Change Difficulty in Saved Sandbox Mode

[Moonfox]

I’d love to be able to change the difficulty of my sandbox games once I’ve already started playing them. My favourite zoo is 7 (game) years old and quite built up, but I started on easy difficulty and there are a range of behaviours my animals never display because of the difficulty setting.

I don’t want to have to start a new zoo just to see my animals climb or use their enrichment items. Would be awesome to be able to change difficulty in a saved sandbox game!

 

[Nioell]

Isn't that an option in the game settings? Either sandbox or general ones, I'm not sure anymore but I know I did switch between difficulty in sandbox parks before.

 

[NachoB]

Is that because of the difficulty level or because some of the welfare options are turned off? (Fighting, scaping, pooping, etc)

 

[Iben]

Is that because of the difficulty level or because some of the welfare options are turned off? (Fighting, scaping, pooping, etc)

It's a combination of both.

If you turn off the option "Enable Animal Welfare", animals don't have an incentive to do much. When it comes to climbing for instance, you take away the enrichment-need based climbing and reduce it solely to the exploration-based climbing. You're essentially taking away half their incentive to climb.

But what hard mode does is make it so that animals needs levels go down quicker so they need to replenish it more often. Combine that with welfare enabled and your animals end up climbing a lot more. (Ran a bunch of tests for that, and the difference was quite noticeable).

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@Moonfox, it's indeed possible to change it in your save file according to the announcement and the game's help function, it should be under "Settings > Game". It's not there for me atm either, but that might be because of Freebuild

 

[Moonfox]

It's a combination of both.

If you turn off the option "Enable Animal Welfare", animals don't have an incentive to do much. When it comes to climbing for instance, you take away the enrichment-need based climbing and reduce it solely to the exploration-based climbing. You're essentially taking away half their incentive to climb.

But what hard mode does is make it so that animals needs levels go down quicker so they need to replenish it more often. Combine that with welfare enabled and your animals end up climbing a lot more. (Ran a bunch of tests for that, and the difference was quite noticeable).

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@Moonfox, it's indeed possible to change it in your save file according to the announcement and the game's help function, it should be under "Settings > Game". It's not there for me atm either, but that might be because of Freebuild

Ooh really!! I’ll try it when I get home, I didn’t know about that. Thanks Iben!