Need help with 'Hiring Freeze' career level

[Ilja]

Hi guys,

I'm at the hiring freeze career mode level right now, and I just don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I can't seem to achieve anything.
I tried to search for topics of people with the same problem, but I could only find people struggling with getting the gold medal. My problem is getting bronze in the first place lol.
I've restarted the scenario several times, but it just ends up with a debt of 50 000 and I don't make a single year with profit, only worse losses every year.

I hope someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong? I tried selling everything I can sell that's unnecessary buildings and stuff, I put education signs and speakers for every habitat and several information boards on climate and stuff, but education remains red. Even with all animals researched. I placed 3 security cameras so pickpocket alerts are gone, I placed an extra drink and food shop so everything in guest happiness is green except education. I also put in staff buildings and an extra keepers hut. I raised the entry money by 5 dollars.

I tried not raising salaries of the staff to save money, but it doesn't matter. The first year it looks like I'm going to make the 1.500 mark that is one of the goals, but then in december my cash plummets all of a sudden and im already in debt. Then for all the following years I cannot buy anything anymore. Animal welfare is ok, I can't buy enrichment for all of them because research is not complete before the first year of december and after that I cant buy . And then staff want to quit so I have to raise their salary and then it's just hopeless to ever get out of debt.

Please help ):

 

[Jaggid Edje]

First things first, on that scenerio change the staff room perks right away to Health Care, to help with the staff happiness at a minimal cost compared to actually giving them raises.

Go slow at the start, you have only 3 goals to get the bronze:

• Obtain an overal staff happiness of at least 75%
• Earn a yearly profit of $1,500.00
• Adopt the rescue animals (2)

So focus specifically on achieving those goals. The 3rd one is obviously easy, it's only a few animals. Don't do a lot of things in the zoo that don't contribute to those 3 objectives at first.

For staff happiness, the healthcare one and not expanding the zoo too much in terms of total animals and shops is all you actually need to do. Then just time. It takes time for their happiness levels to increase. You have to let it cycle them through their work and breaks multiple times for that staff room perk to get their happiness up to smiles.
The reason for not expanding too much is because it increases how much work the staff needs to do which negatively impacts their happiness.

The profitability number is also super low, so not hard, again it just takes time. Make sure you get donation boxes at every single habitat and exhibit and that you have raised the ticket prices as high as you can while still having most visitors think the price is good...then just give it time. Not expanding too much is also a factor here, because it increases your food costs. You also mention selling things off, but pay attention when you're doing that. A lot of things that are pre-set in that scenario COST you money if you sell them rather than giving you more money. Meanwhile the things you sell reduce the scenery rating in the area where they were, which has an impact on staff happiness if it's close to staff buildings.

You mention visitor happiness and animal welfare in your post, but neither of them is a direct goal. You should only worry about those, initially, as much as is necessary to keep visitors happy enough that they are spending money. Stay focused on the specific goals for the scenario and minimize your spending on everything else.

I remember doing that scenario (I went to gold in all of them) and for the bronze level I didn't do much other than the healthcare perk, and time.

 

[Ilja]

Omg you are a life saver. Thank you! I almost have the bronze one now and no more money issues, which I really don't get haha.
The reason I was looking at guest happiness is because my biggest expense (bigger than salaries) was returned tickets of unhappy guests. So I thought I need to up education to lower expenses. But apparently that doesn't matter.

Thank you! I think I'll be able to manage it now

 

[Jaggid Edje]

Omg you are a life saver. Thank you! I almost have the bronze one now and no more money issues, which I really don't get haha.
The reason I was looking at guest happiness is because my biggest expense (bigger than salaries) was returned tickets of unhappy guests. So I thought I need to up education to lower expenses. But apparently that doesn't matter.

Thank you! I think I'll be able to manage it now

Don't get the idea that education doesn't matter. It truly does as you expand your zoos and make them larger as it slows down the decay rate of happiness. On that particular zoo for those starting goals though, I'd consider education as a tertiary concern; i.e. not important enough to worry about that early in the scenario.

Glad things are working out for you better!

 

[Monsarona]

I had to restart this scenario too cause I messed it up big time the first time I did it. All I did to increase staff happiness was to set their salaries in to the green and added 2 extra staff rooms. You can kind fiddle with the pay so that it is exactly on the line between red and green and that's the golden area!

Once that was taken care of I focused on making my animals happy which made the guests happy which made them spend more money.

I had a lot more trouble on the silver objective for the crime rate while the "reporter" was there. At first I tried doing it without cheesing the scenario. Then I gave up and just closed the zoo, kicked everyone out, and then made the ticket price 100 bucks so that only the reported could get in. There can be no crime if there are no guests! lol And by that time the zoo was making enough money to float the 2 months she was in the zoo.

 

[Jaggid Edje]

I had to restart this scenario too cause I messed it up big time the first time I did it. All I did to increase staff happiness was to set their salaries in to the green and added 2 extra staff rooms. You can kind fiddle with the pay so that it is exactly on the line between red and green and that's the golden area

If I had a nickle for every scenario where I had one false start before restarting a successful run at it...why, I'd have at least a whole 50 cents!

Seriously though, I think I had a failure and restart on at least half of them. I learned a lot playing through all the scenarios though, and got a ton of hours of gameplay out of them, so totally worth it.