Building and expanding your Zoo in

While we already brought you a complete guide to the new Zoo Goals in CityVille, the building itself has been released officially in the game this week, and we've got all of the info you need to bring in the tourists with your habitats full of wild creatures! The Zoo is acquired at level 17 or higher, and you'll start with just a basic Habitat, being given to you Karen, a new character (and animal lover) in the game.

The Habitat is a square item, requiring six energy to build. Building it will complete one part of the first Zoo Goal, which should be noted only has two of the three tasks required that we initially believed. You'll only need to build the Jungle Habitat and then Place a Jungle Animal to finish the goal. To "place" the Jungle Animal, you'll need to click on your Zoo to be taken to the building's interior, as seen at the top of this post. You'll be given an animal for free (it can be random), and can place the animal into your Zoo by simply clicking on the "Place" button underneath it.

As the Zoo is basically a glorified collection feature, you'll need to collect a set of Jungle animals before being able to unlock other "habitats" within the Zoo. To collect more animals, you'll be able to post simple news feed requests for new animals. If your friends help you, they'll have a chance of receiving an animal as well, but you can only ask for more animals every eight hours. For each new animal you collect, you'll receive an increase to the Zoo's payout, with the Zoo working as any other business. That is, the Zoo has a built-in timer, and when the timer runs down, you'll collect the profits from your Zoo, resetting the timer.


While you may be satisfied with the way your Jungle Habitat looks on its own, as you complete the Zoo goals, you'll also have a chance of unlocking zoo-specific decorative items. The first item, for instance, is the TIcket Booth, which is an entirely separate item, with its own (large) footprint, that must be placed next to the Zoo to have any real effect. These types of decorations will only interact with the Zoo, and therefore must be placed within the same general area. In our example, the Ticket Booth adds an 11% bonus to your current Zoo payout.

As for the other zoo-themed items released, they are split between those that work as the Ticket Booth, only giving a bonus to the Zoo, and those that work as stand-alone businesses. The businesses are the Zoo Cafeteria and the Zoo Gift Shop. The Cafeteria costs 6,000 coins, requires 130 Goods and offers 585 coins when the Goods are used. Meanwhile, the Gift Shop costs less at 5,500 coins, and only requires 80 Goods to function. You'll gain 352 coins by default each time the Goods are used.

So far, the only other habitat available to unlock in the Zoo is the Savannah Habitat, but an in-game menu confirms that more are coming soon. We'll make sure to let you know when other animals are added to the Zoo, but for now, start asking your friends for these Jungle animals to start your Zoo off with a bang!