Franchise mode is Planet Zoo 2's long-term game: a persistent, online world where every zoo and Wildlife Reserve you open feeds the same economy. The player-driven animal market runs here, and the full 136-species roster gradually unlocks here. This guide covers your first franchise zoo, the launch-week money trick, map selection and accreditation. New to the game? Our release date overview covers what shipped at launch. Data as of 20 October 2026.
What Is Franchise Mode in Planet Zoo 2?
Franchise mode has you build an interconnected collection of zoos and Wildlife Reserves across the globe that support each other. You develop each zoo, establish reserves to release animals into, trade habitat animals with other players through Animal Trading, and join Community Challenges — shared goals for the whole player base. One official rule matters more than any other: Conservation Credits are shared between all the zoos in your franchise, but Cash is not.
That split shapes every decision: spend credits in one zoo and the whole network feels it, while cash earned in zoo one stays in zoo one. Sandbox removes both pressures entirely, and Career is the tutorial-style FEN campaign — but Franchise is where the systems interlock.
How to Start Your First Franchise Zoo
Frontier's official steps take less than a minute:
- Navigate to the Franchise button and sign in with your Frontier account — sign up first if you do not have one.
- Select Start New Franchise + and confirm your franchise name, banner colour and sticker.
- Choose the biome type and continent for your first zoo, then name it.
- Your franchise is live, and you can now take part in Community Challenges.
The first hour matters more than the menu. Your zoo tells you what it needs: a Trade Center to adopt and store animals, a Keeper Hut for food prep, plus a Staff Room, Vet Surgery, Research Center and Quarantine. Connect them with staff paths, then hire keepers, a vet, a caretaker and a mechanic before your first animal arrives. Geekism's real-time launch build shows how far those opening 300 credits stretch.
The Money Trick: From $50,000 to $283,219
Every new franchise zoo opens with about $50,000 in cash, and the number only goes down — even removing a tree cost Adamup $75 in his launch-week test. The money trick attacks that ceiling: on sculpted maps, every pre-placed building inside the zoo boundary refunds its full value when demolished. In his demo, clearing the lot with the multi-select and demolish tools turned the starting budget into $283,219 — more than five times the baseline.
The trick has one landmine: do not demolish the pre-placed entrance structure. Adamup reports it refunds around $112,000, while a replacement entrance costs roughly $150,000 — tearing it down leaves you underwater. Everything else, even rocks, refunds cleanly, and flattening terrain costs hundreds once the budget is flush.
With capital secured, convert it into steady income: place several entrances (extras cost about $10 each) to spread spawn points, keep paths wide to avoid bottlenecks, put donation boxes and ATMs at viewing areas, and let shops auto-hire vendors. Then buy cheap animals, breed them, and sell the surplus — every sale funds the next habitat.
Picking the Best Franchise Map
Every map in Franchise mode is generated from three choices — biome, continent and terrain option — so YouTuber ZSHplays mapped the full matrix at launch. The names below are community nicknames, not official labels, but the combinations are exact:
| Map (community name) | Biome | Continent | Terrain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Temperate Flat | Temperate | Any | Flat |
| Castle Map | Temperate | Europe | Sculpted |
| Stately Home | Temperate | Americas or Oceania | Sculpted |
| Tropical City | Tropical | Africa, Americas or Oceania | Sculpted |
| African Grassland | Grassland | Africa | Sculpted |
| Pride Rock | Grassland | Any except Africa and Antarctica | Sculpted |
| Mountain Lake | Taiga | Any taiga continent | Sculpted |
| Antarctic Tundra | Tundra | Any | Flat |
The only desert map is flat-only — no sculpted desert exists. A hidden European tundra map appears only with tundra, Europe and sculpted, and completing Career scenarios unlocks additional maps. As a rule of thumb: sculpted maps look spectacular and are stuffed with refundable buildings that supercharge the money trick, while flat maps give you a clean slate for deliberate design.
Conservation Credits and Accreditation
Conservation Credits come from playing well across the franchise: releasing animals into Wildlife Reserves (release groups or quick release), greeting avatars that visit your zoos, taking photos in reserves, completing conservation projects and joining Community Challenges. Opening extra zoos also drains credits, so the earn-and-spend loop never stops.
Accreditation gates what you can buy with them. A new franchise starts at Tier 1 with 32 species, and Tier 5 opens the full animal list of 136 — lions and elephants included. Requirements are network-wide totals: two zoos at 3 Zoo Reputation stars and three Wildlife Reserves at 3 Biodiversity stars. Three stars is the entire bar — a five-star zoo counts the same as a three-star one — and the efficient route runs through the three European reserves, which share enough releasable species that one breeding programme supplies all of them. Tier 4's +50 animal storage matters most once breeding programmes scale. Check the Zoopedia for per-species lock icons.
Franchise Mode Not Working? Quick Checks
Most "franchise mode not working" reports at launch traced back to four things. First, the mode is online-only, so connection or server problems can block Animal Trading. Second, an empty or overpriced market is not a bug — listings come from real players and sell within minutes, so refresh, sort by price and buy quickly; Frontier keeps some first-party listings up.
Third, locked species are accreditation locks, not trading failures: if elephants or lions show as unavailable, compare the Accreditation panel in the Planet Hub against the network totals. Fourth, requirements count qualifying locations, not stars — one five-star zoo does not equal two three-star zoos. If everything shows met and a tier still will not advance, report it to Frontier's issue tracker with your mode, platform and game version, keeping your save while you wait.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need to be online to play Franchise mode?
Yes. Frontier's player guide states plainly that you must be online to play this mode. Animal Trading, Community Challenges and the shared Conservation Credit economy all depend on that connection.
How many Conservation Credits do you start with?
New franchise zoos start with 300 Conservation Credits, alongside roughly $50,000 in cash. Both figures were confirmed repeatedly in launch-week gameplay videos, including Geekism's real-time build and Adamup's money-trick tutorial.
Does Franchise progress carry over to Career mode?
No. Career and Franchise keep separate accreditation records, so medals earned in the FEN campaign do not unlock species in Franchise. Sandbox has no accreditation at all — every animal is available from the start.