Hey! This section of the guide is dedicated to tips and tricks for Challenge Mode that can be applied to any of the maps. Is challenge mode giving you troubles? Maybe you haven't completed the first map yet, or maybe you have done them all and just want to improve your par-time. Whatever the case, you want to get better at the game. Don't worry, this guide is here to help! This guide is also WIP (work in progress), as I have yet to complete all the challenge maps myself. New game mechanics and ways to take advantage of them are being discovered, and this guide will be updated as my knowledge of the game gets updated. In the meantime, let's get to it! These tips are strategies that I utilized to beat the Challenge Maps on Hard difficulty. This portion is organized by when in the game they will be relevant. The First Steps, the Early Game, the Mid Game, and the Winning End!

Each portion will also have a summary just in case you only want very quick tips. I recommend reading each portion though, as I go in depth into mechanics of the game and why these strategies are successful.

Keep in mind, these are just the things that I have learned from playing the game. Understandably, others may have better or different ways of completing the maps. Feel free to take what you will from this guide!

The First Steps

SKIP INTRO PAUSE GAME
You have selected a map and difficulty and have clicked play.
As soon as you click play SKIP THE INTRO FOR THE LOVE OF DINO DNA SKIP THE INTRO!! Yes the time has started and yes your starting cash is already being drained! Skip that intro and then PAUSE THE GAME! PAUSE IT! Every minute in the game that passes is money wasted which we can not afford! There is a lot to do in this beginning stage before we even get to playing the game, so pause and relax and take your time. Before we get to doing anything there are a few things we need to organize. We need to take inventory of our resources, familiarize ourselves with the map, and form a plan of action. While paused take a look at the map (hotkey is M), look and see where our 'arrival point' and 'command center' are located, look for wild dinosaurs and pre-existing sources of water/plants that we can take advantage of.

This would be a good time to decide if our two buildings are in the optimal position. We won't get much of a chance to move them later on, and the maps typically have us starting in a corner of the map which is less than ideal. We want access to some of the maps resources so that we don't have to spend money terraforming or building long paths to get to them, so don't be afraid to move our 'arrival point' and 'command center' to a more open area. This is made even easier in this game, as you actually can just move the building without demolishing and rebuilding it.
(Some people have questioned this step, I find it helpful for long-term planning and reserving space. Some of the maps get quite crammed, so the earlier we can start playing tetris with or buildings, the better. Also it personally helps me because my brain hates disorganization and if even for a moment if something is slightly askew or inefficient then I will flip a table)
You will have to unpause to get this completed, but it shouldn't take long. Once you are in a good position and you know what the map has to offer, we can move on to the next step. Keep in mind we are still paused! Don't get ahead of yourself.

Summary

• Skip the intro!
  
• Pause game!
  
• Take stock of resources, look for free water or edible plants
  
• Relocate facilities if needed
  
• Keep in mind your park's needs for the future

Assembling your team.

We need to address the biggest money suckers in our park. The scientists. They are a new mechanic in JWE2 and can be very frustrating and demanding. If we are not careful they will cause us to go bankrupt, which at an early stage just means you have to take the L and start over.
Check on your scientists, we usually have at least 1 already hired for us, and assess whether or not they can be helpful in the early stages. Scientists have three major characteristics that make up their usefulness;

• Stats
  
• Ability
  
• Salary

To do anything in the game, and I mean anything, from going on expeditions for fossils to actually incubating dinosaurs you need a scientist (or a team of scientists) that is skilled enough to complete the task. This is broken into three stats of:

• Logistics (Entertainment)
  
• Genetics (Research)
  
• Welfare

The Logistics stat is useful for going on expeditions or researching new attractions. The Genetics stat would be more aptly named the "general science" stat, they do the bulk of your research, and they also help synthesize dinosaurs in your hatchery. The Welfare stat is for raising or caring for your dinosaurs, either raising eggs in the hatchery or healing injured dinosaurs at the medic. All stats have a number ranged from 0 to 10. The higher the number, the more skilled they are in that stat. In the beginning don't expect to see anyone boasting a stat higher than 5. It can be very tempting early on to hire any scientist striking a 4 or a 5 in one of their stats, but trust me your wallet doesn't think it is worth it. You can always train your scientists later to boost their stats (not all scientists are capable of boosting their stats tho) I never even got to training my scientists until the mid game, and since most of the early game tasks don't need more than a 5 of any one stat we will be good with low-tier scientists.

The next attribute to consider is their Ability. Scientists come with a perk/ability that can affect their work, like make a task go faster or boost the moral of their team. Right now the only perks we should look for are any that lower the cost of a task or lower the time it takes to complete. "Cheaper Research" (lowers cost of assigned research task by 30%) is S tier, "Altruistic Salary" (reduces overall salary by 50%) is also very good. For success we need to hit the ground running, we have to save every penny we can and since time is money we need to save that too!

Lastly and most importantly is the overall cost/salary of employing the scientists. They end up being your most costly upkeep, some scientists can cost upwards of 50,000 a minute just to employ. In this early game we can not take on anyone costing more than 10,000 a minute. Keep in mind that we want at least three scientists, and at 10,000 each that is 30,000 a minute we are losing. I trust you to use your own judgement wisely, maybe you see a scientist that is 11,000 but has "Altruistic Salary". If you want them, go for it! But I warn you... Assemble your team carefully.

Once you have about three selected, with about 4 or 5 combined points in for the three stats, we can move on to the next stage.


Summary:

• Fire the scientists you start with
  
• Hire a new team!
  
• Hire scientists that work for cheap (10,000 or less)
  
• Aim for scientists with perks that either lower task time or lower task cost
  
• Have a combined stat of 5 for each stat type

The race is on!

Ok we have gotten to know the map, we have selected a location to start in, we have relocated our two buildings (if needed), and we have assembled our victory team! Does this mean we finally get to unpause and start? Yup it sure does! And every minute that passes is money down the drain, so we should coordinate what our goal is. What is our goal? Essentially the name of the game is that cold hard cash baby. Money makes the world go round, without it we can not employ our scientists and without them we are toast. To make money we need dinosaurs to draw guests in. With so many to choose from, where should we start? Typically the map starts you off with enough of a genome for Struthiomimus to make a batch. Don't do this. In JWE1 the name of the game was "the Race to Struthy!", but in JWE2 apparently the guests are bored of this dino and it will not make enough money for us to begin making a profit. You can make 10 of them and our profits will go from -40,000 to maybe -35,000? Nah man. Instead the motto of JWE2 is "Race to Nasuto!" Has a better ring anyways. Nasutoceratops, an early game ceratopsid, is cheap enough that we can get it easily, but also wowing enough to draw in the crowds. Plus later down the line, these dinos have a lot of tolerance for different species which makes for a winning exhibit.

Edit: As a commenter pointed out (thank you nyaos) in their playthrough on jurassic difficulty, a Struthiomimus was what they needed in the beginning to succeed. They found trying to get to Nasuto simply took too long, and early on their map in Germany they needed the guest counts. I still stand by my lovely chunky Nasuto boy, but I'm glad other players are finding their own strategies to beating the challenge mode. If you are struggling then maybe follow the old motto of "Race to Struthy!". Please let me know your tips and I will try to include them in this guide!

In order to get to our first dinosaur we are going to need a few things. You should construct the following:

• Backup Generator (this thing is ♥♥♥♥♥♥ evil)
  
• Science Center
  
• Expedition Center
  
• Hatchery - attached to an exhibit for our eventual Nasutoceratops

Try to keep everything organized and compact, transportation is a thing and it does affect our star rating. You might be wondering about a Ranger Team or about Amenities, and don't worry we will get to them eventually. For now however, they are a major waste of money and should be put on the back burner.

We move unto the next step, making our first dinosaur!
If this is a map that already supplies enough genome to make a Nasutoceratops then GO FOR IT! Make that dinosaur ASAP! The sooner we make it the sooner we stop losing money. If this is a map without enough genome, then send out an expedition for its fossils.

While this is happening we need to take a quick detour to do some research. You likely won't start out with much of anything available to you, but that's ok because overall there is next to no research that we need for the entire game. The first thing you should research is Power Technologies, it is found in the power tab and is crucial for long term development. Why are we researching this over anything else? Because the backup generator is evil and we hates it. The Backup Generator is another new implementation of JWE2 and is one of the necessities of the first steps to any play-through. The generator supplies power to your buildings, but requires fuel to run. You have to manually resupply the fuel, and one full refill of the generator costs around $500,000. Holy ornithomimus batman! That is enough money to hatch a full herd of dinosaurs, and is 100% not worth wasting on fuel. Instead what we are going to do is research Power Technology so we can have a renewable source of power for our park. One small Power Generator will for sure be enough to last us to the mid game if we are smart, and it will do so without breaking the bank! So assign your team to researching!

While they are doing that our first batch of Nasutos should be done by now! That or our expedition team just returned with the precious Nasuto fossils. If this is the case then take the time to synthesize them for dino DNA. We only need enough to successfully make a dinosaur, there is no reason to get to 100%. It doesn't matter if our dinosaur is pretty, just as long as we can get it out there for our guests to see.

Let's say that your Nasutos are still being extracted from fossils, your research team has finished and you have placed down your small Power Generator, what should you do while waiting for that Nasuto? There is one other thing essential to research before we move unto the official Early Game, and that is a Staff Center. You may have noticed that your staff are getting more tired with each task they complete, it is a pesky trait of humans that they can't work endlessly without burnout. If you overwork your staff they will become ornery and may even quit or sabotage your park! The Staff Center is needed to provide a place for your staff to rest and be ready for more grueling work. Research and build that bad boy!

And with that, you finally have a batch of Nasutos synthesized and ready to go. More on that in the next part!

Summary

• Race to Nasuto!
  
• Build power, science, expedition, hatchery with exhibit. Forget rangers, medical, or amenities (for now)
  
• If you have nasuto genome, make some! If not, then go get some nasuto genome!
  
• Research Power Technology
  
• Research Staff Center

We are looking good!

Now we have setup a good starting facility. We have Science, Expedition teams, Unlimited Power, happy Staff, and most importantly a Hatchery that is revvin to make some dinosaurs. We should for sure by now have enough of a genome to make our Nasutoceratops.

In order to make a dinosaur we need to go into our hatchery and assign scientists to synthesizing a clutch of eggs, from which we will select the best eggs for incubation. Nasutoceratops has a max clutch of 4 eggs, which means that for every synthesized batch we can get at most 4 dinosaurs from it. This method is much better to the previous game, where we were forced to pain stakenly incubate each dinosaur individually. Before assigning scientists we are given the opportunity to modifying the dinosaurs genome. Don't waste your time. Modifying the genome for prettier or hardier dinosaurs on the surface sounds like a great idea, and it certainly is something you could get into later on once we are financially stable. For now though it is yet another frivolous addition that will only cost us more money and make the genome synthesis unstable. A basic batch of Nasutos will work just fine.

As a quick note, getting DNA from fossils doesn't always leave you with a perfect 100% genome. The percentage of genome required to make a batch of dinosaurs changes from map to map. On some maps you can get away with 50% genome, while others require 100%. Think of the percentage as how good the base dinosaur can be. Sure you CAN make dinosaurs with 50% genome, but they are more likely to die in incubation, more likely to have negative behaviors, and more likely to be sickly. This also affects what your guests think of the dinosaur. Things have changed since the first game, and your guests DO care if your dinosaurs are half-baked. Typically I just wait to make dinosaurs until they are 100%, otherwise I am spending money on sub-par dinosaurs.

Your Nasutoceratops batch is likely done by now. Hooray! Your first dinosaurs! But oop, not quite. You have synthesized a clutch of eggs, now you have to decide which ones will go on to be incubated. If you took the time to get full 100% genome then it is likely you have a full clutch of 4 eggs, each egg with varying traits. TAKE NOTE: Each time you synthesize a clutch of eggs, each egg will have the traits you pick when you modify genome before synthesis occurs! IN ADDITION to those modifications (if any) each egg has a chance of developing traits. The higher the genome, the more likely it is those traits are positive. Similarly, the lower the genome, the more likely it is those traits are negative. These traits are wide ranging, and you can check out my guide to traits for a more in-depth understanding of each trait! For right now though, traits highlighted in red are evidently the bad ones. While you can accept those eggs, (I do it all the time with little repercussion), be sure to avoid any trait that increases the Aggression of your dinosaur. Higher Aggression makes a dinosaur more likely to attack vehicles, fences, other dinosaurs, and even more likely to frighten guests! Overall, a nuisance.

Pick which eggs you would like to incubate. Preferably eggs that have positive traits. It will take some time to incubate, and while that is happening you can set up a proper enclosure for your happy Nasutos.

With housing dinosaurs you need to keep a few things in mind. Things have gotten a lot more complicated since the first game. We will use our Nasutoceratops as reference to go through all the new mechanics for keeping your dinosaur happy:

Summary:

• Make those Nasutos!
  
• Don't make sick ones
  
• Pick the best of the bunch!
  
• Enjoy watching your happy dinos!

Taking a brief moment to explain the new mechanics of JWE2's dinosaur housing. This is vital for the rest of the game, as what dinosaurs we choose now will have impact on which ones we should choose later. The mechanics are very complicated, but no worries! We will get through this together. Let us take a look at our lovely Nasutoceratops as reference to understand these new mechanics. In the first game, dinosaurs had very simple needs. Food, Environment, and Social. There were feeders for both carnivores and veggiesaurs, the only environment types were forest/notforest, and pretty much any herbivore could live with any other herbivore (just as long as they had enough space).
Throw all that knowledge out of the window. Literally none of it will help you now. Everything has changed.
Lol ok maybe its not that much of a detour from the first game, but it is very different. Your dinosaurs needs can still be broken down into Food, Environment, and Social. Except things have changed for each of those categories. These categories combine to create your dinosaurs overall Comfort percentage. The level of discomfort a dinosaur can tolerate before rampaging is different based on the species.

Food
Dinosaurs need to eat! While we still have carnivore feeders, we no longer have herbivore feeders. Instead you must edit the terrain to have the preferred edible plants of the enclosed dinosaurs. This can be tricky when housing multiple species with different preferred plants. NOTE: If an herbivore does not have enough of its preferred plant, it will starve! They will NOT eat other plant types.
Carnivores are much easier to feed. They have three feeder types; dead meat, live prey, and fish! Certain species only accept one of these feeder types. NOTE: Don't get me wrong, a Baryonyx ( a fish eater) will just as happily eat a goat as it will a fish. However! Putting a goat dispenser into its enclosure will do nothing for its comfort level! So to reiterate, most carnivores have animations for eating from any of their available feeders, but only certain feeders actually matter when it comes to maintaining their Comfort level.

Environment
Different dinosaurs thrive in different environments. In JWE2 we have WAAAAY more options in enclosure customization. More tree types, a terrain brush, and even rocks! (That rocks). All of these customizations actually may have an impact on your dinosaurs comfort. How do you know which ones will affect your dino? TIP: Before synthesizing a species, you can look at that species comfort needs in the genome library of your hatchery. There it will tell you what its needs are. Every dinosaur will have its environmental needs broken down into four-ish categories. What does this mean? Basically, for example our Nasuto needs; Water, Forest, Open Space, and Ground Leaf. A Baryonyx needs; Water, Forest, Rock, Fish. A dinosaur will typically have four things, this might be a ground type, a plant food type, etc. Chunkingosaurus is one that only requires three things, curse you ya chubby stego!
Herbivores typically all need; Forest, Water, and then either they will have two different food needs (like ground leaf AND ground fiber) or they will have one food need with an open space need.
Carnivores typically all need; Forest, Water, their preferred feeder, and then either open space, rock or terrain type (like sand or rock).
You may be looking at this thinking "Oh! So I can house herbivores together if they have the same environment needs!" Well yes, but actually no. And that is due to the newer mechanic that I think is the one that most players struggle with, Social.

Social
In the past game players were able to create vast enclosures with several herbivore species living harmoniously. Unfortunately now our dinosaurs have a much more complex social structure. To Summarize: Any dinosaur does NOT like other dinosaurs of its same type (type, not species). Armoured dinosaurs do NOT like other armoured dinosaurs.
So what does this mean? What is dinosaur type? Your dinosaur species are categorized by their larger family, such as Sauropod or Ceratopsid. When looking at our Nasuto's social tab, you can see which types it likes and dislikes. NasutoCERATOPS is (you guessed it!) a Ceratopsid. It is an armoured herbivore. So what can we deduce from this? It means it is unlikely to tolerate other Ceratopsid or other armoured herbivores in its enclosure. If a dinosaur is housed with a type that it dislikes it becomes highly agitated. This agitation will cause its comfort to slowly go down until it rampages, and it may even pick a fight with the dinosaur it dislikes. If a dinosaur is housed with a type that it likes its comfort level will increase, giving you more leway with some of its other comfort stats. For example, our Nasuto.. if we were to house them with say a Triceratops or a Kentrosaur, our Nasutos will become angry and will try to kill the other dinosaurs. However, they like Anklysaurids! So if we were to house them with a Nodosaurus, our Nasutos will overall need less of all their other comfort stats, giving us more wiggle room to make the enclosure comfortable for other species. IMPORTANT NOTE: When a dinosaur type is listed as being "liked", that does not always mean it is safe to house! A lot of dinosaurs "like" Comsagnathus, but use common sense. Ceratasaurus doesn't like Compys because they are a chill dino to live with, they like them because they want to EAT THEM! This goes for herbivores too, your Sauropods can squish your Compys.
Another new aspect of the Social need is the Territory mechanic. In the first game, you would plop a dinosaur down in an enclosure and it would instantly map out the whole fenced in area and calculate its comfort. However, this would only extend a certain distance. You could try to have one area of a habitat be forest while another is open plains in order to suit dinosaurs of varying needs (looking at you Brachiasaurus) but this wouldn't really work. Instead of them sticking to the place they were happy, it was inevitable your dinosaur would wander to a place where it couldn't calculate its forest anymore and would become angry. In JWE2 this has been fixed with territories. A dinosaur will map out its territory within the bounds of its enclosure as it walks around, and will do so until it is 100% comfort.

You can check out my guide that outlines which species can live with which, and what could be considered "Game Winning Enclosures" to maximize enclosure to profit ratio.
Additional Changes
These are some quick additional changes from JWE1 to JWE2 to keep in mind when building enclosures.

• You won't know a dinosaurs comfort level until you build a Ranger Outpost to check on them. You can assign Ranger Teams to routinely check on enclosures.
  
• Dinosaur Visibility DOES affect star rating now!
  
• If the fence is stronger than the dinosaur enclosed it CAN'T break out! But unhappy dinosaurs make for unhappy guests.
  
• Carnivores can fail at hunting goats, which can lead to starvation if they are bad at hunting. (Yes that is an actual trait) So sometimes an extra meat dispenser is helpful.
  
• Don't house carnivores with herbivores, just don't. Armoured herbivores used to be safe from small carnivores, but now because of pack hunting no herbivore is safe.
  
• Even in large enclosures, dinosaurs who dislike eachother will seek eachother out.

To Summarize

• Things have gotten more complicated
  
• Be sure to supply your dinosaur with the right food
  
• Environment matters!
  
• Don't house different species that share a family type in the same enclosure
  
• Don't house different armoured herbivores together
  
• Don't house small carnivores with larger carnivores
  
• Don't house carnivores with herbivores, even the small ones are vicious
  
• Happy dinos are happy guests!

Amazing job everyone!
You have gotten settled in! Your park by now should have the following:

• Park Entrance
  
• Command Center
  
• Science Center
  
• Expedition Center
  
• Staff Center
  
• A Hatchery
  
• A Small Power Station (and an old backup generator)
  
• An enclosure with our happy Nasutoceratops! And a viewing gallery to see them.

Most importantly, you should be making a PROFIT. Check you finances, and be sure that you are not in the negative. If you are, depending on how much money you still have, you should deactivate all buildings that are not being used. (IE If you are not actively researching something, maybe turn the science center off!) Then make more Nasutos ASAP. More dinos=more guests=more money.

Making a profit? Yes? Good! Then you have officially entered the Early Game. This is different from the First Steps because now we have ever so slightly some breathing room. While before it was a mad dash to make dinosaurs as fast as possible, now we have a chance to think about our plan for victory. Don't be fooled though! The name of the game now is Profit, and if at any point before the mid game you end up in the negative, that is a fail. There is no reason to try and recover from it when we are only like 10-ish minutes into the park. I highly recommend making a quick save file now, that way if something goes wrong you can always go back to this moment instead of having to start from scratch.
So, what now? Our next goal is to reach 2 stars, the line for Mid Game status. In order to do that we need to expand our park while maintaining a good profit. For the Mid Game we will break it into three parts:
What should we research?
What dinosaurs should we get?
And how do I make money?

Since the Research is the smallest portion we will go over it in this section now.

Research
There are many awesome things to research, most excitingly are new dinosaurs and cosmetic genes! For now those go on the back burner, as they will be brought up in the dinosaur section. What about all the other available research opportunities? This is a WIP moment, as I am still testing which things are more important. However I do have a good idea of what is essential based on what I always research at this point in the game. Basically you want all of the things that will improve your staff and make your guests happier.
These are the essential nodes for guest happiness:

• Core Guest buildings
  
• Wider Paths <-- SUPER IMPORTANT
  
• Viewing Galleries AND Viewing Towers
  
• Medium Amenities

These are the essential nodes for staff/park improvement:

• Additional Staff Center 1
  
• Response Center (Ranger Station)
  
• Meat Feeder

Anymore research then that (besides dinosaurs) is all gonna take place in the Mid and Late game when we have the profit to fund it. These are the Essentials, not a strict rule. If you find that researching something else at this stage is helpful to you then hey I am glad you are having fun! These are the nodes I found myself needing in this stage. Again, all this testing was done on Hard difficulty.
You may be wondering about my reasoning for some of these nodes, so I will go over it quickly. The Core Guest Buildings are your small amenities, your bathroom and hotel, and your security bunker. All of these are essential. Without them you will not succeed. The same goes for viewing galleries/towers. I go for towers here because it attracts more guests of a different type (we will get into that later). It also provides another type of attraction which means more profit. Wide paths and medium amenities are both for fixing overcrowding. It happens at this stage because our park is very small and we are not going to be expanding all too quickly yet. Plus medium amenities also unlocks more attachments to attract more guests which again = more money!!
Researching the additional staff center here may seem odd, but right now we need some better dinosaurs which also means our staff need higher stats to get them. This may be the time you swap out some of your staff for ones with better stats (when you can afford them). This node also allows us to train our staff so they get better stats. The response center is crucial, it's how you control your dinosaurs, ensure they stay in their enclosures, and make repairs to any damaged buildings. We only didn't build it in the first steps because it is expensive and up-keeping it is another bill to pay. Once you start getting more than two species though, they become very useful. Besides that, most of all the other research nodes for facilities and staff is for later in the game. Except for the meat feeder. It seems like an odd choice I know, but having it researched is a requirement to research the live feeder. Carnivores often need a live feeder to be comfortable, and to get a live feeder you need: meat feeder researched, carnivore population of at least 1. If you don't research it now it means that later when you have a hungry carnivore waitin to break down the fence, you'll have to wait for not 1 but 2 nodes to be researched! No thank you! Just research the meat feeder now so it isn't a rampaging dinosaur later.

You may be wondering, what about medical treatments? If you have the time, go for it. But you will probably already be in the mid game by the time you get around to researching it. Typically I don't bother until a dinosaur is sick with something. Even then sometimes I just tranq the sick dino and sell it. Better than paying for the research and construction of a medical facility early on.

Besides that, all the other research is based on what dinosaurs you choose to populate your park with! Which will be in the next portion of this guide.

-Just quickly I'd like to thank the nice feedback this guide has gotten. Thank you for your kind words and encouragement! This is a lot of fun to write, so I'm glad some people are enjoying it.

What dinosaurs should we prioritize?

This section of the Early Game guide is for explaining what dinosaurs we should try to get in the early game. Afterall, our guests are our most important asset. They won't show if we don't have a variety of great dinosaurs for them to visit! Depending on the game mode and on the map, we will have access to selection of dinosaurs. Where do we even begin to break down which ones are worth our time? I think the best way to look at it is through the lense of Appeal.

What is Appeal?
Your park has an Appeal rating, a rating of how appealing your guests find the attractions of your park. This number starts at 0 and goes up to 4,000. A park with a high appeal is going to be attracting max guests, meaning max profit, and of course a 5 star victory! Every dinosaur species counts towards this appeal rating, based on how appealing the species is to your guests. A Tyrannosaurus has a much higher rating than say a Struthiomimus. Appeal is more than just having the dinosaur though, it actually is based on a few factors.

• The Quality of the dinosaurs in your park
  
• The variety of species
  
• How visible your dinosaurs are

Dinosaur Quality
This is determined by the genome of the dinosaur, as well as any modifications you make to them. A dinosaur with a 100% genome will have higher appeal than a dinosaur with less genome (even if they are the same species!). When synthesizing a dinosaur, you will see its appeal level. You also can sort the genome library based off of appeal.
Variety of Species
This is pretty self explanatory. Your guests don't want to walk around your park and just see a Tyrannosaurus in every pen. They want a good mix of species. Variety is more based off of dinosaur Type rather than species. For example, if you have one of every Ceratopsid, you won't get a good rating in variety. So you definitely want to be branching out into all sorts of dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and marine reptiles! Some maps utilize this mechanic by restricting the number of species you have access to, adding extra challenge.
Dinosaur Visibility
In the first game, dinosaur visibility actually had nothing to do with star rating. This has been fixed now, and your guests actually do care if they can see your dinosaur or not. It is wise to place down viewing galleries first, and then fences. This allows you to strategically be sure that no part of the enclosure is being missed. Better than building a large enclosure only to discover the center of it is unreachable! Lastly, it also matters that you have a variety of ways to see into an enclosure. An exhibit that has a viewing gallery, a viewing tower, and a tour ride is going to rake in more happy guests than one that only has a gallery.

What does any of this have to do with what dinosaurs we go for?
It matters because we want to maximize our benefit from what dinosaurs we choose to house. Why should we waste precious time and money on a dinosaur with little to no rating when compared to another species of the same type? Especially when our dinosaurs now are selective about what species they will accept in their enclosure. For example, we could try to get max genome on a Struthiomimus, or we can skip it and go straight to Gallimimus. As I mentioned, go into your genome library (open your hatchery) and sort it by appeal. Try to pick dinosaurs with a higher base appeal rating.

The second trait we need to consider is the species comfort stats.
More specifically, their Preferred Food and what other species they will tolerate. I actually have another guide that lists out all the dinosaur species, their preferred food, their environmental needs, and what other species they are compatible with. I will use that chart for this guide as well. Essentially, we want to pick species that are going to be able to live together. Enclosures take up space, money, and energy to maintain. We want to get as much profit as we can out of each single enclosure, that means creating diverse groups of dinosaurs in a single exhibit. However, as we have established, dinosaurs are picky. Especially herbivores. We can't just house any two species together willy-nilly and expect them to get along. Instead we need to take into account what food the species prefers, as well as what other dinosaur types it gets along with.
The reason for considering their food is that well, we need the space! Plants take up space! Trying to house five different species that all want five different plants in the same pen is gonna be exhausting and inefficient. Instead we should house five different species that all want the SAME plant.
We also don't want our dinosaur to fight, which is why we house them with species that they like. Every dinosaur has liked and disliked species/dinosaur types. We can check it by looking at their comfort needs. Typically dinosaurs don't like living with dinosaurs of the same type. For example, an Amargasaurus is a Sauropod, it dislikes other sauropods. We also have to watch out for our Armoured herbivores, which dislike other armoured herbivores. These would be our Ceratopsid, Anklyosaurid, and Stegosaurids. There are a few exceptions to this rule.

So what is the best plan?
Essentially we want to build enclosures that are:

• Visible from every angle, with a variety of viewing options.

And we want to house within them:

• Dinosaurs that eat the same food
  
• Dinosaurs with high appeal

The best setup to maximize potential in an enclosure is:

• One Sauropod species
  
• One Hadrosaur species
  
• One Pachycephalid OR Ornithomimid
  
• One Ceratopsid OR Stegosaurid OR Anklysaurid

Obviously there will be exceptions to this rule. You should exploit them! Choose a Ceratopsid that likes Anklysaurids over one that doesn't!

Carnivores
Carnivores are a fantastic option for drawing in the crowds! They have high appeal, but unfortunately a lot of drawbacks. They are your most dangerous dinosaurs, are prone to escaping, and can be the most expensive to feed. For carnivores I actually recommend only a few species: Baryonyx and Suchomimus are Game winning! As they can live in the same enclosure with no issues. Carnotaurus is also a favourite, as it is quite comfortable in a small pen full of sand. Ceratasaurus is good because it can tolerate a lot of its own kind. If you have the money and you have already researched its feeders, then go for it! Just be sure to keep it comfortable, or else it could come back to bite you. (Literally :)
One carnivore that is always a win, as you can add it to almost any enclosure to add variety with no risk of it killing your herbivores, it Compsagnathus. Compy's can only hurt small non-armoured herbivores such as Struthiomimus or Homalocephale. Be careful with them though, as other carnivores will snack on them and sauropods will step on them!

Lagoons and Aviaries
Both of these are great options for any park IN THE LATE GAME! They are hella expensive!! While they do add a lot of variety to your park, they are more likely to sink your ship if you take them on too early. Be patient and wait until you are at about 4 stars to build one of these. If you want more info on Pterosuars and Marine reptiles, check out my other guide.

Final thoughts:
Hadrosaurs and Compy's are really great as they all just love everybody. You can really cram a lot of hadrosaurs into any enclosure. Same with Ornithomimids, they all love eachother. Most dinosaurs like Pachycephalids, but they tend to not like one another. Hopefully this was helpful! If you are looking for a comprehensive list of dinosaurs that can live together, I recommend you check out my guide. I also list out what I think are game winning enclosure setups! Basically telling you recipes for enclosures that are sure to get you to 5 stars.

The name of the game! MONEY!

Why should we be so focused on making money?
Well first of all, money is literally how we get everything done in our park. Without a profit we are an inevitable sunken ship. Secondly, our star rating is now DIRECTLY linked to our profit. This is another change from the first game, and it was added to streamline the march to five stars. The more money we make per minute, the higher our star rating. If optimized to maximum efficiency, you can easily five star a park without utilizing the full map.
So how do we go about doing this?
There are two main ways we increase our profit.

• Ticket sales
  
• Amenity sales (way more important)

Tickets
Tickets are easy to manage, as long as your park is open and you have dinosaurs within view then you will sell tickets. You can't change the price of the individual tickets. The way you get more profit from your tickets is by increasing your dinosaur/park appeal. Bigger attractions, better dinosaurs, basically just play the game and this will increase. Usually players have more of an issue with the next topic...

Amenities
Your Amenities; the shops, rides, and accommodations of your park, all work together to add to your Income and Park Appeal.
WOah woah woah, I hear you saying, this is going all over the place. Amenities, Star Rating, and Park Appeal? How does this all work to make me money? We will get to that, its just important to understand how and why this stuff works together. The more you understand it, the more money you will be able to make.
Think of it like this:

The more/better dinosaurs you have, the more guests come to your park. The more guests in your park, the more accommodations they need. The more accommodations (shops, hotels, and rides) we build, the more money we make. The more money we make, the more/better dinosaurs we can get. And so on and so on.

What Amenities/Accommodations are there?
Amenities/Accommodations for your guest include:

• Bathrooms
  
• Shelters
  
• Hotels
  
• Shops (Food, Drink, and Gift)
  
• Dinosaur Viewing
  
• Attractions
  
• Transport

How do they work?
The two main mechanics of your amenities/attractions are:

• Guest Type Appeal
  
• Guest Capacity

Guest Type Appeal
This is a new-ish? Mechanic of the second game? Technically it was in the first game, but it never impacted the game enough to be important. Guest Type refers to the kinds of things your guests find appealing. You may have hardcore dinosaur nerds who don't want species from different eras in the same enclosure, maybe they are a thrill seeker who wants to see big carnivores, or they shy away from that and prefer luxury and comfort. Depending on how you build your park, you will attract different kinds of guests. We can see our park's demographic when looking at our park appeal or our finances. Using this information we can tailor certain areas of our park towards certain types of guests, and thus making more money from them. How? Well if we make a carnivore area full of shops that thrill seekers like, then they are more likely to go in those shops and spend money.
When we place down a shop, we have three options of that shop; Food, Drink, and Gift. You also will enter a view to see where the shop type is needed most. Path highlighted in blue indicates that the guests there are satisfied with the shop type. If we were to place a Food shop in an area already satisfied for Food needs, then we would not make a good profit from that shop. Path highlighted in red is in need of the shop type. So for max profit, you should place the Food shop in a red area. NOTE: Try not to follow the blue path until it just turns red, placing the shop right on the border of blue and red. Instead, take note of the range of the shop, and place the shop where you think would cover the most red.
After placing a shop we should Customize it. Customizing means changing the type of item offered at the shop, while also adding scenery to make it more appealing to certain types of guests. The easiest way to customize a shop for maximum profit is to mouse over all the options and pick whichever gives you the most profit. When typing that it seems like a no brainer, but its easy to get caught up in all the other information given to you in the shop panel. NOTE: Ignore everything except how much money is being made when customizing a shop. When adding modules don't add more than one. Each module adds to the upkeep cost of that shop, and eventually you will lose more money by adding extra things to a shop.

Guest Capacity
Capacity refers to how many guests we can comfortably accommodate in our park without crowding them. We don't want to crowd our guests, they may get grumpy and leave. You also don't want shops to get crowded, as they can only serve guests up to their max capacity. A crowded shop is a shop missing customers and profit opportunity! You can visually see which routes guests take, and which ones are more crowded. You also can check on shops to see if they have reached max capacity. What can we do to increase the number of guests in our park while also decreasing the crowding?
We want to research the following:

• WIDE PATH WIDE PATH WIDE PATH<---- Secretly the most important mechanic of the game
  
• Bigger Shops
  
• Bigger Hotels

We want to increase the number of guests capable of being comfortably accommodated in each singular building available to them. Which is why we want to research Medium (and eventually Large, although often I skip over that) shops and Large Hotels. Bigger buildings capable of housing more guests also make WAAAAY more money than their smaller counterparts. All around they are 10/10.
Ok so I have been stressing getting wide paths, it is literally one of the first things I told you to research. What is the deal with it? Honestly I don't know??? All it does is increase your transport rating while decreasing crowding issues. Yet somehow something minor is fundamental for a five star park. As test, I built two parks in sandbox. They were identical, and based off of profit/appeal should both be 5 stars. The difference was that in one of them I maxed out the paths to their widest and most luxurious, the other stayed with small standard paths. Guess which one was stuck at 3 stars? I replaced all the pathing with just standard wide paths and it insta-jumped to 5 stars. It's witchcraft.

Overall, to make money we need to have big shops tailored to make as much profit as possible. We want big hotels, and lots of them, and we want to put them near enclosures. We want a variety of attractions; galleries, towers, tours. To attract many guests. We want to make sure bathroom and shelter coverage is as close to 100% as possible. Lastly, we want some wide paths. All of this will guarantee maximum profit.

Important notes:

• Remember we want maximum coverage of all shop and accommodation types while ALSO keeping the actual numbers of those shops low. Why? Each shop is more upkeep. If we have two shops too close together, sure we have good coverage, but they are both empty and each is costing us upkeep!
  
• Don't customize a building more than one or two modules, just focus on maximizing profit. Any customization past its max profit is just wasting money.
  
• Hotels are important. We want lots of guests and we want them to stay awhile.
  
• Bathrooms require power but shelters don't.
  
  What will ruin my profit?
  
• Having too many scientists/too expensive scientists. Always lookout for better hires.
  
• Having long paths that lead to nothing (or just one thing). Keep paths short and to the point.
  
• Not checking profit regularly/not expanding
  
• Small amenities for too long
  
• Customizing too much (or too little)
  
• Boring dinosaurs

You have made it to the Mid Game!
WOOOOT Congrats! Victory is practically within your reach. And yet it still feels like a daunting task that is miles away. I gotchu, we will get through this together.
How do you know you are in the Mid Game?
The signs that you are at this point are:

• You are making a steady profit
  
• You have an enclosure with about 4-5ish species
  
• You have researched everything from the Early Game portion of the guide
  
• Your park is above 2 stars

At this point in the game, the guide devolves from a step-by-step experience towards a more subjective list of suggestions. Each of the challenge maps are different, your play style is different, and you will have access to different resources or have different restrictions! As far as a strict rule of success at this point in the game, it's not as obvious? This is also the longest and most arduous part of any challenge play. The infamous 3-star-hurdle is right at our doorstep.

Instead for the Mid Game (and eventual Late Game) guides we are gonna focus on overall tricks you can do to up your star rating/profit. We will have sections on:

• What should we expect/strive for
  
• What research we should obtain
  
• What dinosaurs we should aim for

So now that we are in the Mid Game, what are our goals? What should we be trying to accomplish next? Are there things we should be wary of?

As always the biggest goal is PROFIT! Money money money, (geez we sound like Mr. Krabs). Our star rating is directly linked to how much money we make. For the Mid Game our newest goal is to upgrade all the things. I'm talking bigger dinosaurs, better buildings, and more efficient infrastructure. What we did in the Early Game was create a sturdy foundation from which to tentatively branch out and expand our park. We also now want to be steadily expanding (when we can). New rides, new enclosures, and slowly filling up the map.
Let's go over the different sections of the Mid-Game:

What should we expect? What should we be striving towards?

With a firm footing, there really isn't anything specific to be on the lookout for. Essentially our game now is just park sim, which when I think about it, is literally the point of the game. Always ALWAYS be checking up on your profit! You can see by how much your profit has gone up (or down) since last month. If at any point your profit is starting to fall, I'd recommend trying to address whatever is causing it. Have you made any new dinos lately? Are your guests getting bored? Check your attractions, maybe the guest demographic has changed. Turn off any buildings that are unnecessary.
New things will change for the map once you reach a certain star rating, and some of these new things could tank your park and cause you to fail. These being Disease, Weather, and possibly Sabotage. Your dinosaurs can get sick, and it may mean dinosaurs rampaging, dying, and even a failed park. Now, my method for addressing illness may be a bit extreme... Honestly I just tranq the first sick dino and dump it in a volcano (sell it). I'm not playing around. The upkeep for a medic, the cost of researching medicine, bills upon bills! Just nip the problem before it gets out of hand. But you do you. Weather is just as bad, if not worse, as it was in the first game. You shouldn't encounter any serious weather until 3 or 4 stars. Weather can come in various forms depending on what your map is. From snow to sand, but what you are most likely to encounter is rain or hurricanes. How can you prepare for a storm? You can: Have Helicopter teams assigned to ranger posts, doing so will mean they auto wrangle any dinosaurs that escape. Have plenty of shelters, they do not require energy and you can check to see if you have good shelter coverage. Have extra strong fences, better fences are less likely to break. The last thing we need to keep an eye on is Sabotage, which isn't as common as it was in the first game, but it is still possible. Sabotage occurs if it is a story beat for the map, or if one of your employees is overworked/grumpy. You can prevent it by ensuring to give your employees breaks.
Overall, expect things to get more challenging. Don't worry, I know you can persevere! Remember to save often. :)

We should be striving for:

• Profit
  
• Expansion
  
• Organization
  
  Profit: Self explanatory, make that money o~o
  Expansion: Always be looking to fulfill needs. Does an area need a bathroom? More shops? Is an area secure enough? Could a paddock hold a few more dinosaurs? Maybe some of your dinosaurs could stand to be replaced with upgraded versions of the same niche they fit. Be open to feedback from your guests, and seize the opportunity to take advantage of all your available spaces/resources.
  Organization: Firstly, why is this important? If you go at this by giving all your buildings tons of space, every habitat is separate and spaced out, you will fail. You will fail from running out of space to expand, there will be a point where you no longer can realistically re-organize everything. Instead, aim to optimize your space from the get-go. (This is why I said from the start you may want to re-locate your starting buildings) Fill every space, try to take advantage of every space, and be smart about where you place things. Habitats should (typically) be built off of each other.
  
  What research should we obtain?
  Again, there isn't a "one size fits all" answer to this. I will explain what I tend to research. I aim for: cosmetic genes (pretty dinos make brain go brr), better buildings like medium amenities and more amenity options, upgrades for buildings to reduce the costs of tasks, upgrades for improving efficiency, better dinosaur species with higher ratings, better fences, and better power. Some of the best things to research specifically are Viewing Towers (can fill small spaces for efficiency), Gyrospheres (immune to dinosaurs), Wide Paths (we've been over this), and researching your staff level to at least 4. You can ignore researching medicine, at least with how I play. Researching specific nodes to attach to amenities is also pretty useless. Researching for marine pools or aviaries at this stage would be a waste. They are waaay too expensive, you need to be making millions.
  
  What dinosaurs should we get?
  That is a complex question to answer. Does our map have species restrictions? What dinosaurs did we start with? How much genome do we need before we can make a dinosaur? My answer is more of an in general, and later on I will go over each map on its own and that will have a more in-depth list of what species to obtain. Overall, I like herbivores more than carnivores. Except for you Compsagnathus, you are doing beautiful sweetie. I like them better because for every point, herbivores are just better. You can have more in one habitat, they are less likely to break out, they appeal to a wider array of guest types, and they are practically free to feed. Now, herbivores are more prone to disease, so keep an eye on them. I tend to follow this plan for each habitat:
  
• One Sauropod species
  
• One Ceratopsid species
  
• (maybe) One Anklyosaurid species
  
• One Ornithomimid species
  
• One Hadrosaur species
  
• Good Compy boy <3
  Check out my dinosaur enclosure guide to get more info.
  We should aim for dinosaurs with high appeal, that are efficient for the space they take up<the profit they earn, and ones that our guests enjoy. Dinosaurs like Galimimus, Anklyosaurus, Edmontosaurus, Chasmosaurus, Nodosaurus, Sinoceratops, Parasaurolophus, Compsagnathus, Camarasaurus, Apatasaurus, and Diplodocus are all species that make regular appearances in my parks.
  Don't go for Marine or Aviary dinosaurs yet. Again, they are expensive, and unlike our land friends they don't tolerate cohabitation well. Aviary is better on this, but Marine species aren't.

So you've made it! Congratulations! Against the odds you started your business, you have stood against the weather, the nature of our dinosaur friends, and you have made it!

At least... to four stars. And if I may go out on a limb here, you are now at the point where you are pulling your hair out over what that last star (or even half a star) is hanging on. We thought the 3 star block was bad, now it looks like a slice of cake. We've all been there buddy, that's why we are here to discuss the best ways to get out of this situation.

This is the last section of this guide, and briefly I'd just like to say, Thank you so much for everyone who has supported this guide! It means a lot, and all ya'lls suggestions have been super helpful! Now let's finish this out together.

Our path to 5 stars looks like it should be easy, but it may be filled with obstructions. I don't know what your park looks like right now. Maybe you have run out of space, maybe you have nothing more to research, maybe there isn't anywhere to add juuuuust one more dinosaur. For this section, I'm going to present the common problems you may be facing right now and I will offer solutions. For an "in general" help, just go back to the mid-game section and review our goals.

Problem: You have run out of space
This might be the hardest problem to solve, or the easiest. Depends on where you stand. If you have like, 20 million, you might be able to get away with bulldozing everything and starting from the beginning. You probably don't have that money, so we have to be more careful.

• Power plants- do you have a bunch of small/medium plants instead of 1 big one? Check, replace, take advantage of the new space.
  
• Optimize habitats- Did you give a certain paddock more space than needed for the dinosaurs enclosed? Make it smaller. What about the shape? Did you take advantage of every inch of space, or did you make perfectly rectangular enclosures? Make the fence go right up to the path, have it against the buildings, the shape don't matter, any extra inch of space is that much more fit you can make it. All those extra pieces might add up to another enclosure,
  
• One big dino- You may have run out of space because you went for 1 T-rex instead of several galimimus, 3 ceratopsids, 2 anklyosaurs, and 1 sauropod. Which is more likely to get you some appeal? (Maybe you have a carnivore only island, which again, why 1 T-rex and not multiple raptors?)
  
• Replace the dinos- You could try replacing certain dinosaurs with other species. What I mean by this is, for example, the niche a Nasutoceratops fits in within your massive herbivore habitat might be better filled by another Ceratopsid that has a higher base rating. This doesn't always work, because they might have different food needs.
  
• Amenities- Similar to power plants, try replacing multiple small amenities with one large one. Additionally, check that your amenities are optimized for maximum profit potential. THIS CHANGES! Check up on them because what worked 20 minutes ago might not be working now, your guest demographic changes.
  
• SPAM- This is an extreme reaction, but it has gotten me through two of the maps. Just f*cking spam those high ticket dinosaurs. Doesn't matter, forget everything else. On one map (carnivore only island), I spammed large carnivores. I think I had like 7 in one paddock and then I got my star. On the other island I had a marine pool, and I filled it with 10 attenborosaurus. XD It works!
  
  Problem: You are not making enough money
  Again, I don't know where you are right now. You might have a lot of money saved up, or you might just be scraping by. And "not enough" might mean you are just barely making a profit, or you are just a few thousand away from the minimum earning needed for 5 stars. Your profit is directly tied to your star rating! It is important!
  
• Amenities- You want big amenities, you want hotels near habitats, you want an array of ways to view your dinos (aka rides), and you want all of these things tailored to fit the demographic of guests that are attending them. You can best tailor your shops by going to one, and changing the nodes on it until it reaches a high profit. Just view the projected profit, and pick the nodes that give the best profit.
  
• Dinosaurs- Swap out low appeal dinosaurs for high appeal dinosaurs that can fulfill the same niche. Got 10 Struthiomimus? Why not 10 Galimimus? Got 5 Nasutoceratops? Why not 5 Sinoceratops?
  
• Your staff are too expensive- Review the staff you have. Sometimes I have found that a staff member I have trained up to level 5 has a higher salary then one I could hire at level 5. It is all rng, and really a luck of the draw. So any opportunity you have to swap out a staff for someone cheaper (but still as useful, or more useful) then do it. One Ability, "Altruistic Salary" is particularly helpful. There also is a building upgrade that reduces staff salary.
  
• Too much upkeep- You can help improve your profit by reducing your expenses. Check all your buildings, from amenities to operations, and see how efficient they are. You can apply upgrades to given buildings to reduce their upkeep.
  
  Problem:

This is a quick portion of the guide that addresses very common problems/struggles that people experience in the game.

Why do my dinosaurs keep fighting eachother?
Possible Answers:
1, They are not compatible species.
2, They are too crowded.
3, They do not have a clear alpha.
How to fix:
1, Check your dinosaurs comfort stats. You can see which species it is compatible with. Separate the incompatible species into separate enclosures.
2, Allow the dinosaurs to fight, sell the losers. Or just let them kill eachother until they are no longer crowded.
3, This occurs when your dinosaurs strength stats are all too similar, the alpha is the strongest amongst them. Synthesize and incubate an alpha for them with boosted strength stats.

Why is my herbivore starving?
Answer: Your herbivore does not have enough of its preferred food plants. The plants do more than just raise their comfort level, they literally feed your dino. Be sure to check enclosures periodically as their food plants will deplete over time.

My stupid dinosaur isn't exploring its enclosure fast enough and is becoming angry.
Answer: I love my sauropods but dang it those lumbering oafs don't walk around fast enough, so instead sometime I just use my transport team to move them to an unexplored corner of their exhibit. Or if you are extra mean, you can scare them with a helicopter into the right direction.

My dinosaur has cohabitation issues but it isn't with any species it dislikes.
Answer: Your dinosaur is crowded. Certain species can only handle sharing their territory with a small number of other species. You can expand the enclosure or you can try moving out other species to give your dino more space.

My carnivores that are supposed to get along are still fighting!
Answer: Sorry man, but dinos do be fighting tho. Even dinosaurs of the same species fight for no reason! The best you can do is either tolerate it or separate them if it is too annoying. You can also try letting them kill off a dinosaur, I find sometimes they just need to lower the population to become more comfy.

My dinosaur escaped but the fence was not broken?
Answer: Smaller dinosaurs can get through fences if the power is down or if the fence is a lower defense rating than the dinosaur. Even herbivores like Homalocephale do this! Little bugger slipped through the bars while I was repairing a substation. Either improve the fence strength or try to keep the power on, maybe an extra backup generator if your map is prone to storms.

Why do my dinosaurs keep attacking vehicles? Can I make them stop?
(Edit: The best thing to do to fix this issue that I have found is to assign a helicopter team to your ranger post. Yes you can do this, yes it is awesome. Helicopters assigned to a post will automatically protect vehicles and tranq escaping dinosaurs.)
They are attacking because they are dinosaurs doing what dinos do. Nothing to do about it. Aggressive species will always periodically try to show a ranger team who is boss. If the vehicles in question are tour vehicles like gyrospheres or safari jeeps, then I'm guessing you had them go through a carnivore exhibit right? Small carnivores are ok, but anything larger than that and they will always try to eat the tour vehicles. (Edit: Gyrospheres are impervious to damage. So gyrospheres are safe for any enclosure!)