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 Macaraccoon.

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.

Beneficial

Gatherling can be used as a money exploit

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

Annoying

Resident piñatas and other items on or beyond the garden border lose 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.

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.

Piñata 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.

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.
• How to fix (courtesy of the official forums) -- Warning! The following steps will erase all of your progress in the game!
  1. Delete all of your saved Viva Piñata gardens and options from memory.
  2. From the dashboard, navigate to System | Memory, select the HDD and press .
  3. Press .
  4. Select yes when asked about disk maintenance.
  5. 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!

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
  • No information at this time.