Glitches

Viva Piñata, like most games, has its share of glitches and bugs. Some of them can be beneficial, while others are annoying and even destructive. This collection of glitches and bugs in Viva Piñata is meant to inform players of potential problems (or benefits), how to avoid (or reproduce) them and possibly remedy them.

Typographic and Grammatical

Cluckles misspelled in the encyclopedia

Description: In the encyclopedia, Cluckles is spelled as 'Cluckle' in the Resident Requirements section for Sour Macaracoon.

Mismatched Visit Requirement text and icons for Chippopotamus

Description: In the Visit Requirement section for Chippopotamus in the encyclopedia, the text and icons for the three listed plants are mismatched.

Incorrect descriptions for Whirlm Variants

Description: In the Variant section for the Whirlm in the encyclopedia, the text indicates that the Whirlm must eat a Water Lily flower for Variant 2 and a Watercress flower for Variant 3. However, both variants are achieved by eating those respective seeds.

Incorrect description for Bunnycomb resident requirements

Description: In the Resident section for the Bunnycomb in the encyclopedia the text indicates that the Bunnycomb must eat 3 carrots to reside. However, it only needs to eat two.

Incorrect description for the Bunnycomb orange variant

Description: In the Journal the Orange variant is listed as requiring a pumpkin seed when in fact it requires a grown pumpkin.

Incorrect Description for the Buzzenge Romance Requirements

Description: In the Romance section for Buzzenge in the encyclopedia, the text indicates that the Buzzenge must eat two Pudgeons and two Sparrowmints. However, the Buzzenge must simply to eat one of each.

Cosmetic

Wildcard Eaglair has no visible differences from a normal Eaglair

Description: If you are lucky enough to breed a Wild-Card Eaglair, there will be no visual difference between it and a normal Eaglair. Rare has suggested that the Wildcard may be suffering from Situs Inversus.

Chippopotomas Glasses

Description: If a chippopotomus is wearing 'cool shades', they will be visible inside its mouth whenever it opens wide.
How to: Buy 'cool shades' for a resident chippopotomus.

Blue Plants

Description: Plants retain blue 'overwatered' color for the rest of their lives, even though they are perfectly healthy and not overwatered. The perfect plants for a blue-variant garden.
How to: You need both the One-Pour Wonder Watering Can and a Sprinkling in your garden. Wait near an underwatered plant. Allow the sprinkling to water it. Water it immediately with the one-pour wonder. There is a chance that the plant will now be blue for the rest of its life. This seems more likely to work if the sprinkling slightly overwaters the plant before you water it with the one-pour wonder. There are reports that this works with trees as well as with flowers and produce.

Leaving the Garden

Description: Before your your Dragonache send it away. You will get a very good overview of the garden and outside of the game.
How to: You need to tap your Dragonache with a shovel several times. It will begin fighting something. Right as you get the message saying it has started a fight, send it away. Afterwards, view the fight. You will get an amazing view of the island.

Piñata turned green but did not get sick

Description: When a fight ends the piñata still stands, only with the colors of a sick piñata (ie:green) and wont do anything. (it sometimes will walk away)
How to: Select and redirect the piñata right before he gets hit by the finishing blow.; Doesn't work on sours
How to avoid: Wait untill battle ends then heal the sick piñata.; Can be stopped if you hit it with the shovel or can fix itself, but will get sick in the end.

Beneficial

Gatherlings can sell unbought seeds

Description: A Gatherling will collect seeds that have been placed but not yet purchased in buy mode.

Sell sours

Description: You are able to sell a sour piñata just before it is tamed
How to: Finish requirements and then wait for sell option to pop up; Sold for same price as the tame version

Piñata Central always issues request in new Garden

Description: Within minutes of starting a new garden, Piñata Central will always ask for a single most valuable Piñata.
How to: Make a new garden, and send your most valuable Piñata to yourself via the Post Office. Keep doing this in new gardens, until your piñata becomes worth a ton.

Annoying

Resident piñatas and other items on, the garden border lose the ability to be interacted with

Description: Fruit that falls on the garden border cannot be selected.; Piñatas that get ill on the border cannot be selected or healed.

How to avoid: Plant fruit producing plants far enough away from the border that their goods can't fall on the border.; The chances of an ill piñata ending up on the border and broken are low and usually not a huge deal. However if you want to make sure a prized piñata isn't lost this way, take steps to ensure its safety. Build a fence to keep important piñatas corralled, keep aggressive piñatas away or make sure the piñata is wearing the Halo of Hardness.

Resident piñatas inside the garden cannot be selected or healed.

Description: Piñatas that get ill inside the garden that cannot be selected or healed, romanced, or sent to a party. They remain resident, preventing you from attracting more than 1 other resident piñata of the same species.
How to reproduce: Create a 1-square square fenced area. Plant a sour plant or seed inside. A piñata may eat it and become sick. The tight space may cause your piñata to become unselectable. The piñata will stay ill and unselectable in your garden forever.
How to avoid: Avoid creating a 1-square fenced area.

Game becomes unpaused while in the Pause Menu

How to reproduce: Using a cordless controller, pause the game and wait for the controller to turn itself off. When you see the Controller Disconnected message on the screen, turn the controller back on. The message will go away, leaving you back in the Pause Menu, however the game is no longer paused in the background.
How to avoid: Save and exit the game instead of pausing when not playing for an extended period.; Use a corded controller.
How to fix: Re-pause the game.

Pinata temporarily unable to be sold

Description: Sometimes a piñata will become temporarily unsellable when it is forced outside a home that is then sold.
How to reproduce: Selling a home after tapping it to get the piñatas out will sometimes cause this to happen.
How to avoid: Sell the home without tapping it first or after all the piñatas have exited on their own.
How to fix: Reloading the game should cause the affected piñata to be sellable again.

Piñata Sick Loop

Description: Larger pinatas get sick over and over again in a loop even if they have a Halo or the doc is called. Once the doc is called out and heals piñata, it immediately get sick again.
How to reproduce: Have water to close to a fence or a fence to close to a house.

How to avoid: For larger piñata, make sure there is walking room.
How to fix: If you want to save your piñata, fill in the water around the area he is getting stuck or break a fence.

Piñata variant award not given when variant quickly romances

Description: If a piñata eats the required seed/plant to become a variant and is quickly romanced, the piñata will change color, but the variant award is not given to the player.
How to reproduce: Fulfill the romance requirements for two piñata of the same species. Select one of the piñata and direct it to the plant/seed required to make it a variant. Quickly select the other piñata and direct it to the first one. The first piñata will change color but you will not be given the variant award.

How to avoid: Wait until you receive the variant award before romancing the piñata.
How to fix: Fulfill the variant requirements with another piñata.

Piñata attacks get stuck in place

Description: If you destroy a visiting Piñata that trys to eat something such as a plant their attack is sometimes frozen in place... forever, and you wont be able to interact with it at all(it will stay forever even when you log back in).
How to reproduce: When a visiting Piñata trys to eat something whack it with your shovel rapidly to kill it (Must kill it before it gets to eat) and the attack that Piñata used may possibly get stuck in place (Doesn't happen everytime)
How to avoid: Since the Piñata has already started eating you might as well let it finish since the plant or Piñata is dead anyways. When it finishes whack it freely and joyfully, then replace lost Piñata or plant.
How to fix: There is no known fix at this time.

Bonboon music carries on when Piñata sold

Description: If you sell a resident Bonboon while it is stopping a fight, the music it dances to will carry on, and the two Piñata that were fighting will remain stuck, staring at the place where it was FOREVER.
How to reproduce: Sell the resident Bonboon while it is dancing
How to avoid: Do not sell your Bonboon while it is dancing. Wait until it is finished.
How to fix: Re-start the game before it has a chance to save. If it saves them you will have to start a new garden and ship all of your Piñata there.

You can only ever get Whilrm twins

Description: It is curently impossible to obtain twins of any species other than Whirlms.

Piñatas get stuck permanently when about to be eaten

Description: When you make pinata eat its prey. It will be stuck there. You can whack it but it wont go away. When you load your garden up again the glitched pinata flickers.
How to: When a pinata's about to eat another pinata whack the prey when the attack is being shot, the prey will look as if its been hurt badly. It may take some time to figure out the exact moment to hit it.

The music in the store dissapears

Description: The background music in any store won't play
How to: Press the connection button (middle button) in one of the stores and wait for about a minute then exit out of the profile menu, the store should have no background music
How to fix: Exit then re-enter the store

Game Blocking

Invisible piñatas and other objects

Description: Piñatas or other objects, such as homes, become invisible. The objects still exist and can be interacted with, however the game becomes a hassle to play.This problem can occur after a piñata is sent to a party.
How to fix (courtesy of the official forums) -- Warning! The following steps will erase all of your progress in the game!
#Delete all of your saved Viva Piñata gardens and options from memory.
#From the dashboard, navigate to System | Memory, select the HDD and press .
#Press .
#Select yes when asked about disk maintenance.
#Restart the game.: Unfortunately, the game will not allow you to transfer your saved games to another storage device prior to performing the above steps. Please be sure you're willing to lose your progress!

Bart gets stuck outside the garden

Description: After requesting Bart to tinker one or more items, he becomes stuck outside the garden. From the garden, you can watch Bart as he jumps into his hat, gets ejected from his hat, and starts the process over again.
How to fix: There is no known fix at this time. Bart does work in other gardens, so you can create a new garden and ship your pinata and other items out of the garden where the problem occurs.

Game Crashing

Random Game Freezes

Description: The game freezes at seemingly random (but infrequent) times. Note that game freezes can also be caused by other factors, such as a defective console or a console with insufficient air circulation.
How to avoid: Keep your Xbox 360 gaming system and power supply well ventilated. DO NOT keep your Xbox 360 gaming system on a carpeted floor. Try using a Nyko Intercooler EX if you are still having overheating issues.

Specific Garden Always Freezes After Loading

Description: A Specific Garden freezes each time you load it. Other Gardens run fine.
How To avoid: Once this continues to happen, it seems that there is no hope for the specific garden, it will continue to freeze each time it is loaded. The only thing you can do is delete the specific Garden that is freezing. Be sure not to delete the main file or the other gardens you want to keep.

Specific Xbox Player Profile Always Freezes after Start Screen

Description: At the main game screen player presses start and xbox freezes during profile load.
How To avoid: Either delete your main Viva Pinata folder and create a new one or copy the gamer profile onto a memory card and run it from there. Please note that you cannot transfer your actual Viva Pinata folder.

Packing a non-empty Milking Shed Freezes Game

Description: The game freezes if you attempt to pack a Milking Shed into a crate while a Moozipan is inside the shed.
How To avoid: Wait until the shed is empty before trying to pack it into a crate.