Guide to Piñata Achievements

Viva Piñata™ is a unique title for adding points to your gamerscore. The structure of the achievements rewards you less for following a set path and more for experiencing the game at your own pace and in your own way.

Happy piñatas are valuable piñatas.

The game is designed so that as your garden expands, creativity and experimentation will lead you to meet achievement requirements. A few helpful nudges, however, can go a long way to helping you discover those achievements. This guide won't cover every achievement in Viva Piñata, but it will outline the ones that are difficult or difficult to discover.

Evolution
Viva Piñata boasts two secret achievements given to gardeners who are able to get their piñatas to evolve. There is one achievement for two new piñatas and another for eight. Contrary to popular speculation, evolving new piñatas isn't achieved by romancing two different piñatas. It wouldn't be any fun to give away all the evolutionary tricks, but here are two simple examples:

• Sparrowmint: Given the right flower conditions these birds might naturally evolve, but if they don't, feed them a buttercup and see what happens.
• Quackberry: Achieve another easy evolution by feeding a gooseberry to a quackberry and watch the transformation!

Wonder what piñata that evolved from.

Employees
Once Arfur's Inn becomes available, a whole slew of easy achievements will be available to you. Score an achievement for each person from the Inn you employ. Initially you can only hire Sprinkling, but check back often and hire as many people as you can afford.

Defense Achievements
You can uncover three more achievements by choosing select piñatas to scare off enemies. Simply select the right piñata and the right enemy for it to frighten off, and they'll take care of everything else on their own.

• Crowla Delay: Achieved when a Crowla scares off a Dastardo.
• Sherbat Dance: Achieved when a Sherbet scares off a Dastardo.
• Mallowolf Howl: Achieved when a Mallowolf scares off a Ruffian.

Value Achievements
There are four value achievements to discover in Viva Piñata. Two focus on the value of your piñatas, earned for having piñatas worth five and ten thousand chocolate coins, while the other two focus on the value of your garden, and are rewarded for reaching a value of 25 and 100 thousand chocolate coins. First we'll take a look at raising your piñata values.

• Base Value: First, apply your talents to a piñata that already has a high base value. You can check this simply by selecting them in your garden, or by looking them up in your journal. Your best bet will likely be in the form of a rare piñata who isn't yet a resident of your garden. Satisfy a rare piñata's residency requirements, and start from there. 
• Value Stats: Once you have a piñata with a good base value, examine the value portion of their information page. There you'll find a list with the piñata's accessories (available at Paper Pets), happiness, age, sweets, and twin value, all of which contribute to the overall value of the piñata. The two easiest aspects to control are the accessories and the happiness rating.
• Be Patient: It's unlikely that you will earn this achievement until you get several hours into the game, so don't get anxious. Keep the values in mind and focus on building up one particular piñata, and these achievements will come as a matter of course.

Adding value with high-cost items from Costolots.

The Garden Value achievements take into account every aspect of your garden. This includes flowers, fruit, houses, statues, and of course, the piñatas themselves. Keep the following pointers in mind.

• High Value Residents: While you progress through the game, slowly weed out the lower level piñatas and replace them with higher value ones as often as you can. You can only handle so many piñatas at a time, and if a bunch of your early piñatas are taking up space, they've got to go.
• Miscellaneous Items: Costolot's store is filled with items for your garden that immediately add value. For example, the Bird and Bear statue contributes nearly 500 chocolate coins in value just by dropping it in place.
• Evolved Status: Whether it's the piñatas themselves or the plants that you grow, as they evolve they will add tremendous value without taking up more space. Plants are easily evolved by adding the correct fertilizer while they're growing (match the colors) while piñatas take a bit more experimentation.

Variant Achievements
Much like evolving piñatas, creating a variant piñata requires you to feed an item to an already existing piñata. This isn't about changing the species, but about creating a different colored version of the same species. Simple experimentation over time will yield plenty of piñata variations. Like most achievements in Viva Piñata, this is something that you will achieve as you progress in the game.

Maintain those rare piñata at all costs.

Tower of Sour
Sour piñatas that invade your garden can be a nuisance, but they can also be converted into placid, and therefore valuable, residents. This creates two positive effects. First, when you convert a sour piñata, the species will now only visit in non-sour form. Secondly, you get another totem in the Tower of Sour. Add two sours to score your first Tower of Sour achievement, and complete the tower with six sours for the second achievement.

This guide doesn't cover the more basic achievements, and we even left out a couple of the special secret achievements to keep things interesting, but you should find what you need to net twenty of the most difficult achievements in Viva Piñata. Good luck!

Article by Ryan Treit