Ten Easy Tips for Pikmin Bloom

Now that my family has been playing Pikmin Bloom for a few weeks, we've discovered a few tips and tricks along the way. Here's what we'd call our top ten tips for anyone just starting out in the game:

1- Easy Nectar Feeding

When we first started playing Pikmin Bloom, we would flick individual balls of nectar at our group of Pikmin. At first this was fun, but it soon became the most tedious part of the game. My son then discovered that if you simply hold a ball of nectar on to the screen in one place, then the Pikmin come running to your finger and jump up and grab their own ball of nectar.

All bunched up and well fed!

Not only is this more efficient, it's much faster too.

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2- Easy Nectar Collecting

After feeding all my Pikmin nectar, we use to tap the screen rapidly to collect Nectar like the game was Cookie Clicker. Sometimes this caused the screen to zoom in, and we'd have to refocus and zoom the game out to collect more nectar. Collecting nectar is actually super easy, just swipe your finger over all of your Pikmin and you'll collect all your flower blooms in one swipe.

It may not sound like much, but anything to make feeding nectar and collecting flowers easier and faster is totally the way to go.

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3- Fast Pikmin Swapping

After you've fed your squad of Pikmin and collected all their flower petals, you can easily change them out for the next batch.  All you have to do is tap the whistle three times rapidly and all your Pikmin swap out just like that.

These days I'm running a little low on Nectar, so I tend to individually select my Pikmin based on their need for hearts, but when Nectar isn't a problem and you just need petals, this speedy method is the best!

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4- Using Mushroom Colors Correctly

When my family first started attacking mushrooms together, we'd just choose any color of Pikmin to attack as long as they had maxxed out their hearts. That's a fine strategy, but if you use Pikmin that match the color of the mushroom you're attacking, your damage will go through the roof.

Try using yellow Pikmin only on the next yellow mushroom you attack and you'll see the difference right away. 

But what about Brown Mushrooms?! Yup, you guessed it, there is no brown pikmin. Ever noticed how when you start mixing colors together they end up just kind of turning brown?  This is the same philosophy . . . just use your best Pikmin for these mushrooms or the ones that do the most damage like rock or purple Pikmin. You got this!

Nothing better than an easy brown mushroom!

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5- Planter Efficiency

Ever get a huge seedling and have it stuck in your main 2 planters for a long time?  Well, don't do that!  Keep your main two planter slots running the 1,000 and 3,000 step Pikmin and only use the one-time use slot planters to plant your giant 10,000 step Pikmin.

If you use this method, you won't have clogged up planters causing problems.

Don't let those big seeds take up your valuable growing space!

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6- Know Before you Grow

By the time you get in the higher levels of Pikmin, you'll start noticing you have an abundance of "roadside" red, blue, and yellow Pikmin. You probably also know that when you inspect a Pikmin planter that your Pikmin have to make an expedition for, it only shows a red location symbol? The game wants to hide your type of Pikmin! Simply back out of the expedition view and then view that same expedition once again, and its type will now be shown instead of the red location symbol!

This helps you not waste valuable timers on Pikmin that you have an abundance of already.

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7- Use Detectors Wisely

You only get one free Detector a day, so using it wisely to find a new decor style Pikmin is what it's all about.  Sometimes it takes a bit to find the perfect spot to use your Detector, but if you keep it open on the Detector screen, you can see the "Places Nearby" changing as you encounter new stores. Sometimes those "sweet shops" at the local strip mall can be really hard to get, but don't use that detector until you see the sweet shop symbol in the Places Nearby area. 

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8- Get Your Flowers to 500

You may notice yourself gaining coins occasionally and not knowing why. Every 500 flowers you plant while you're walking, the game gives you 1 coin. This is important to know because if you're done with your walk and have only planted 480 flowers, you're going to want to keep planting flowers while you walk around the house for just a bit so you can hit the magical 500 mark.

Every coin counts and this is really the only way Pikmin Bloom players have to earn that premium currency for free.

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9- Walking Out of Town

It's an absolute blast walking around with Pikmin Bloom in an area that's hundreds of miles away, but just know that any pikmin you get from those areas will have to march all the way back when they're at max hearts. Don't be surprised if your Pikmin has to set out on a multiple day journey. If you know you'll be headed back to that town soon, it'll be best to hold on to those far away expeditions until next time you're in town.

Then again, if your expeditions are in a spot only 30 minutes away by car, that'll probably be about an 8-hour trek for your Pikmin on foot. It's best to do those longer expeditions overnight and wake up in the morning to some fun surprises.

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10- Use Stars to Prioritize

After a while of playing Pikmin Bloom, you'll be overflowing with Pikmin and Seeds! Luckily you can use the helpful star feature to favorite the ones you want to grow and play with first. Favoriting these will automatically sort them to the top of your inventory.

Stars upon thars!

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Thanks for reading along and good luck, bloomers!

Happy Dueling! 

Participating in Pikmin Bloom's First Community Day Event

 A couple weeks ago, the family all got a notification that Pikmin bloom was having their first community day and we, along with the rest of the world, were invited to walk 10,000 steps on November 13th. We were all in for the event!

We've all been playing Pikmin Bloom pretty religiously around here. The Uber Wife is kind of killing the rest of us in the family as she's now level 19 . . . or maybe even 20 after yesterday! I've been the slowest of the bunch, but still I was sitting at a respectable level 14 at the start of the day yesterday.

Flowers! Flowers Everywhere!

But is it that respectable? No way. The real fun doesn't start until level 15 when you can attack mushrooms with your pikmin for cool postcard rewards, and believe me, the rest of the family all let me know that I needed to start walking my weight and get up to level 15.

We decided to start our day out with a Donut Adventure in downtown Austin TX to try some seriously amazing donuts at a place called The Salty Donut. It was soul crushing to watch the kids enjoying a horchata donut. Um, donuts are 100 percent off the menu for me these days as a diabetic, but man they looked good.

Drool.

After this we drove down to the south shore of Lady Bird Lake in Downtown Austin and walked around the shore's excellent trail system. For us it had TONS of flowers waiting to be bloomed, and we all launched our detectors here hoping for a riverside pikmin.

Time to get walking! Those giant flowers aren't going to bloom by themselves!

In case you're unaware of how it works, Pikmin come from different locations. Most pikmin are "roadside" pikmin, but others come from restaurants, grocery stores, cafes, movie theaters, zoos, forests, post offices, art galleries, airports . . . the list goes on and on. You can see it for yourself here. When a pikmin gains four hearts of love and attention, it sets out to retrieve a gift box and then its silly decor is manifested on its body.

He's everyone's favorite fun guy!

By the end of the day I had walked my 10,000 steps (and then some), dinged level 15, and earned my new badge . . . kinda. Apparently it'll take a while for that badge to show up in everyone's inventories. That's ok though . . . the badge doesn't really do anything but it's kind of cool to earn it yesterday since there's really no other way to get that badge.

Anyway, after I hit 15th level, I was super happy to participate in my first mushroom attack with the entire family! We crushed it.

3-stars earned at the Iron Works BBQ in Downtown Austin

To be honest, the best part of the day was simply being out with the family walking around and having fun together, and that's really what Pikmin Bloom is all about.

Tired feet, happy pikmin!

Happy Dueling!

Spreading Flowers Everywhere in Pikmin Bloom

A new Niantic game released just a few days ago and that good ol' feeling my family used to get from playing Pokemon Go . . . is back, baby! It's BACK!

That feeling I got was the same one from when everyone in my family downloaded Pokemon Go and got outdoors for a bit, playing the game together, and that's the feeling that came back yesterday when, again,  everyone in my family downloaded Pikmin Bloom and started walking around.

I'm on a walk with the fam?! What is this nonsense?

Now, I realize that some people never stopped playing Pokemon Go, but let's be honest, it's nowhere near what it was like back in 2016 when everybody was crowded around hotspots and restaurants at those hotspots were giving discounts to gamers. That was a crazy time that I'm not sure will ever be duplicated.

That said, if you've played Pokemon Go, Pikmin Bloom will feel very familiar, and for those that have actually played any of the Nintendo Pikmin games, you'll appreciate seeing your little buddies again.

Look familiar?

As the story goes, the world is full of tiny unsee-able creatures called Pikmin, but your phone does a bang up job of revealing them to the human eye. You plant your pikmin and harvest them by walking around the world. Once you've walked around a bit, you pick your pikmin out of their planting pots and bam, they're ready to harvest Nectar for you.

Man, I need to find some of those cooler looking Pikmin!

The more nectar you have, the more your pikmin will give you their petals. The more petals you have, the more you can spread flowers while you're out on your walks, beautifying the virtual world along your way. 

On yesterday's walk we headed toward our local neighborhood park because it was a node with a huge flower that was not yet bloomed.  

Feed me Seymour! Feed me!

Once we arrived we walked all around the edges of the park together until it magically bloomed and our neighborhood's flower was doing great.

Our neighborhood's flower in full bloom

Earlier in the day, I also took the opportunity to spread flowers all around the voting location since no one had . . . go out and vote, friends.  Cover those voting locations in flowers!

I hope someone saw that yesterday and appreciated it.

At the end of every day around 9pm, Pikmin Bloom takes a moment to review your day and tally up the number of steps you took. It even gives you a personal journal entry and snags one of your photos.

Pikmin Bloom also lets  you take pictures with AR so you can show off the Pikmin hanging out in your house.

The cat tower isn't just for cats. ;)

I hope you have a chance to spread some flowers and to stretch your legs with Pikmin Bloom. It was great to bring some of the magic back into taking a walk yesterday.

Happy Dueling!