Let's Build A Zoo Morality Guide

How Let's Build A Zoo's Morality System Works

One of the core mechanics of Let's Build A Zoo is its morality system. Both passive and active decisions -- for example, how well you pay your employees and choosing to take in rescue animals or not -- will help you accrue both good and evil morality. After gaining a certain number of good or evil morality points, you can then purchase upgrades for your zoo, such as an on-site farm (good) or a bacon factory (evil). 

Keep in mind, however, that while you can gain both positive and negative morality points, your overall morality score can only lean in one direction, which means that having made negative decisions can weigh down a positive morality score, or vice versa. 

You'll be prompted with decisions early on in Let's Build A Zoo. For example, an artist named Salvador will frequently ask if you would like him to paint one of your geese to look like a peacock or one of your bears to look like a panda. Doing so will make your zoo more attractive and can justify higher ticket prices. However, it's not moral and will award five evil points if you accept. Likewise, some black market traders will stop by the zoo, and you can either trade with them or turn them in.

It's important to decide which direction you want to go early on because participating in both sides can prevent you from accruing a high good or evil morality score, which will slow your Research Hub upgrades progress. 

Let's Build A Zoo Good Morality Guide

Good morality in Let's Build A Zoo largely consists of positive environmentalism, biodiversity, and sustainability, but it also takes into account how well you're treating your employees in addition to your zoo animals. Keep in mind that you won't want to participate in anything associated with evil morality or that will drag your score down, and sometimes it can take up to a month to reverse those negative effects.

How to Increase Good Morality in Let's Build a Zoo

Early on, there are several ways that you can slowly increase your positive morality so you can start getting upgrades in the Research Hub. Be careful with your money, though; you don't want to overpay your employees or buy too much luxurious animal food and end up taking out loans at the end of the week. 

• Pay your employees above the market rate. You don't need to go top-tier, but paying them above the current market rate will award continuous good morality points. 
• Feed your animals good-quality products. In the storage room, you can change each species' diet. By default, they'll be fed 100% the most basic, cheap option. Again, you don't want to go all-out with nutritious food because it can be costly. A good ratio to start with is 70% of the basic pellet or straw and split the remaining 30% among the better options. 
• Use good-quality food for visitors. Likewise, you can also adjust the quality of food at shops with the slider under the shop management menu.
• Donate unwanted animals. The animals can breed at an alarming rate, but you can get rid of unwanted animals by donating them (as opposed to euthanizing them) to another zoo. Click on the animal and hit the yellow but at the bottom of its page. 
• Increase nursing time. In the breeding facility, you can adjust how long newborns stay with their mothers before being transferred to an enclosure. Click on the Nursery followed by the breeding menu, then the breeding pair. You can adjust the nursing period under the configuration settings. 
• Choose the moral option during critical decisions. When you're prompted with a mandatory choice, choose the option marked with good morality, if there is one. 
• Report black market traders. Occasionally, black market animal traders will visit the zoo, notated by a special symbol above their head, and you can do business with them. Instead, you should report them to the police. 

As you surpass good morality milestones like 5, 10, or 20, you'll be able to purchase upgrades for your farm that will greatly expedite the other areas of your good morality, such as how much trash your zoo accumulates or where you source your electricity from. 

At 5 good morality points, you'll be able to get the Energy Pack - Wind Turbine in the Research Hub. Sticking several of these in a corner of your zoo will give you more good points toward your Electricity Consumption. At 10 points, you can unlock farming, and at 75 points, you'll be able to build a Farm Processor to use these crops as the zoo's food source. At 30 points, replace all garbage cans with recycling bins and at 40 points, you can start releasing animals back into the wild to rebuild animal populations by unlocking the Release Hub.

Let's Build A Zoo Evil Morality Guide

Other players may want to go for the more chaotic, sometimes sillier, and sometimes more horrifying route. Essentially, you can easily accrue morality points by being a terrible person -- feeding your animals with cheap food and paying your employees the absolute minimum. That's not to say it won't come with consequences, however. Visitors might notice that the animals aren't very happy and employees are much more likely to quit on you. 

How to Increase Evil Morality in Let's Build a Zoo

To quickly gain evil morality points in Let's Build A Zoo, you'll want to do basically the opposite of the good morality list above. 

• Give animals and visitors the worst food possible. Whatever the lowest-quality options are, go for them. 
• Choose the immoral options during critical decisions. Dress that lost labrador up like a lion and show him off for money instead of returning him to his owner.
• Decrease nursing time. Animals can go straight to the enclosure once they're born. 
• Increase trash output. Put trashcans everywhere and sell food and drinks as much as possible. More cola cans and candy bars equal more waste. 
• Pay employees lower than the market rate. Most of them have a low work ethic, anyway. 
• Euthanize unwanted animals. This will rack up evil points rather quickly. 
• Deal with black market traders. You can buy exotic animals from the black market traders and even sell some of your unwanted ones.

Going down the evil path will mostly have you turning to unethical options to make or save money. At 5 evil morality points, you can purchase an Electricity Siphon at the Research Hub to steal electricity from the government. Also at 5 points, deceased animals can be turned into "useful resources" by unlocking the Processor. At 35 points, snakes can be turned into attractive belts and at 75 points, you can turn your chickens into tasty wings.

Luckily, Let's Build A Zoo allows for multiple save files, for those of you who would like to impose the chaos of the evil zoo without corrupting your wholesome zoo.