This is more ideas and suggestions I suppose, but it is various ways I have used to save money and seen as ways that will help you earn and save. This will be from my own self experience for the most part and in no way something you -must- do (or not do).
If you have your own little money saving tips, feel free to post them and I'll add it in!
Feeding your dinosaurs
Best food choices!
The top thing; keeping those hungry dinosaurs fed. A dinosaur only becomes sick if you let the hunger meter drop to less than 40%, so you need not worry about feeding and buying food every day. Waiting until this point though is risky of course! You may end up spending more money getting them back to 100% health. On top of this, you'll be spending money on treating Metabolic Bone Disease if it happens to drop below 40% hunger. I'd say the lowest you can safely go while still saving money is 50%.
The best food items you can buy are:
T-bone steak ($500) - Gives 50% hunger boost (Top choice!)
Sausages ($500) - Gives 30% hunger boost
Cheaper food may not give as much which means you could be spending more buying those than you would buying T-bone steak. For example, if you paid $150 to buy Drumsticks and fed them every day for 5 days, you would have spent $750 on just one dinosaur. If you buy T-bone steak and waited 5 days before feeding, you then get your dinosaur from 50% back to 100% and only have spent $500 on that dinosaur, saving you $250. This is a small saving, but all little savings add up and this is also only based on one dinosaur. If you had 20 dinosaurs, you would have saved $5,000.
Vaccinating and Healing
When and what?
Healing item wise, the best value for your money is:
Band-aid ($100) - Heals 20%
Soothing Cloth ($600) - Heals 35%
Box of Bandaids has 10 uses and each Band-aid also heals 20%. However, these cost you
$1,100 to buy while 10 single Band-aids will save you $100.
As for vaccinating, you can save a fortune here. Personally, I only vaccinate for Avian Flu
costing $2,500 per dinosaur, which I will explain about later. All 3 vaccinations on 1 dinosaur would cost $7,500 and lasts for 30 days.
Vaccinating for tumors - You only need to worry about tumors when the dinosaur turns 70 days old. Given the Antibiotic Injection is indeed a bit pricey ($25,000) and vaccinating can save you money, you could wait and vaccinate at age 69, which means you only spend $2,500 to stop it getting a tumor when it turns 70 and for the rest of its life (most likely at least, unless it develops a tumor at age 99). Vaccinating for tumors from birth and keeping on top of the vaccinations would cost you $10,000 for one dinosaur, so waiting until later in life before they turn old saves you $7,500.
Vaccinating for MBD (Metabolic Bone Disease) - Your dinosaur will only suffer from this if it drops below 40% hunger. If you be careful not to let this happen you will save money from not having to keep up with vaccinations for however long you have the dinosaur. Should you have an accident and it drops below 40%, a bottle of milk only costs you $1,500 and heals 20% each use. If you can catch it on the day it happens, it can be healed much quicker and save some uses.
Vaccinating for Avian Flu - This is the vaccine you do want to keep up with. Avian Flu can spread like wildfire through your enclosures. You might be spending money here but it saves in the end as you don't then have to keep buying tissues and spending time treating every day to get rid of it, especially if it has spread far. Not to mention they lose health too so you would spend money on healing items.
Each time a dinosaur is born on your farm or you get a new dinosaur, try get in the habit of vaccinating against Avian Flu and checking that they are all up to date. Vaccinating an infected dinosaur will not cure it but it will stop it catching it again until the vaccination has worn off.
Bone Salve - This item is for broken bones which you can't really avoid if you battle and/or trial your dinosaurs. One way you can save a little here is by checking to see if any dinosaurs need to be treated after you are done battling for the day. If you catch the broken bone on the day it happens, one treatment can clear it up. This will save you uses on the item from not having to give multiple treatments.
Visit the fruit vine! - The fruit vine can give you Healing Cherries and Magic Peaches, these could be life savers in an emergency should your dinosaur become very sick. Healing Cherries will fully heal a dinosaur of broken bones and give them +90 health. Magic Peaches will fully heal of all other illnesses and give +20 health.
Herbivores
Own them for less
Herbivores are not something you want to have in the first place should money be a bit low for you and you should have a steady flow of money coming in before taking them on. For those who do have herbivores, there are a few things you can do to save money.
Carnivore Poo - Use Carnivore poo to improve the foilage health in your Herbivore enclosures rather than buying Fertilizer, which costs $2,500 a bag. Cleaning your carnivore enclosures is how you harvest their poop for you to use on your herbivores and it's free!
This means if you bought fertilizer every day for a Herbivore's 70 day life, you'd be spending
$175,000 per enclosure.
When to feed grain - Your herbivores do not need grain at all to survive and only need water; they can eat the foilage in the enclosure for food. When it comes to raising grades, you can get a herbivore to Grade A by watering alone. Getting them from A to A+ is then the difficult part and is when you should feed them grain. Each bag feeds 20 herbivores so you can save by figuring out how many bags will grain your entire population per enclosure and not buy too many bags.
Posted: 10/03/2012 @ 3:13 pm Edited on 13th Mar 12 @ 11:16am by Clara