-Get all staff facilities in a separate area from the guest path to be sure to avoid negative effects on their happiness. This way, you don't have to worry about spending money decorating them.

-GET TWO SMALL STAFF ROOMS. Keep it like this until you unlock a large staff room.

-Have restrooms close to food facilities.

-Make sure you have recycling and normal trash bins. Recycling bins improve your conservation rating, improving your overall rating, improving guest numbers and income.

-Place bins very close to food facilities. Guests will litter if there isn't a bin within an inch of their stupid ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ faces.

-Stay close to the spawners for free power until you have enough money to research and get solar panels and/or wind turbines. Transformers lower your conservation rating and cost more overall.

-Decorate the most in high traffic areas, and not in staff areas or thin walkways with fewer guests.

-Make sure your paths are nice and wide, and don't connect guest facilities too close to the path.
Have a small 'queue' line so they won't get in the way of other guests trying to walk.

-Keep everything tightly together and place plenty of benches and security cameras, especially as your zoo gets bigger.

-In zoos with frequent extreme weather, like snow or hot temperatures, have lots of indoor areas for guests to vibe, or place heaters/coolers along the paths.

-Use education speakers instead of the boards. They have a larger range and are overall more beneficial. Be careful to make sure they are not overlapping.

-DON'T START WITH EXHIBIT ANIMALS. You'll end up with low animal comfort, unnecessary feeding costs, and not enough donations to consistently raise your income. Start with habitat animals.

-Don't start with animals that get stressed easily by large amounts of guests. Before deciding on your first animal, check their relation with humans in the Zoopedia. Don't get animals that are Shy, and be careful with animals that are Neutral. Try to find animals listed as Confident, which are much harder to stress out by human presence. Also try to find animals that don't need very large enclosures, so guests can view them easier.

-Don't start with very expensive animals (above $1,200). Even if you can afford it, it's likely to have a high food cost and require a large, more luxurious space, which will make it harder to give guests good viewing points.

-Make sure your animals have perfect terrain, shelter, and social. You won't have high quality food or enrichment items at the start of the game, but you will start off with all plants and basic food and water equipment. You will rely on them to keep your animal happiness in the green until you can research enrichment items. Interspecies enrichment can help, but not with everything.

-Be careful with fences. The log fence DOES look pretty, and DOES fit well with everything, but it is climbable and rather weak. Use brick fence for your starting enclosure, better safe than sorry.

-Hire 2 keepers, 2 vets, 1 caretaker, 1 vendor, and 1 mechanic to start. You can get Educators and some more of each staff after you get your first animals and start making a steady income.

-Train your vets before everything else, to make research faster.

-Assign keepers and vets to work zones to prevent animals starving or dying in their own filth.

-As soon as you buy your first animals, start researching them so you can get enrichment items. Large herbivore food and toy enrichment (things like the antelopes, moose, zebras) enrich lots of animals and are worth getting.

-If you have spare vets, continue researching animals to get a valuable education bonus.

Get good