Site News

Happy Holidays, Keepers! 

Any words highlighted in BLUE are links!

To start, it's time to welcome our winter prompts! These prompts will replace the fall collection and will run until the last day of February. Don't forget you can suggest new prompts in the Discord, we will be looking for new ones for Spring before you know it!

NOTE, the minimum roll requirement has been raised to four (4) for prompts.

We've added the Accessory item to the game, which allows players to depict their animals more than 50% covered by accessories on their reference. These are for sale in the Zoo Shop for 2,000 ZD. To use, select it from your inventory when uploading/updating your animal. These are also available as a prize for this prompt!

Another thing to note: IVF and Uranium Pills are being paused for the time being until we can get the lineage bug figured out.

Next, to allow our dedicated moderation team some time for themselves and their families during the holiday season, we will be taking a brief break. The group will be closed for submissions from Dec. 18, 2025 until January 2, 2026. During this time the admin team is not required to process submissions on Lorekeeper or requests in the Discord. I will hopefully be able to use this time to work on the current bugs and possibly roll out some updates to the site. This means the site may go in and out of maintenance mode during the break, this is normal and not something to report in the bugs channel.

Animal news incoming!

Thanks to our dedicated players the kākāwahie (by FancyRatties), Hawaiian crow (by Shirelin), and the eastern hare-wallaby (by creationsbyroyal) have been saved from extinction and can now be found in Critically Endangered crates.

In other animal news, the marbled polecat (by FancyRatties) and the Malagasy blue walking stick (by FraidyCat) have been sponsored into the game! You will find these critters in vulnerable and near threatened crates respectively.

One final bit of excitement, I've finally saved enough ZD to get my first gene paintbrush and have created the banded purple jay! This gregarious corvid species is now found in least concern crates.

As the roadmap outlined, we are having a small Holiday Event! To help keep us all busy this season, and during the short break, we are going to have our very first Great Reference Drive. This is similar to the "Draw the Person Above You" game but designed for Zoo ARPG! The first person, me, will request three (3) different species they would like referenced. The first player (FancyRatties) will claim one of those species and list three species of their own they would like referenced! The chain will continue from there. Please go HERE to read the rules and join the fun!

Friendly reminders:

It is the responsibility of the player to check their submissions for comments from the moderation team as we often include important information regarding the approval process there. This is true for approved submissions as well as declined ones.

Shading must be obvious and shown on the entire image to count, this is not a new rule and applies to digital and traditional art.

Hello Zookeepers,

We have some big changes today so please read this portion carefully.

Breeding tokens are being phased out - they will no longer roll from the standard/conservation loot roller. This means that "random" breedings will no longer occur. In their place, pheromone pills and breeding items have received a small buff to their drop rate.

One major reason we decided to remove random breedings is because of the hybridization system. This system has always been flawed to me and I've made the decision to sterilize all hybrids, rendering them infertile and unable to breed. This is also why the specimen jar has been removed as a prize for the conservation reward system. The price of the specimen jar will be lowered to 50,000 ZD to reflect this change. The specimen jar will also be released to the Black Market, valued at 10 reputation.

The Big Snip will occur next week, giving players the opportunity to breed a few more times before the hybrid system changes will be implemented. The official date is 11/17/25.

The price of the specific animal crate will also be adjusted, as it was always a bit too high to me, making it 30,000 ZD and 8 reputation once the official sterilization occurs.

With that business out of the way, I also wanted to make include summary of the recent changes made to the game, which were shared via Discord. The plan is to start updating the game in waves and to utilize the Lorekeeper News feed as there are no character limits like on Discord. I will continue to ping the Announcements role as needed for these updates and smaller, less site-worthy posts.

The rules for art/literature have been updated and can be found here. The roll numbers have also been increased and expanded to put a little more value on rolls as animal limits have been put into place. This is a work in progress and further ways to earn rolls will be added as the details are finalized. ZD amounts that can be found per roll have been raised from a minimum of 25 to a minimum of 200. A new item called Forgotten Rolls, which are tradable loot rolls, has been implemented and added to both the standard and conservation art rollers.  

The encyclopedia updates are underway byMarciella! She has also been hard at work researching and implementing changes to subspecies of several animals including grey wolves, black bears, giraffes, African buffalo, and more. A couple of entirely new aquatic species have been popped into the game and can be found in regular crates moving forward. Updates to animals are typically posted in the Development Logs channel on the Discord.

This roadmap is merely a visual representation of the plans/goals we have for the group- things may change and timelines may shift as we move along. If something is implemented early or out of turn, it does not mean that previous steps have been forgotten or skipped.

I wanted to put out a little reminder to players that the staff are volunteers and their time is valuable. Prompt submissions and MYOs can take anywhere from a few hours to over a week to roll, depending on how our availability falls. This also goes for Discord based redemptions as those are done by hand. We are people with our own lives outside of Zoo ARPG and if a submission takes a little longer to be rolled, please do not pester in public channels or DM any of the staff regarding wait times.

Also, the site is being upgraded constantly, sometimes things might fail, sometimes things might come up that just don't work and break the site. This can be frustrating, I am very aware, but moving forward it would be great if you could take a moment and check the latest announcements or bug reports before bringing it up in other public channels or sending me a DM about it.

Another reminder: clone guns and modified clone guns are usable through the website to create an opposite sex clone. You do not need to use either of these items in the Discord redeems unless you are wanting to clone a same sex animal. We will no longer be processing clone guns/modified clone guns for players unless they want a same sex clone. 

We also need y'all to approve requests to "use" other player's animals in the Discord. If you are cloning or breeding someone else's animal the owner must react or reply to your request to confirm their permission.

Thanks for checking out the group and sticking with us through this period of growth!