Life… Finds a Way

I feel it’s entirely necessary to preface this with the fact that I am not a huge Jurassic Park/Jurassic World fan.

When I was growing up I lived with my mother who had no interest in movies. For her, the odd rom-com accompanied by a torrent of soap operas and reality television was all she needed… Yawn.

Because of this, I missed a lot of classic movies; E.T., Terminator, Alien, Predator, Debbie does Dallas, Gremlins, Die Hard, Back to the Future and many many more, including Jurassic Park. They weren’t exactly of-my-time being that I grew up in the mid-to-late 90s, but they were classic movies that everybody around me had seen.

It wasn’t until I was around 16 that I took it upon myself to see many of these movies (I have not watched and will not watch E.T). Prior to this, I’d had a childish bias against films made before the year 2000, as the poor CGI and special effects were hard to ignore. Obviously, as I became older and more interested in creative pursuits I was able to appreciate the work that went into these movies and finally see what everybody loved about them.

My girlfriend, however, is a huge Jurassic Park fan. She grew up with an older brother who was the typical early 90s kid, obsessed with Dragonball and WWE (back then it was WWF), who got her interested in a lot of movies and shows at a young age, one of which was Jurassic Park.

Naturally, my girlfriend was excited to see how close we could get to a T-Rex in this game

With her at my side, I’ve been able to appreciate Jurassic Park a lot more, vicariously through her reactions and emotions, although with one crucial difference – I enjoyed the Jurassic World movies a lot, whilst my girlfriend and many other Jurassic Park fans have a strong hatred or distaste for them. This strikes me as a pretty classic reaction from fans of a classic IP whenever something new is made from it and is just one of the nuances of human nature.

Perhaps that reason is exactly why Jurassic World: Evolution fell off the map. In the run-up to this game’s release, there was a lot of excitement and chatter which slowly petered out as the release drew nearer until I didn’t hear a word about the game for the longest time and had completely forgotten it was a thing.

Cut to one week ago when, not long after finally platting Monster Hunter: World, I found myself in the local CeX looking for my next platinum and before I knew it, I was at home excitedly playing a Jurassic World theme park management game and having an amazing time!

I’d assumed the reviews for the game were bad but upon inspection, they’re pretty decent, everybody just stopped talking about it…

Man creates Dinosaurs

If you’ve ever played a theme park management simulator such as the well-loved Rollercoaster Tycoon series, then you’ll be fairly clued in to how Jurassic World: Evolution works.

You add attractions to your park, build guest facilities, and then manage the needs of the customers. The main and most important difference here, however, is that the attractions are dinosaurs… and they have needs too!

There are six islands on the game, five of them are smaller islands as part of a small archipelago known as the “five deaths” or something equally ominous. These islands are where the majority of the gameplay comes in and your main objectives in the game are tied to managing parks on each of the five islands; Isla Matanceros, Isla Muerta, Isla Tacano, Isla Pena and Isla Sorna. The sixth island is Isla Nublar, the main setting of the original Jurassic Park as well as the first Jurassic World.

There is a great selection of over 40 dinosaurs to incubate

Isla Nublar is not part of the main campaign and is instead a huge open expanse upon which you can build your dream park with unlimited money, a totally open and free sandbox mode.

An island setup typically begins with a “Hammond Creation Lab”, within which you may incubate, hatch and release dinosaurs which you’ve collected enough genomes for. To collect genomes you must launch an expedition from an expedition centre to one of many real-life excavation sites in order to recover dinosaur fossils, from which you can extract DNA.

You need around 50% of a dinosaur’s genome in order to begin incubating them, the rest is presumably replaced with frog DNA or whatever. Once you have 100% of a genome you can make a totally authentic dinosaur, which visitors enjoy – in moderation. Visitors hate it when you have the same dinosaur multiple times and your island rating will take a hit if you don’t mix things up. However, sometimes, in order to fulfil a dinosaur’s social needs, you need a group of them. Stegosaurus, for example, is uncomfortable unless in a pack of five.

There is a long list of dinosaur needs to monitor

So how do you get around this? Well, we can actually manipulate a dinosaur’s DNA and include DNA from other existing animals to create a stronger dinosaur, or a more resilient dinosaur, or a dinosaur that lives for a very long time. By changing the DNA markup of each of the dinosaurs in a herd to be different from the others, you can avoid being penalised for repetition but also be awarded for making the dinosaurs more exciting to the visitors.

Oh, and, boy are these visitors picky. If I had the chance to go and see real-life dinosaurs I wouldn’t give 2 gender-fluid frogs whether or not there’s a good selection… They’re dinosaurs. But the visitors get very antsy if they need to walk too far, so you add in monorail systems, but they complain they can’t see the dinosaurs well enough so you add viewing platforms but then they complain there are no good fast food places nearby so you build a fast food joint and then they complain they can’t do any shopping. It’s ridiculous, mostly because there are actual dinosaurs here ya dum-dums but I get it, right, the game wouldn’t be a challenge without the world’s pickiest guests.

Luckily there is a management view which allows you to see where each guest need is most localised so you can make decisions about the best places to build different facilities.

Thank god for Management View

Of course, the accommodation, fun, food, drink, shopping and transport needs of the guests aren’t the only things you’ll need to worry about. As I mentioned before, the dinosaurs themselves have needs to attend to. They obviously need water and food, the food requirements being different depending on whether a dinosaur eats meat, vegetation or fish. But they also have environmental needs, some like a lot of grassland where others prefer to have a forested area as cover, there’s a basic landscaping tool in the game which allows you to add and remove grass, water or trees. There’s also the option to add dry craggy areas or coastal sections, but I never needed those options. The whole time I was playing the game not once did a dinosaur want something other than grassland, water or forest.

It doesn’t stop there, either, the dinosaurs also have social needs. Some dinosaurs don’t mind where they are or who they’re with, they’re just good – Struthiomimus for example. Others, like the Tyrannosaurus Rex, don’t mind others being around, as long as it’s not another T-Rex whereas some dinosaurs such as the Stegosaurus don’t like being away from other Dinosaurs of their species. The social needs of a dinosaur were the most frustrating and time-consuming thing to manage and often led to a lot of issues.

If any dinosaur’s needs are not met, their comfort rating drops. Each dinosaur has their own comfort threshold and if their comfort drops below that threshold they go berserk and do everything they can to break out of their enclosure.

The comfort on this lonely Kentrosaurus is dropping.

If a Dinosaur does manage to get out they will attack your guests – even some herbivores, especially if they’re uncomfortable – so you’ll need to take some precautions. Guest shelters will give your guests somewhere to run to in the event of a Dinosaur escape or a tropical storm. Each guest shelter has a coverage radius which will need to cover most fo the island, at least where the attractions and facilities are.

To sedate the dinosaur and move it back to its enclosure you will need an ACU centre which provides you with one single Helicopter and access to an infinite supply of transport helicopters. Your one lone helicopter can be used to tranquilise dinosaurs, but it can only tranquilise one at a time and you can’t get more helicopters. Often it can take a while for them to land the shot and tranq the dino, too, so it can really be a frustratingly useless tool sometimes but it’s the only way to subdue a rampaging dino.

Luckily you can manually tranquilise a dino if necessary.

Once the dino is tranq’d you can call in a cargo helicopter of sorts to come in and transport your dino back to their pen. These transport helicopters can only move tranquilised dinosaurs and dead dinosaurs. They can either transport the tranquilised dinosaur to a specific location or sell it, unless the dinosaur you selected is dead, then they’ll just take it away for you.

Of course, moving the dinosaurs back to their enclosure is pointless if you don’t fix the broken fence they escaped through, which you cannot do without a Ranger Station.

A Ranger station will give you access to up to three Ranger Jeeps. Each of the Ranger jeeps can be given up to 2 tasks (this can be increased to a maximum of seven per Jeep), which include the folowing:

Restocking Dinosaur feeders

Fixing broken fences or facilities damaged by Dinosaurs or Storms

Medicating dinosaurs to heal them or cure them of diseases

Rebooting power stations or gates when they have been sabotaged

So as you can tell, there are a lot of things that can go wrong on your island, a very frustrating and stressful list of potential ways the game can screw you over, and the Ranger Station is crucial to resolving most of them.

On a lighter note, however, the Ranger Jeeps can be manually driven. You can get in a jeep and drive around at dinosaur level, shooting them with healing darts or taking awesome photographs with the ranger camera, it is one of the more fun things to do in the game and a great way to burn a little time in the game’s slower sections.

Manually driving around your park is some of the most fun the game has to offer.

You can also manually perform any of the tasks they can be assigned as this can sometimes be faster when you’re in a pinch. The ACU Helicopter can also be piloted, and you can manually tranquilise dinosaurs, which is sometimes preferable to waiting for the AI to figure it out.

How can we sit in the light of discovery and not act?

A common theme in the Jurassic Park/World movies is people vying to use the Dinosaurs for their own gain, be it Military purposes or Scientific Discovery, everybody and their Dog wants a dino.

The same can be said about Jurassic World: Evolution. There are three main factions to manage; the Science Division, the Entertainment Division and the Security Division, this is essentially Story Mode.

There are 15 missions in the game, one for each of the three factions on each of the five main islands. To unlock the missions you need to complete contracts for each of these factions to raise their satisfaction, this prevents them from sabotaging your park out of petty jealousy and also eventually unlocks their missions and various unlockables at each faction-specific threshold.

Reaching certain thresholds with each division unlocks various rewards.

The contracts will appear at random throughout normal gameplay and you can hold up to 3 contracts at once, but every 2 minutes you can manually request a contract from the faction of your choice if one or more of the factions are unhappy with you.

Missions are essentially much larger contracts which can be very tricky to complete as they often require more money or dinosaurs than you currently have, and for the sake of drama, they usually end with some of your dinosaurs going berserk.

The missions are increasingly difficult as the game goes on, but I wouldn’t say they were ever too difficult to accomplish with a moderate amount of effort.

An act of sheer will – Jurassic World: Evolution Trophy Guide

Getting the Platinum for Jurassic World: Evolution requires about 30-40 hours of park management which, while fun, can be insanely frustrating at times but it’s somewhat addictive. Even though you’re almost always overwhelmed with things to manage, it’s hard to stop, the Platinum will come at you far quicker than you might expect.

Nevertheless, there are a few tips and tricks that I learnt throughout my Platinum journey that I’d like to share in the hopes that it helps others have a much easier time than I did.

Also, keep in mind that you will need to reach at least 4.5 stars on Isla Nublar for the “I read your book” trophy. More on that in the misc trophies section below.

With every island, there are 3 things you will want to do before moving on to the next island;

Reach 5 stars: The park has an overall rating of 5 stars, this is determined by two other 5-star ratings; your Dinosaur Rating and your Facility Ratings.

The park has an overall rating of 5 stars, this is determined by two other 5-star ratings; your Dinosaur Rating and your Facility Ratings. Complete the Faction Missions: As I stated earlier, each faction has a mission per island that you can unlock by doing contracts for them.

As I stated earlier, each faction has a mission per island that you can unlock by doing contracts for them. Get all Factions to maximum level: There’s a gauge for each faction which indicates your relationship with them. It is increased by completing contracts and at certain thresholds, you will unlock research, dinosaurs, upgrades, genetic enhancements and more, including the missions themselves. If you can fill these gauges for each faction you will receive a memo for the InGen Database, which is vital for a trophy named “I read your book”.

These stats are the key to your success, monitor them closely.

Now, don’t panic, if this seems too difficult then don’t forget you can come back to an island at any time to pick up where you left off, so if you’re struggling to complete all of the above, you can still move on to the next island to progress and unlock more upgrades, dinosaurs and facilities. This will make things easier once you come back to your island to complete the few things you didn’t the first time.

Getting a 5-star park rating in Jurassic World: Evolution

Reaching a 5-star rating on an island can be really really tricky at times, but there are a few tips and tricks which I learned that you can use to make it a little easier:

Don’t incubate duplicate dinosaurs: Many herbivores need to be in a pack to be happy, but repetition affects your Dino rating more than you’d think. Try to ensure that every dinosaur of the same genus that you incubate has a slight genetic difference from the others, even if it’s just their skin pattern. Also, try to start a dino which is 100% authentic and unedited as you will get authenticity points too.

Modify your dinosaurs as much as you can: As you’re modifying a dino you will see that it has a “rating” stat. This statistic goes a long way to improve your overall dino rating so you will want to get this as high as possible, but as I’m sure you’ve noticed, this causes the incubation success rate to drop dramatically.

You want to try and keep the success rate at least over 50% while getting the dinosaur’s rating stat as high as possible. Later in the game, you can unlock upgrades for the Hammond Creation Labs which will allow you to boost the success rate. Putting 3 Success Rate 2.0 upgrades on a creation lab will add a 60% success rate boost to all dino incubations, meaning even if your dino’s success rate is 0% you still have a 60% chance of success. With the Success rate 3.0 upgrade this boost is increased to 90%, with which I was incubating dinosaurs with a rating of 500 and a success rating of -19% and still having success!

Have a diverse range of dinosaurs: You will actually be penalised for having too many of the same dinosaur. Which is irritating because as I said before, many Herbivores need to be in a pack to be happy. Some only need to be in a group of 2, but some such as the Stegosaurus need to be in a group of 5 to be satisfied.

Many herbivores can live together peacefully but Carnivores tend to pick fights if put with other dinosaurs

Managing this can be difficult as you’ll also need to ensure they don’t have too much space in an enclosure. For example, I thought I was being very clever by creating a huge herbivore paddock with a variety of herbivore herds inside and plenty of room for them to explore. This is detrimental, however, as some dinosaurs are so absolutely moronic that they will wander away from their pack and then get lost, becoming lonely and then aggressive to the point that they will try to break out of the enclosure, rather than searching for their herd. Incredibly frustrating.

To get around being penalised for this requirement of repetition, you will need to have as much diversity on the island as possible, try to have 2 similar genuses of Dinosaur per paddock, such as Nodosaurus and Ankylosaurus, Diplodocus and Brachiosaurus or Kentrosaurus and Stegosaurus, as they have similar needs and will be more likely to get along.

Let them fight!: There is a “combat Infamy” rating which increases your dinosaur rating. You can simply put two or more hyper-aggressive species together and let them fight, the victor will gain combat infamy and the guests will want to see that dinosaur.

Are you not entertained!?

A good idea is to breed a specially modified combat dino, a tough one like a Spinosaurus or a T-Rex. Then, put unmodified aggressive carnivores in the same pen and then let them fight for dominance. Once your modified dino wins, release another one. It will increase popularity with your guests and even increase income per minute.

Have good Transport: The transport rating is determined by how far visitors need to walk from the entrance. Having a monorail station right near the entrance will make the visitors extremely happy, you will then need to have more stations near all the main attraction hubs on the island.

You will also want to build the monorail tracks so that they go over every possible enclosure, this will mean your visitors can view the dinos from the monorail and will increase your dinosaur visibility rating without the need for extra viewing platforms.

Even you will get to enjoy the view from the Monorail

Doing this is extremely beneficial when it comes to completing contracts too, as the visibility rating will fluctuate as the monorail trains move throughout the park, meaning you will often get contracts asking you to increase dinosaur visibility which will then often be completed without you changing anything when the visibility fluctuates upwards as a train passes over an enclosure.

Use Management View: The third option down on the left-hand menu will open the management view. With this, you can see which of your attractions have certain needs, for example, whether or not a viewing platform has enough food options nearby. Using this, you can determine the best place to put stores and restaurants.

When opening a new store or restaurant, you can select which item you’d like to sell and how much it should cost. Always select the most expensive item and sell it for double the cost. For example, selling the $20 Giganto-steak in restaurants for $40.

You also have the option of hiring extra staff, which will increase the location’s visitor capacity. You will only need to do this if the facility reaches capacity, if you see that a facility is full, hire more staff until there are less visitors than the maximum capacity.

Remember to leave room for a Hotel: Building hotels increases the park’s capacity, there are no values for this, but you can see whether visitors think you have poor, good or great capacity and buying hotels is the only thing which will increase this. If you don’t have at least “Good” capacity, you need to build a Hotel. It’s worth noting that on Island Pena you don’t need a Hotel to reach 5 stars, but on Isla Sorna I needed 5 hotels!

I wasted a lot of time trying to find room for more Hotels on Isla Sorna

These Hotels are pretty enormous so you will want to keep them in mind and ensure you don’t use up all of the available space on the island without considering where you will put a Hotel.

Hotels also need to have plenty of shopping and food facilities nearby so keep that in mind too.

You can give your park a half-star rating boost by closing the park: If you’re struggling to get further than 4.5 stars, you can actually close the park temporarily by interacting with the entry point, which will drop your facility rating to 0 stars. If you wait a few minutes and re-open the park, your facility ratings will be recalculated from scratch and be boosted quite a lot for a short time, before settling back to 4.5 stars again.

You don’t need the park to stay at 5 stars for the associated trophies, you simply need to reach 5 stars at some point.

Reaching maximum level with all divisions in Jurassic World: Evolution

Reaching maximum level with every faction can take a while and often you’ll be given unreasonable requests, but most of the contracts are similar, unearth a new fossil, increase visibility, increase shelter coverage, increase revenue per second, etc.

As such, there are a few tips and tricks for ensuring you receive easily completable contracts.

It has been my experience that a lot of the time, a contract will be related to something which your park is lacking. For example, if dinosaur visibility in your park is low, you’ll be asked to increase it.

Dinosaur Visibility: I said this before, but in-case you skipped to this section, monorail systems contribute to dinosaur visibility but because they move around the park, the visibility rating will fluctuate. Try to ensure your monorail systems pass over as many enclosures as possible so that when you’re asked to increase dinosaur visibility, the fluctuating visibility from the monorails will eventually increase the value above the requested threshold, completing the contract.

Fossil Expeditions: It’s important to note that if you’re running low on cash, but you have another island which has more disposable income, you can switch to that island to pay for expeditions or research which you will then benefit from across all your islands. If you’re asked to launch an expedition for a certain type of fossil or increase a certain genome to a specific percentage you can simply switch islands, pay for the expedition, then switch back.

Fossil centres have universal storage too, so any fossils you discover on another island will be available at the fossil centres on every other island. Therefore, any unusable fossils you find can be sold on the island where you need more money, this is a great way to cheat the system a little.

Expeditions are the only way to research dinosaur genomes.

Increasing income: Early in an island build, this is as simple as building new facilities, or adding a new dinosaur, however, once you start to run out of space it’s a little more difficult.

What you can do, once you have a bit more disposable income and don’t need all your facilities to be selling the most expensive item, is to start selling the cheapest item for double it’s cost at a few facilities. This way, if you’re asked to increase your income for a contract you can quickly just start selling the most expensive item again and gain a big income boost, completing the contract,

If you follow all fo the tips above you should start to have a much easier time managing your parks and reaching the trophy-required milestones.

Uh, Well, There it is – Jurassic World: Evolution Miscellaneous Trophy Guide

Once you’ve got 5 stars and had 100% faction support on every island, it’s time to get those miscellaneous trophies. Many of these revolve around photographing dinosaurs doing certain things, and almost all of them can be easily completed on the sandbox island; Isla Nublar. Below, I’ll tell you how.

A Kind of Biological Preserve Take a Photograph worth more than $100000

This sounds more difficult than it is, but I managed to land the trophy with minimal effort. You get more money based on how many dinosaurs are in a photo, what kinds of dinosaurs are in a photo, and what they are doing. I managed this a few times, the easiest 100k photo I got was from photographing a group of 5 long-neck dinos together in the same photo, but the chances are, you’ll get this trophy when going for one of the other photography trophies…

This is Very Dangerous Territory Photograph a Spinosaurus fighting a T-Rex

Learning Where She Fits in the Food Chain Photograph an Indominus Rex fighting a T-Rex

These two trophies can be done as soon as you can incubate both required dinosaurs. It’s worth noting they won’t fight if you’re waiting for it. I wasted a good 15 minutes following the Spinosaurus and T-Rex around waiting for them to fight but all they wanted to do was roar at me over and over again, but once I gave up and drove the Jeep back out of their enclosure, not 20 seconds later they were at each other’s throats, literally…

So, of course, I raced back in and snapped the photo. I even opened the game’s limited photo mode and snapped a few cooler pics for the sake of it.

You could also easily do this on Isla Nublar, just build a power station and a creation lab and then incubate the required dinosaurs.

You can get much cooler angles in photo mode since time is frozen.

Where’s the Goat? Photograph a T-Rex eating “Live Bait”

Look How it Eats! Photograph a T-Rex hunting a Gallimimus

These ones can be very tricky because as I said, the Carnivores won’t do anything except roar at you when you’re nearby, so you’ll need to keep your distance while monitoring what the T-Rex does and also managing your park. I got pretty lucky both times, but here’s how to set up the right conditions at least:

In the Feeders section in the Enclosures menu, you will find a Live Bait Feeder, which spits live goats out into the enclosure, it’s one of two ways to feed carnivores. You just need to snap a photo of the Dino eating a goat.

Same goes for Galimimus, except you will need to incubate a Galimimus and then release it into the T-Rex enclosure. To increase your chances of the T-Rex eating a Galimimus, place a few in there and remove the T-Rex’s other food sources.

1 goat = 1 bite

It sounds tricky but if you set the conditions up just right for yourself then you can more than likely snap the photo eventually. If you’re still struggling, consider just using Isla Nublar to construct the perfect conditions. 50 Galimimus, 1 T-Rex and no other food, for example. It’s also important to note that with the Galimimus trophy, you don’t need to catch the moment the dino gets eaten, like with the goat. You just need the moment the T-Rex starts hunting the Galimimus, you will be able to tell as the photo summary will say “T-Rex hunting Galimimus”.

Smarter Than Primates Photograph Two Velociraptors Socialising.

This is pretty easy because they tend to do this as soon as there are two of them. So if you release two at the same time with a Ranger Jeep in position, you can quickly jump to manual driving mode and then snap the photo as soon as they interact with each other. I just never got around to it and ended up doing this in Isla Nublar.

Velociraptor photograph results screen

Who’s Hungry? Photograph a Carnivore attacking a visitor

I Hate Being Right All the Time Photograph a herbivore attacking visitors

Visitor attacks cost you a lot of money in lawsuits so you really want to avoid this as much as possible, however, if you have a lot of disposable income and a dinosaur gets loose, it might be worth taking the time to follow it around to get the photo when it attacks somebody. I was usually pretty on-the-ball when a dino escaped though and didn’t get much chance to get these trophies, so I ended up doing the herbivore one on Isla Nublar, here’s how:

I made a long path from the entry point with a viewing platform at the end, to coax visitors into walking down the path. I then made a creation lab without an enclosure and released a Pentaceratops. Pentaceratops are incredibly fickle and annoying dinosaurs to manage, and without any other Pentaceratops around they quickly become aggressive, so naturally, this free-roaming and lonely dinosaur soon went to attack the visitors and I was waiting nearby; camera at the ready.

Doing this with a carnivore would be much easier as they would attack visitors regardless in no time.

The animations are pretty dramatic and drawn-out giving you enough time to snag a photo.

Accept You’re Never Actually in Control Power slide with the Ranger Team’s vehicle for 3 seconds (within a 5-second window)

I Thought You Failed Your Driver’s Test Manually drive a total distance of 25km in the Ranger Team’s vehicle

Must Go Faster Drive the Ranger Team’s vehicle at top speed for 5 consecutive seconds

Hold on to Your Butts! Get 5 seconds of air time in the Ranger Team’s vehicle (within a 20-second window)

The drifting one is super easy, just jump in a Ranger vehicle, pick up some speed, and then hold to drift. Do this a couple of times and you should get the trophy with ease.

Driving 25km is pretty easy too, and if you get a straight bit of road long enough you can get the top speed trophy too, just slam on the acceleration and go for it! I got the 25km trophy by manually doing a resupply run to every feeder on my island a few times in my downtime, snapping photos of dinosaurs for a bit of extra cash on the way.

The tougher one is getting 5 seconds of airtime. There were plenty of times that I tried to achieve it but the jeep would crash and roll, kicking me out of controlling it, or I just couldn’t do it fast enough. In the end, I went into Isla Nublar and drew something of a wifi-symbol shape on the ground with the raise terrain tool and then drove over that, securing the trophy.

My custom ramps

Shoot Her! Manually tranquilize a dinosaur with the ACU helicopter

Shoooot Heeer! Tranquilize a dinosaur from a distance of at least 125m

Get a Clear Shot Manually perform a headshot with the ACU helicopter

All of these trophies involve shooting dinosaurs while in manual control of a helicopter or jeep under certain conditions. They’re all very easy to acquire and you should have no trouble identifying the perfect situation to jump into manual control of a vehicle.

I’m sure you can likely manufacture the perfect situation for many of these on Isla Nublar but the best thing to do is to just keep these trophies in the back of your mind so you’re ready to get them whenever you can, I find it highly unlikely that you won’t be able to do these within your campaigns across the 5 main islands. I myself had these by my second island.

Now You’re John Hammond House at least 50 dinosaurs on a single island

Creation is an Act of Sheer Will Release at least one of every dinosaur genus in the game

These two might occur naturally, for me I got them both on Isla Sorna (though I did give a little extra push for the latter one) but in theory, this would be incredibly easy to do on Isla Nublar. Just set up a few large power stations and as many creation labs as you care to and then incubate as many different dinosaurs as possible and release them into the open. You should pop those trophies in no time at all.

I Read Your Book Unlock all InGen Database entries in the game

This trophy is the worst of them all. In my run, I hadn’t bothered maxing out my reputation with the 3 factions on each island and ended up having to play every island for at least 30 minutes to an hour each in order to get the InGen database entries they unlock. I also wasn’t aware I’d need to play Isla Nublar at all, but some of the locations and characters database entries don’t unlock unless you reach at least 4.5 stars on Isla Nublar. Luckily, if you just place enough facilities and some very highly rated dinosaurs in the park you’ll get that in no time without having to use up all the space available.

Each InGen database entry has its own unlock criteria which the game doesn’t tell you, luckily there’s an incredibly handy list of each entry and their unlock requirements here which I used a lot.

It’s also worth noting that you will want to run as many expeditions as you can. Once an expedition location has been fully excavated, the location will have a small green checkmark over it. I excavated every location until they were all green ticks in order to ensure I had all of the palaeontology database entries. One, in particular – buried treasure – turned out to be incredibly elusive, but once I saw that the icon for these was Mayan-looking coins I focused my excavations in South America and had no luck. Turns out I eventually got them from Portugal, so try that if you’re having the same difficulty.

While I found this game incredibly addictive and was excited to jump on it whenever possible, I can’t say it was a totally pleasant experience. Most of the game’s length comes from waiting for dinosaurs to incubate or research to be completed or for an excavation to return, so half the time you’ll find yourself with nothing to do and at other times you’ll have far too much to manage at once and not enough resources to manage it.