Parkitect

Parkitect

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Know the mechanics and beat the campaigns
By 3.141592653589793
Tips, and tricks that I have learned after I finished the game.
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Introduction

Have you been having an anxiety playing campaigns lately? Have you been worried about not get all of the goals in time? Well you have come to the right guide!

Disclaimer: This guide will heavily focus on beating a campaign in time. I personally think that for beating the goals, you have to trade something off, or it won't be optimal enough to beat it in time. Although, you still have chances to touch up or edit your park after you have finished it.
Know the Goals
Goals of the campaigns are consisted of:
  • Have n guests
  • Sell n tickets
  • Have no debts
  • Complete by month of year n
  • Have x rating of n%
    • Overall rating
    • Experience rating
    • Price rating
    • Happiness rating
    • Cleanliness rating
    • Decoration rating
  • Have operating profit of n$
  • Have m coasters with ≥n excitements
  • No building while the game is paused (Taste of Adventure)
  • No tracked ride blueprints (Taste of Adventure)
  • Own n tiles of land (Taste of Adventure)
Several goals are pretty straightforward to do, some however, is quite tricky than others.
— Have n guests
Having n guests in your park is pretty straightforward, but lots of people are still worried when it comes with a ridiculously high number. From my experience, there are some game mechanics that will keep your guest count at bay. Which, surprisingly, a very simple solution to this is to build more rides — literally anything; calm, thrill, coaster, you name it. After that, you will see a number of guests increase over time. You now should keep track on the guests' incrementation, and add rides accordingly. Then you should pass this goal easily.

One mistake I personally think (because I literally have no data of others' style of gameplay) people do is to put a small amount of rides in the park — let's say this one simple sentence:

JUST PUT ALL OF THE DAMN RIDES DOWN

Putting all of the possible, unlocked rides down in the campaign will make it much easier to play. One benefit is that, you literally don't have to care about anything and lo and behold, 200+ guests are suddenly flocking into your park! From this point later on, it should be an easy, measurable thing for you to plan about putting more rides into your park and increase the guest accordingly. Having 2 or 3 of the same rides in the park is okay, but don't forget to research more interesting rides.

TLDR: Just put more ride into your park, I don't care if it's already there or not, just make it fancier or less fancy with its configurations.
— Sell n tickets
This one is quite easier to do than the previous goal. You should know that by selling n tickets does not mean that you must have n guests in your park.

I think you get the strategy now, right?

If the game ask you for:
Sell at least 1,200 park tickets (Orchard Acres)
You can just wait the guest count to hit 600-ish, and close all of the ride and the park. After the last guest left, reopen everything and do some ads, now you can hit the goal quite quickly. Be careful that this method can make you guests demanding for their money back. So, preparing some loans is advised. And after the guests are back, just pay off that loan.

TLDR: Close, open, repeat
— Have no debts
JUST PAY OFF THE DEBTS BRO. You should not take loans with high interest rate AT ALL COSTS. Just take a small loan, build a coaster (or continuing one you stuck), and pay it back — simple enough right? You should not fail the campaign for this simple mistake, or I'll be very worried about your life. Also, you can consider "refinancing" your big loan with a smaller loan with a smaller interest rate. This way you can minimize the fees taking out of your pocket every months.

TLDR: Take one with small interest rate. After taking one, paying it back should be your highest priority.
— Complete by month of year n
Well, we are all here for this, right :D? In my opinion, the campaign should be done wayyyyy before the deadline if you play it very goal-based. So just, keep reading this guide.

TLDR: Just keep reading this guide.
— Have x rating of n%
Rating is one of the nerve-wracking things that you have to keep your eyes on. After you opened your park, you should see the stats update after some months later. This goals are separated into these types:
  • Overall, Experience, and Happiness: You should keep watching for guests' experience in general. If they're hungry, more food stall. If they think something is pricy, lower the price of it — it's that simple. Use the tab "thoughts" in the guests overview window to see if your guests are happy or not with anything, and help them accordingly. After the fix, you guests should be happier in no time. As for happiness, Some shops like balloons shop or snowcones shop can increase your guests' happiness. The entertainers can of course do that too.

  • Price: There are several things you have to take note here

    • Ride price: You should always follow the formula "Excitement × 1.5 ÷ 10 = Ride Price". This will make the most out of your park. Yet, if the guests are not happy with it, you can try -0.5$ and wait to see if they are happy with it.

    • Shop price: Mostly, starting with 3$ is fine (map for 2$ though). Then, if guests are happy with the price, try to +0.5$ until the guests are not talking about its price. That should be the optimal spot for it.

    • Entry price:

      • If you are pay-per-ride park, try "Number of Rides × 0.75 = Entry Price" formula, and ±0.5$ accordingly.

        PS: This is also up to what you built, a calm ride and a coaster will have a different impact on the entry price so don't trust me too much on my formula.

      • If you are pay-per-entry park, your strategy should be trying to maximize the entry price as much as you can. So, you can try to +10$ until guests are not happy, then -5$ until they are happy, and ±1$ to fine tune your price.

    If price rating become your problem when you're about to finish, hang tight, and make everything free. This problem should be solved in no time.

  • Cleanliness: If the path is very disastrous (yes, I am talking about Disaster Peaks). Delete the path and put the new one down and all of the trash should be buried into the ground. Or if you want more of a cheap (?) but painfully long solution, hire tons — I mean TONS of janitors and just watch them suffer. Enough janitors in your park should not raise any problems about this at all. Also, put down tons of bins in your park. This will make the guests not to littering around and hence, make cleanliness score better.

  • Decoration: If you are a gifted builder, take some pause and build some glamourous building. But If you're not, let me tell you that there are tons of trees, plants, rocks, props, you know what to do (NO — just don't place it down, SPAM THEM). You should keep in mind that some decoration like umbrellas (in pavilion section) will decrease the decoration rating (maybe because it obstructs the view?), so take a peek at decoration rating after you build something sometimes.

    Also, by having bad decoration score in some places does not necessary mean that it will contribute to the whole score. Remember that the score of everything that the game use is from your guests thoughts. If your guests didn't have to walk near that place, it will not affect anything.

So, TLDR: Mainly, just monitor your guest happiness and needs with guests overview window, and help them accordingly. Use formulas for prices, hire enough janitors, and spam the decorations.
— Have operating profit of n$
If you have not known yet, please always use the formula "Excitement × 1.5 ÷ 10 = Ride Price". This will make you hit this goal and make your park profitable in no time. So you can do more quick research, add more rides or decorations to your park, and thus, make your park more popular and more profitable.

TLDR: Excitement × 1.5 ÷ 10 = Ride Price
— Have m coasters with ≥n excitements
Finally, my favorite topic.

To make your coasters super exciting, you should learn about how excitements are calculated, and use it to our advantage.

Please keep in mind that, I write this by the information I've got from Coaster Stat Calculation Guide - Parkitect Wiki (fandom.com)[parkitect.fandom.com] which might not be exact but definitely help with my gameplay and help me beating the goals.

There are 2 types of excitements:
  1. Intrinsic Excitement: This type of excitement is calculated base on the coaster properties and stats like coaster type, ride time, number of drops, g forces, etc. This type of excitement has 2 important things for you to remember:

    1. Make it longer than 35 seconds. If it's not, it can get a penalty up to -75% of its excitement rating. Now you know why your short, ugly wild mouse sucks.
      So how can I make mine longer? (No, I'm not talking about your thing)

      • If you have only 1 train (maybe fitting one or two block breaks is not ideal, etc.), you can try to lower your "chainlift speed". With lower chainlift speed, the car should now be somewhat slower and make it longer. If it's still not make the time problem better somehow, then your coaster sucks, tear it down and rebuild a new one (jk, just find something to adjust so it's longer alright?).

      • If you have ≥2 trains, adjust the "minimum/maximum waiting time" so the finishing train have to wait longer to get back to the station, hence, more ride time. I personally like to set the "wait for" option to be "full", which will make your train wait for guests until it's full for a "maximum waiting time". This will improve your throughput, and make ride time more longer because the finishing train will have to wait for guests. So, it's a win-win. But if your ride is very popular, and guests fill up super fast, adjust the "minimum waiting time". It will force train to not depart even if it's full until it reach that time.

    2. Don't make it above 90 intensities, the excitement rate will get a penalty too. How much? the wiki said they don't know so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

  2. Extrinsic Excitement: This type of excitement is up to you, yes, YOU. You can get this score in a pure score which will make your calm, low intensity coaster to have 50-ish excitement! So, what are the secrets?

    1. Make it go underground and above for 3 - 4 times: The wiki use a fancy term of "underground transitions" which basically means "tunnel holes count". So, according to the wiki, when you have 6 - 8 underground transitions (or tunnel holes), you'll get +15 excitement. YES, +15. Now you have a reason to build your "worm coasters".

    2. If it's possible to have more cars per train, make it has ≥6 cars per train and you'll get +5 for this. It's basically +1 for additional cars but max out at +5 so 6 is enough. But of course, if you have spare space, just do more cars so the ride can hold more guests.

    3. Decorate! this game is damn good that it's calculate your decoration into your excitement stats. Not just the ride, but the queue line too! As the wiki said, this score can be between -10 to +10 and the ratio between the ride/queue line is 75%/25%. So, you can mainly decorate the environment around the train. Decorate to medium level should be easy enough, but of course if you have time, aim for the "amazing" one.

    4. Bonus: Station syncing. Syncing up stations together will improve it's stats a little, according to the wiki:

      • Syncing 2 coasters: ×1.05
      • Syncing 3 coasters: ×1.085
      • Syncing 4 coasters: ×1.105
      • Syncing 5 coasters: ×1.11

      You might think that ×1.05 is not much, but with just 2 - 3 points increment of the excitement, you can charge more 0.3$. See? more money :D. One trick is that, you can sync an operating coaster with an empty coaster in testing mode. For some reasons, its excitement rating gets up. So maybe it's okay-ish?

      Disclaimer: I know you're now thinking that "Well, I should sync all of my coasters together for better stats" which is, well, factually correct. But you should know that syncing stations that has a vast gap in ride time will make the lower ride-time one, lower throughput. So, you should always considerate this fact, like, do they have about the same ride time? Do they have a lot of spare train? Etc. Basically just sync the one that you designed to be sync, and it should not raise any problems.
Now you know how to build a cute coaster with fabulous stats :D.
— No building while the game is paused
I think this is the most irritating for every single player of this game, even for me, who is playing very centered on goals.

One thing that this game has been gaining countless reputations from is an impressive immersion system, that make players focusing more on building beautiful structures and unleash their unimaginable imaginations. Somehow however, in Taste of Adventure pack, these scenarios were like "F### IT, let's force player to manage their park in LITERALLY NO TIME". This is very ironic how the game are now "forcing you" to play very goal based if you want to beat the scenario without leaving you any windows of opportunity for you to decorate your park within the deadline.

Moreover, some of the scenarios are the worst, like "Technopolis", "Victoria Island", or "Celeste Mountain". These scenarios are solely on the fact that their terrain is very hard to work with. But now that you cannot pause, it is now super difficult even for me who is "I don't care, I want to finish" kind of player.

Even if this goal is somewhat insulting, at least if you accidentally built something while you're pausing, the game will show a confirm dialog if you really want to do that. Please notice that "terraforming", and "shops/rides property changing" won't be counted as a building. But any editing like "placing shops/rides down" or "edit the coasters" will be counted as a building.

TLDR: It'll ask you if you build when pausing. So just don't accidentally press "Okay"
— No tracked ride blueprints
Wait, it said "tracked ride blueprints" right? I though "No blueprint allowed".

Well, I think if you "accidentally" try to place a blueprint with a ride in it. I think it will behave like a "No building while the game is paused", which it will show a message like "Are you sure?", so you don't miss that goal just by your accident.

TLDR: I think it will behave like "No building while the game is paused" but I need more research. Imma edit this later.
— Own n tiles of land
I have to say that, when I saw this goal in "Victoria Island" from Taste of Adventure scenarios, I was thinking "huh, how hard could this be?".

BRUH they literally gave you NO LAND.

As you playing Taste of Adventure scenarios, you know that one of the constraints are starting money. But now as you don't have much land, you have to both thinking about where to buy the land, and how would you organize your ride.

So, I suggest you to place very basic stuff first (a food court, first 3 rides). After making some profit, buy more land and build some coasters, and repeat. For this particular scenario. I have done other goals way before this one, so I just took a biggest loan and buy the land until it hit the mark. Please notice that the land count will not update if you are pausing (yes, you can pause while using terraforming tools even if it's, in my opinion, a kind of "building"). So please make sure that your park is running while you are buying land.

TLDR: Make profit from rides, and buy the land.
Gameplay Strategy
When you hop into a campaign, except for knowing the goals, you should always ask these questions and do the following:
  1. How is the terrain? Mountainous? Flatlands? If it's a flatland then you can build your park easily, but if it's mountainous, you have to plan with your eyes how things are going to be placed. Using terraforming tool is a no going back thing, so you should always check and check again if you're using the right tool.

  2. How is the environment? Normal? Sunny? Rainy? If it's sunny, consider more "water ride". If it's rainy, consider more shades and rain protection. You can see what kind of your map weather is using the wiki[parkitect.fandom.com].

  3. Are there any already taken loans? If there are, pay it back immediately if you can, so you don't have to worried about losing your income.

  4. Is the current path layout feasible for playing? Just ask yourself, "Will I ever walk to here irl?". The most layout in campaigns are mostly too much path. Take a look around to see where exactly do you want to build the rides, and add/remove path accordingly. You can also using the sign to keep everyone out from the unwanted path that you might expand into later.

  5. Are there any trash or vandalism?
    • For trash problem, please see "Cleanliness" in "Have x rating of n%" section above.
    • For vandalism problem, just replacing all of them with the new one.

  6. Put down a staff room. You should not miss this at all — or your guests won't be happy to see tired worker stealing their comfy benches.

  7. Check available shops. If there are a small amount of shops, consider to research it first. Remember, food first, fun later. Although I personally think that a vending machine should be sufficient enough for a gameplay, but I'll leave you to decide about that.

  8. Build a food court. It can be either at the start of the park, in the middle, or inside the park. All of them work, just build one.

  9. Check the decorations. you already know what to do. Put more decorative items down and hide bad things should be enough for this.
    • You can just put the doorway wall in front of the toilet, you'll still see it but guests are stupid enough to think that it is now "an immersive thing".
    • Just use a normal path with a sign to make an employee only path. It will not ruined the immersion.
    • Build some basic thing and save it into your blueprint, it'll save you a lot of time when you're expanding your park or if guests are demanding a new toilet. Normally I have following: tables, pavilions, fountain squares, roof parts, toilets.

  10. Put as much ride down as possible. As I said in guests count goal. This will make the campaign ridiculously easier. So check that out above.

  11. Set the prices. Check out "Price" in "Have x rating of n%" section above. There are a rule of thumb and formulas there.

  12. Put tons of benches, bins, and toilets in the park.
    • Tired guests will use the benches to relieve their tiredness. And thus, staying in the park longer.
    • Guests will put their trash into the bins, so this will improve cleanliness score.
    • You know what a toilet does.

  13. Open the park, and see the guests' thoughts.

  14. Improvise, research the things you need (mostly thrill rides), monitoring your guests' thoughts and adjust to them accordingly, and steadily working towards the goal.
Understand The Needs and The Mechanics
Imagine building a real park, the guests that are going to be in you park will consist of 3 groups:
  • Lovely kids with their family: This type of group enjoys a peaceful cute calm rides.
  • Woo-girls on a trip: This type of group enjoys somewhat intense, but not too intense ride to spice their life up a bit, and have a laugh after one of them throw up after playing a teacup.
  • Vloggers and Daredevils: F###### INTENSITY ROCKS, B####!
So, what do these have to do with the game?

In every park, even the park that claims that "the guests will prefer more calm rides" (Sakura Garden). There will always be these 3 types of people in your park (you should also know that the word "prefer" does not mean "always"). So you should always build at least 3 rides, each of them with low, medium, and high intensity.

For low intensity ride, the choice is, of course, a calm ride. Which the intensity falls in between 0 to 30, I found that a marry go round with 5 rounds is quite good.

Now coming up to the intensity between 30 to 60, the choice will definitely be a thrill ride. If you got a Launched Drop Tower, then luck is on your side, because it can be configured in so many configurations and vastly different intensities.

For high intensity, just build a coaster of any kinds. The intensity itself will make the coaster more exciting, but you can also use the tricks in "Have m coasters with ≥n excitements" section to boost your excitement too. Also, please keep in mind that anything >90 intensities will get a excitement penalty so don't make it too intense.

After this 3 rides, you can now fine-tune by seeing how your guests prefer things around the park, and build the one they like accordingly, you can also use the "Market Research" in Research window too.
Personal Opinions
  • Use customizable shop if it's available. All of the shops cost >200$ but the customizable shop will always costs 200$. So it's a little cheaper to use it. Also, the vending machine is a little bit cheaper at the cost of 150$ but have to restock in front of them (which might be unpleasant to the guests). But do you know what solves that? A Customizable Shop! However, this op shop is not available for all scenarios, so just use it when you can.

  • Always make the ride waits for full guests. Why would you want 1 guest to ride a whole roller coaster? The park will go bankrupt if they do that. So just set the "wait for" option to "full".

  • Save the game before you open a bobsled coaster to avoid it become a bobslaugh coaster.

  • Zoning your hauler, so they don't walk aimlessly when they have nothing to do. This will also make them restocking things faster because they will always be around things they should be.

  • Use go-kart blueprint called "Enchanted Racers" and make it 7 cars with 3 laps. With its compact size and super good stats make me faint when I found this blueprint (there should be 1 in the game but you can check it out here too).
    https://cs2bus.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1223078712&searchtext=Enchanted+Racers
  • I'd say that ~60% of the campaigns can be beaten easily with the instructions I've gave you in "Gameplay Strategy" section. There are some of them I'd like to have some tips:
    • Adventure Island: Close the damn tower and make the coaster more efficient (Please see the guide here: Adventure Island - Parkitect Wiki (fandom.com)[parkitect.fandom.com]).
    • HappyCo Habour: Trees, Fences everywhere.
    • Highway Hijinks: No bridge for ya. You can done it without opening that part.
    • Orchard Acres: Just build 2 identical park ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
    • Kaiserberg: Close the damn monorail and pick your guests out from the top part.
    • Sakura Garden: You see the garden with employee path, right? Use it, you can put some rides there.
    • Silica Slopes, Sheer Cliffs: Terrain + Coaster = Excitements
    • Disaster Peaks: Delete and add path to get an instant clean path.
    • Zalgonia: Put some flat rides with high support, underneath them are rain proof so you can put the coasters under it and it'll operate. Use the terrain to your coasters' advantage too. For the flat rides, just put a glass on top of them to avoid the rain.
    • Victoria Island: Study the terrain, and plan how would you place things around. Starting at the flat beach will be easier to place things and gain money for more rides.
Closing Words
In conclusion, I'd like to say that this game has a lot of solid foundations and a lot of underlying logics behind its mechanics. In my opinion, as a player, you should always recognize these things and take advantages of it. However, even with these tips from me which might be factually correct or wrong, there will always be things waiting for players to discover. So, after you've done reading this, let's open your Parkitect and unreel the secrets of the game.

If you have any useful tips, game or anything, feel free to comment below and share it with the others. I hereby conclude my guide and sign off here.
8 Comments
DuoX 29 Aug, 2022 @ 10:35am 
I found the easiest, albeit most tedious method for dealing with Orchard Acres is to just pause, then pick up any guests on the side you're not using and drop them on the other side.
creamy johnny 12 Aug, 2022 @ 3:18pm 
this is a good guide thanks
3.141592653589793  [author] 9 May, 2022 @ 6:46pm 
@MistahBoweh Poggers. Thank you so much!
Boweh 9 May, 2022 @ 1:35pm 
As a final note, while it's not relevant for scenario play in general, the system that causes ride decay eventually means that, after decades of operation, rides are much less profitable than they used to be. The maintenance costs are higher, the ride stays operating less, the ticket price is lowered, and increased breakdowns on top of the occasional price adjustment means that it will start hurting your safety rating as well as the price rating. By blueprinting an attraction, demolishing it, and then rebuilding it in the same spot, you can pay a flat fee of half the cost of the ride in order to reset its age, which also means you get to reset the price and popularity, allowing it to turn a profit again.
Boweh 9 May, 2022 @ 1:35pm 
Once guests do start to complain, you can choose to lower the price, or if the queues are still filled up, leave it as is and let your price rating take the minor hit for a while. It's not a big deal up until you reach the point where you're sending out empty trains, unless you need to keep price satisfaction up for your scenario goal. Alternatively, if you don't need the cash, you can always undercharge the ticket price on rides by a hair. If you get great value comments this can improve your price rating, but this undercharge also means that ass a ride price decays it won't cause complaints to pop up as quickly, useful if you don't want to keep having to adjust prices as your rides age. It's not optimal park efficiency, but it saves you, the player, the extra hassle of having to stay on top of these things as often.
Boweh 9 May, 2022 @ 1:35pm 
Now, it must also be said that ride prices are not fixed constants. Happiness and guest preference are both variables on an individual level, yes, but the age of the ride changes both how often it needs maintenance and how popular it is. Again, I don't have concrete numbers to give, but after about six months of operation or so, rides begin to slowly lose demand, which means the amount that guests are willing to pay goes down. It must be said that, because the standard price formula isn't actually the highest you can get away with charging, this doesn't mean that you will always see complaints popping up the instant a ride's been there half a year. If your ride's a year or so old and has no price complaints, that either means that average guest mood in the area is high enough that peeps are still willing to tolerate the ticket price, or just that could have charged more for the ride all along.
Boweh 9 May, 2022 @ 1:34pm 
All of this is to say that ride price is not a fixed thing. You can charge more, and as long as there are enough happy guests in your park who prefer the ride you're upcharging, they'll shell out the extra dimes to ride it again and again. The downside to this is that, the higher your price goes, the more guests who DON'T meet these criterion will complain about it. Complaints about price lowers the price rating, which lowers overall happiness in turn, so if these are scenario goals, you don't have the freedom to nickel and dime riders. However, if the scenario has a high bias toward calm or thrill seeking guests, you can be cheeky and start your ride prices a tad above what you normally would.
Boweh 9 May, 2022 @ 1:33pm 
Some notes on ride pricing:

The 1.5(e)/10 formula is a good rule of thumb, and you'll pretty much be safe always using this price, but it's actually not the upper limit for how much you can get away with charging on newly built attractions. 1.5(e)/10 is simply the highest you can go without having guests complain a ton about your pricing, which would hurt your price rating (and your overall happiness). However, not all guests are created equal. The more a ride matches the rider's intensity preference, the more they are willing to pay. I am not 100% on this, but I believe the happier guests are, the more they are willing to spend also. This is true in the RCTs parkitect is based on, so I imagine it applies here as well. If your park is wildly successful and guest happiness is already high, you can get away with charging more for rides, as a general rule. Not a large amount, mind you, we're talking a couple dimes worth of difference, but these things add up.