11 things I wish I’d known before playing Pikmin 4

Domagoj Belancic

21/7/2023

Translation: Patrik Stainbrook

Pikmin 4 is the biggest Pikmin game to date. In addition to more expansive worlds and new Pikmin species, the game also offers completely new modes. These eleven tips will help you get started on your new adventure.

Pikmin 4 is bigger, better and more beautiful than its predecessors. In addition to the new Ice and Glow Pikmin, the cute yellow dog Oatchi is a real gamechanger. With him, Pikmin 4 plays completely different from previous instalments. And then there are the new night missions, Dandori challenges, and underground dungeons, a breath of fresh air for the Pikmin universe.

With so many new features and game modes, it’s not easy to keep track of everything. The in-game tutorials are well done, but tell you some tricks pretty late or not at all.

I’d have liked to know the following eleven tips before playing Pikmin 4.

1. Unlock gear early

After you’ve recovered some members of the rescue crew, you can visit the laboratory in your base camp. You can buy both gear and other items there. You can use the former as often as you like. The latter disappear from your inventory after one use.

Since the currency for gear and items is the same, you have to decide: do you prefer to unlock gear as early as possible, which will become more and more useful as the adventure progresses? Or do you buy items like bombs and potions to have short-term success? I recommend option one. The following gear in particular is essential when exploring the Pikmin 4 game world and should be acquired as early as possible:

• Survey Drone: this gadget can be unlocked very early. If you use it on a mission, you can explore the entire area from a bird’s-eye view. This will also pause the in-game time. Using the drone, you’ll discover hidden passages and treasures in the above world and in dungeons. The drone is also immensely helpful in Dandori challenges. With it, you can take a breath, analyse your game environment, and plan your next moves.

• Treasure Gauge: you can also unlock this tool relatively early. The gadget gives you visual and auditory signals when there’s treasure nearby. For buried objects in particular, this is extremely useful.
• Homesick Signal: at the end of a busy day, you must always collect your Pikmin. This can be tedious, especially when the critters are scattered all over the map. With the Homesick Signal, Pikmin hurry back to your base – even if they’re doing something. This way, at the end of a mission, you’ll make sure that you don’t forget any Pikmin and let them die.

• Idler’s Alert: when your Pikmin complete a task, they stop and rest. The cheek! And this is where the Idler’s Alert comes in. When pressed, it attracts all Pikmin that have nothing to do at the moment and guides them to your current position. An essential tool for Dandori masters.

2. Command your Pikmin with the Charging Horn (X button)

To attack enemies or transport treasures, use the A button to throw your Pikmin in the desired direction. Larger treasures or enemies often need a lot of Pikmin to be transported, same goes for fights. Manually throwing the plant critters can therefore be exhausting. Unless you like hammering your poor A button 50 times over and over again.

Don’t forget that you can instead use the X button to blow the Charging Horn and send an entire Pikmin type off at once. This relieves your thumb and saves time. And especially in hectic Dandori duels, every second counts.

3. Use shortcuts

The more items, tools and Oatchi commands you unlock, the more tedious it becomes to find and select a respective option in the pop-up menu. Instead of clicking through the menu each time, I recommend using shortcuts as early as possible.

You do this by going to Shortcut Settings in the pause menu (minus button). There you can assign up to five items, actions or commands to the D-pad and the L3 button. Experiment around and find out which shortcuts are best for your Dandori strategy.

4. Use Glow Pikmin in caves

In the new night missions, Glow Pikmin will be by your side. The fluorescent creatures are faster and stronger than regular Pikmin. They can also paralyse enemies with a powerful ball lightning attack. They can even teleport!

Unfortunately, you can’t use these powerful Super Pikmin on your regular missions – they like the dark and won’t work in daylight. But what I often forget: I can freely use the luminous beasts in pitch-black underground dungeons.

This is especially handy in later underground levels with ultra-strong boss enemies. I really despaired at some monsters – until I used Glow Pikmin and marched through the strongest enemies without any problems.

5. Improve – or worsen – your aim with motion controls

Wondering why your Pikmin aim is off? By default, motion-controlled aiming is enabled in Pikmin 4 as soon as you start shooting your Pikmin with the A Button. If you don’t keep your controller still, your plant creatures may fly wildly through the air. This led to much confusion at the beginning of my adventure. Is my aim really that bad? Or are my Pikmin drunk?

You can disable this option in the settings (minus button). To do this, scroll to the Motion Controls item. Strangely enough, the setting is disabled when you select «Yes».

If you decide to leave motion controls enabled, this can also have advantages in combat. With small controller movements, you’ll precisely hit individual body parts of enemies. Same goes if you target them with the R button.

6. Collect onions and save Pikmin

You can breed your Pikmin soldiers. This works like in all previous instalments: let your plant creatures transport flowers or mortal remains of enemies to the bulb in your base and bam! Suddenly, new Pikmin sprout from the ground.

On your journey, you’ll keep discovering new Pikmin species. However, you can only breed them if you collect an onion in the colour of the respective Pikmin species. Therefore, search levels for coloured bulbs first to be able to breed your new Pikmin friends.

To make sure that you don’t completely wipe out a Pikmin species, you should never send all Pikmin of one colour to battle. Always leave at least one Pikmin behind so you can breed the critters more easily once you find the appropriate bulb.

7. Use Oatchi’s sense of smell

Don’t forget that you can use Oatchi as a sniffer dog! The two-legged furball can search for onions, loot, materials and even stranded astronauts. This makes exploring the map a lot easier.

8. Focus on Oatchi’s abilities

In the base camp, you can unlock new abilities for Oatchi and train with him. You should unlock and upgrade the following skills as early as possible:

• Rush: With the Rush attack, Oatchi not only destroys things in his way, but also attacks enemies. If you train this skill diligently, you will unlock Mega Rush. With this, the yellow dog stuns attacked enemies for a short time. This gives your Pikmin the opportunity to do a lot of damage. In this way, you’ll be able to efficiently eliminate even the biggest and nastiest enemies.

• Buff: if you train this skill, Oatchi can transport very heavy objects. Initially, your faithful companion has the power of three Pikmin. When you fully upgrade the skill, Oatchi becomes as strong as 100 (!) Pikmin. This makes transporting huge treasures in later levels much easier.

• Command: an essential skill for your Dandori challenges. If you unlock it, you can give various commands to Oatchi. You can let the dog search for objects (see tip 7), send it to a certain point on the map and let it collect scattered Pikmin. Without this ability, efficient Dandori isn’t possible.

9. Use items

After unlocking the most important gear (see tip 1), you can spend money on one-time use items. I find the following particularly helpful:

• Ice Bomb: in combat, the ice bomb is of limited effectiveness. If you shoot it at an enemy, it won’t explode immediately. If you’re unlucky, the monster will have already moved on by the time the thing goes off. But the bomb has a nice side use outside of battles. If you shoot it into bodies of water, they’ll freeze. This is especially handy when you don’t have enough Ice Pikmin with you. But beware: the ice effect doesn’t last long.

• Lightning Shock: this item paralyses all creatures within a certain radius. Unlike the slow ice bomb, paralysis is instantaneous. No countdown, no delay. When surrounded by too many enemies, Lightning Shock got me out of trouble quite a bit.

• Trackonator: an item that can be especially helpful in night missions. Strategically place sensor bombs around your Lumiknolls. If an enemy gets too close, they’ll explode. Outside of night missions, I also used the sensor bombs every now and then. If you throw the bombs directly at enemies, they’ll stick to them and explode after a short countdown.

10. Use Ultra Spicy Spray

Are enemies still too strong despite your items, gear and Oatchi’s abilities? Then pick up some Ultra Spicy Spray!

With this red mist, your Pikmin become incredibly fast for about 60 seconds. Their attacks also speed up. Combined with a paralysed opponent, you can pump out insane amounts of damage in a short time.

You can’t buy the spray in the lab. Instead, you have to collect red berries. Ten berries get you a bottle of spray. Occasionally, you’ll find red nectar that you can also turn into Ultra Spicy Spray inside eggs. One egg is equal to one bottle of spray.

11. Don’t forget about side quests in the camp

The more stranded astronauts you rescue, the busier your base becomes. Many of them also have side quests for you. Check in with the little space travellers after your trips and talk to them to unlock quests. Successfully completing missions will grant you materials. With these you can buy gear and items in the lab. Some side quests are «endless» and keep rewarding you with materials. It’s worth dropping by regularly!

A little tip on the side: in order to avoid running through the whole camp every time, you can select astronauts with new quests in the map and teleport directly to them.

Got any other tips for Pikmin newbies?

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Domagoj Belancic

Senior Editor

Domagoj.Belancic@digitecgalaxus.ch

My love of video games was unleashed at the tender age of five by the original Gameboy. Over the years, it's grown in leaps and bounds.

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