Zoo Tycoon: Ultimate Animal Collection

Challenge zoos can be a long process. First of all the requirement is to fill the "zoo collection" which is unique to each particular zoo. Please note that you do not have to have all of the animals in the zoo at one time. Getting your animals leveled up, bred, or even keeping them happy is not part of the requirements All you have to do is have them in the zoo, even if that means adopting it and selling it as soon as it lands.

Each challenge zoo will require an animal that is not adoptable in that zoo. So, your first zoo you will not be able to complete until you do the zoo that has the animal you need to finish it. These animals are also ONLY available in one zoo of the 20.

So, how do you do this? Pick your zoo to start, I would recommend either Japan City Zoo or Animais Felizes Wildlife Sanctuary. The names on the map do not match the actual zoo names you will need to scroll around the map and look at the information box that pops up to see the zoo name. It will also tell you how many animals are required and which animal is needed from another zoo as well as what zoo said animal is in. I will give you a roadmap of sorts at the end of this solution.

If you have no experience with zoo tycoon I would recommend reading several other solutions on how to build a zoo effectively as there are several good ideas, including the other solution for this achievement by Forlorn Wolf so I will not go into how to make a good zoo to do this. My goal here is to try and help you figure out where to go, what to breed and give you a tip on how to make this go a lot faster.

If you hit and look to the right you will see the "animal collection" button and if you look at that you will find all of the animals that you must have in your zoo at one point in time to complete the challenge.

Your first zoo you should play as normal. Learn how to do it and once you have all but the one oddball animal go through and move a bunch of your animals to the reserve. To do this, view an animal and to the right at the end of the options is "move to reserve". I would recommend you move a lot of your animals to the reserve. Keeping them in a zoo really does nothing for you. You don't take money with you to the next zoo but you can take the animals. When you get the animal you need for the next zoo MAKE SURE you move them to the reserve. You won't lose them if you don't unless you delete the saved zoo, but I find the load times are extremely annoying and moving back and forth from saved zoos just to put your animal in reserve as a huge waste of time.

If you started in Japan, the next zoo you should start is the Animais Felizes Wildlife Sanctuary. You may have noticed in your first zoo that the biggest problem at the start is money. You probably had to wait to make enough money to put in a few of the exhibits or adopt a few animals to keep going. So hit the button and look at what animals are available to you here. Build whatever exhibit is required for one of those animals and then instead of adopting those animals, put any animal in your reserve in that exhibit that the game will let you. It doesn't have to be an animal required for the zoo though that could save you time. As soon as the animal arrives, sell it. Do this as many times as you feel you need to in order to keep the zoo going. Don't forget to try and keep the customers content as this will help you keep the money coming in without having to sell all of your other animals.

That is my biggest time saving trick. Don't build and sell exhibits as even though you may get fame to begin with it does subtract it when you sell. Filling exhibits with animals you previously had in another zoo that are not required for the zoo you are working on is an easy way to earn fame so you may consider doing this as well. Releasing animals and breeding them is helpful for fame as well. You may notice that the animal you need for the next zoo is usually only unlocked after a pretty high fame level so you will need to keep things rolling a bit.

When selling animals, level 1-5 seem to be some of the highest return. Adult animals make you more money the higher the level which may make you consider selling an animal at level 15 instead of releasing it.

The zoo circles (as I like to call it):

Japan City Zoo(39 animals required) will unlock Red Pandas for you to use in Animais Felizes Wildlife Sanctuary.
Animais Felizes Wildlife Sanctuary(39 animals required) will unlock Parana Jaguars for Japan City Zoo.

Hawaii Beach Zoo(47 animals required) will unlock Tasmanian Devils for Rocky Mountain Zoo.
Rocky Mountain Zoo(44 animals required) will unlock Grizzly Bears for Hawaii Beach Zoo.

Russia Zoo(46 animals required) will unlock Siberian Tigers for American Wilderness.
American Wilderness(44 animals required) will unlock 9-Banded Armadillos for Alaska.
Alaska(46 animals required) will unlock Kodiak Bears for India Central.
India Central(46 animals required) will unlock Asiatic Lions for Russia.

Outback Animal Reserve(29 animals required) will unlock Numbats for Scandinavia.
Scandinavia(28 animals required) will unlock Common Barn Owl for Alpine.
Alpine(28 animals required) will unlock Peregrine Falcons for West Coast Animal.
West Coast Animal(29 animals required) will unlock Pronghorn Antelope for China.
China(27 animals required) will unlock South China Tiger for East Coast.
East Coast(26 animals required) will unlock Olympic Black Bear for Outback.

Caribbean Beach(39 animals required) unlocks Lesser Antillean Iguana for East Africa.
East Africa(39 required) unlocks Ruffed Lemurs for East Asia.
East Asia Wildlife Park(39 animals required) unlocks Malayan Tigers for Mexico.
Mexico(39 animals required) unlocks Mountain Tapir for North Africa.
North Africa(36 animals required) unlocks Western Chimpanzee for Caribbean Beach AND Barbary Lions for European Wildlife Park.

European Wildlife Park(176 animals required) needs those Barbary Lions but does not unlock any animals for any other zoo. This zoo is probably the one you will want to use for the Zoo Tycoon achievement.

Good luck!

This achievement is a grind but isn't too difficult. The solutions by PhatDaemien and Forlorn Wolf have some solid tips and strategies, I just wanted to post something that might help people save a little bit of time. When you have collected all the animals for a zoo, transfer them all to your reserve (you can do this by selecting the animal then scrolling over to the 'send to reserve' option); this way you can use the same animals for other zoos rather than repurchasing them. I found that I kept forgetting which animal species I had already put in the reserve because there are so many, and I also spent a lot of time switching to the menu to look up which animal were needed for the particular zoo I was working on.

So with that said I have created a spreadsheet with all the species of animal in the game, and the species each zoo requires to complete the collection challenge. I kept this open while I played and it helped me stay organized and save a bit of time as well. To condense the size of the sheet so that it can all be viewed without scroll sideways, each zoo is represented by its abbreviation, and works from left to right across the map starting from the 'West Coast Animal Park' (abbreviated WCAP). The 'X's' mean that the animal is not required for that specific zoo collection,
Let me know if you have any questions or spot an error, here is the link.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J-YVwvj2KarWTuFD65Jf...

My strategies for every map:
1) Start off by putting the Admission Price to High. If you are losing popularity, most likely due to a janitor strike, then bump it down to Medium for a bit, or even Low if you have to.
2) Keep everything organized so you can find it quickly. For example I always had my mini exhibits in rows on the right side of the zoo, and made enough for each type of species up to the mid 30's. The small sized exhibits were on the left, and the middle was a cluster of all the other types of buildings.
3) Research the research reduction stuff first, followed by the cheaper animal purchase, advertisement increase, and then the decoration upgrade cost reduction. Do not bother with medium and large exhibits, this is quick and dirty work.
4) Keep up a Medium (the $1,000 type) advertising starting at level 10 and upgrading to Viral at level 20.
5) Do not forget the Awards. You can easily get the 10 different decorations early on buy purchasing the $100 landscape trees.
6) Learn and then adopt the new animals as soon as you level up. This way you do not have to keep track of what you have (which you can find on the Back Button menu aka the admissions building menu under Zoo Collection or the Animals section (which will have an exclamation mark if you can learn it but do not have it).
7) The last animal you can learn is the one that is needed in another zoo. The exception to this is the Northern African Sanctuary as you have to continue to level 37 to get Barabery Lion.
8) Most IMPORTANTLY: learn decorations that provide 400 rating and above. You will need them to quickly hit the upper 30s. Use up other 400+ structures such as Pizza Shop, Lemur Keeper, and you can even doss down a Breeding Center or two (but those are pricey). If it does not provide 400 or more rating then do not bother with it (after doing the Concessions Award). Getting all the animals in a zoo (except the Britain one with 176) took me under an hour.
9) Save the British zoo with 176 animals for this challenge. It takes the longest, and you need to make 100 babies and release 100 animals. Might as well do this one to 40 so you can finish up the non-Challenge mode achievements in Sandbox mode.