map from the top right menu - make sure that your objects aren't placed so close together that they're blocking movement through them;


The red squares represent squares that can't be walked on, and red corners touching means your keepers won't be able to move between these objects. In the screenshot above I have some objects in the enclosure that are touching, but there's a clear path around the left of them, so the animal keeper can still walk around them.

In this image, the keepers can't get to the poop because it's closed on all four sides by the trampolines and water; it looks like there's a space but the collision boxes for the trampolines are a bit bigger than the actual trampoline, so it's important to check :D (Thanks to Tuga on Discord for allowing me to use this image of their bunny poop shame XD)
11 Comments
Xkilp 13 Aug @ 10:26pm 
Ah yes, the good ol bunny shit pile
Rea 14 Oct, 2022 @ 4:12am 
Very cool bunny poop pile.
Ulsha 24 Jun, 2022 @ 1:48pm 
@WelshPixie trying to reproduce so I can help them isolate the triggers :steamthumbsup:
WelshPixie  [author] 24 Jun, 2022 @ 4:19am 
@Ulsha They're trying to fix those, so if you experience any of them, please make a bug report and include your save file so they can have a look :)
Ulsha 23 Jun, 2022 @ 11:09pm 
There are bugs that occur when the animal poops in the shelter. Moving the shelter, ending the day, closing and reload may clear it.
Another bug is showing access indicator arrows for a object without an object present, it took a while in one pen to find that one. I was able to force a reset by adding and removing water tiles so it forced a reassessment of the object. There were no more ghost conflicts after that.
Lastly some of the stone perches will conflict in both manners preventing clean up and ghost arrows if placed against a wall but this was resolved by moving it away from the wall so there was full access to whatever critter pooped next to it.
Okiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 30 May, 2022 @ 10:53am 
Thank you, it's helpeful:steamhappy:
WelshPixie  [author] 12 Nov, 2021 @ 12:17pm 
Well, you can try assigning more than one keeper to an enclosure if you can afford it, then they might do it faster / more often - I'm not sure how the AI for it works, whether they'll do it once a day regardless or what.
Rook 12 Nov, 2021 @ 11:26am 
I think making them clean poop more than once a day would be better. By the time they get around to it, my visitors have been all over and seen a LOT of poop so my animals never get high ratings
WelshPixie  [author] 12 Nov, 2021 @ 6:49am 
Are they only looking after one enclosure, and do they have a fast path between the enclosure and the store room so that they can get through their chores quickly? They also only pick up the poop once a day so sometimes you'll look and it'll be messy, if it's before they've cleaned it.
Glühwürmchen 12 Nov, 2021 @ 5:54am 
My Zoo Keeper doesnt clean the enclosure, i move all the things but they do nothing. Hate it and i can do nothing