Pikmin/The Forest of Hope

Start area
There are a number of new game mechanics to learn here. First, you now have a time of day display along the top of the screen. From now on each day has a fixed length of about 17 min. in real time. Time spent in game menus does not count. The game day is divided into 12 game hours; nighttime must be spent away from the planet surface to avoid the dangerous predators that appear. Near the end of each day you'll want to gather up any stray Pikmin not near the ship, otherwise they won't make it back to their onion in time and will fall victim to the predators. If you find yourself with a bit of extra time at the end of the day, but not enough to do anything useful, select 'Go to Sunset' from the Start menu to avoid having to wait.

Notice the rainbow colored circle of light near the ship. Stand in it and press to get a status report including the number of ships parts found so far and the number remaining to advance to the next area. This also repairs your space suit which can take damage from enemies and other hazards. If your spacesuit 'health' (shown in the lower left corner of the screen) reaches 0 then the ship's emergency rescue system will transport Olimar to the ship, but you immediately advance to the next day and any Pikmin not safe in their onion will be lost.

There is a small circle of light under the onion as well. Stand in it and press to draw Pikmin out. You can also put Pikmin back in should the need arise, but Pikmin will find their own way back into the onion at sunset if they are close to it.

Start by drawing the Pikmin from the day before and exploring the immediate area. There are a couple of patches of grass here and if Pikmin run across them they stop following you and start pulling it out of the ground. This may produce drops of yellow nectar which the Pikmin will greedily drink up. As a result, the leaf on their heads turns into a flower. The flower-Pikmin move faster than the leaf-Pikmin so this is a good thing. It's a good idea to swarm Pikmin around areas where yellow nectar might appear so as many as possible get a taste of it. Pikmin that taste the nectar go inactive for a few seconds while they mature and you may have to call them a couple of times to get their attention again. Note that flower-Pikmin will leave yellow nectar alone since they get no benefit from it. Pikmin sprouts left in the ground will gradually mature from leaf, to an intermediate bud stage, and finally to the flower stage, but this doesn't work on the first day. Flower-Pikmin may loose their petals and revert to leaf-Pikmin when fighting certain enemies.

Eternal Fuel Dynamo
The area you are in is enclosed my a wall with two gates. One is blocked by a solid wall and Pikmin, try as they might, can't break it down. The other is blocked by a less sturdy, lattice-like wall which Pikmin can destroy eventually. So swarm the lattice wall and let the Pikmin work on it until it's down. This wall is white and later in the game grey and black walls are found; white are the easiest to break down and black are the hardest. Tearing down the wall opens a new territory for you to explore.

Here you'll encounter your first predators of the Pikmin: the bulborbs. They have round red bodies, yellow faces and come in large and small varieties. You should be able to defeat the smaller ones with your small army, the most effective way is to throw a Pikmin directly on top of them. After it's killed an enemy usually leaves behind a corpse and the Pikmin will carry it back to its onion as if it was a food pellet. When it gets there the onion will absorb it in the same way and produce Pikmin seeds. There are several of the smaller bulborbs here, not to mention some pellet posies and stray food pellets, so you should be able to quickly build up you forces enough to take on the larger bulborb here.

There is a pond on the far side of this area, but the Pikmin you have now will drown if go in it so avoid it until later in the game. Should a Pikmin wander into the water you have few seconds to lead it out by repeatedly calling it.

Of the left shore there is the start of a bridge. Pikmin will start working on it if you let them and finish the bridge after a while, but there isn't any point to doing this at the moment.

Once your army has been built up a bit you can take on the larger bulborbs. They sleep during the day so you should be able to take them by surprise. Their teeth are in front so you'll want to attack from behind as much as possible. Some recommend swarming them from the rear while others recommend quickly throwing Pikmin on top of them. Certainly any method which can defeat them with little or no casualties is a good one. These corpses take a lot of Pikmin to move, but you get a lot of seeds from them in return.

You will find a space ship piece, the Eternal Fuel Dynamo in this area, though you will need 40 Pikmin to move it so you need to grow your army before you can do anything with it. Always make sure the path from a part to the ship is free of enemies before letting the Pikmin move it, otherwise you may find that the Pikmin have been turned into a quick meal instead of making it back.

At this point you can either get the next part or start work on breaking down the next wall. But this is as good a time as any to start multitasking, so you might want to split up you force, set some going on the wall where they can work unsupervised while you take the rest to get the part. We'll cover these tasks in separate sections leaving it up to you to decide the best strategy according you your preference and circumstances.

Shock Absorber
Take a force of 45-50 Pikmin and locate the ledge to the left of the pond. You can't get to the ledge but you can throw you Pikmin to it; do so being careful not to let any fall into the puddle on the left. With your force waiting for you on the ledge, go through the puddle and up the ramp on the far side. Your spacesuit protects you from water so you can do this even though your Pikmin can't. Cirle around to your Pikmin, being careful not to wake the bulborb, and call them. Then sneak around behind the bulborb and dispatch it as with one the you encountered earlier. Assuming you didn't take too many casualties you should be able to send your Pikmin back to the ship with both the bulborb corpse and the ship part. Note, there are alternative ways to reach this part once you get other varieties of Pikmin, but this seems to be as good as any.

The Yellow onion
As you exit the start area, follow the wall right until you come to another lattice wall. Once you break through you'll be in another area with bulborbs; this time there is a small one and a large one together. Try to defeat the small one quickly or it will wake up the large one, or you can avoid this by luring the small one away first, though you lose some of the element of surprise that way. You may want to send back the spoils but it may be better to just have you Pikmin wait for a bit.

You'll find a brown object that comes to life and turns bright yellow as you approach. This is the Yellow onion and its seeds produce Yellow Pikmin (or Yellows for short). Start building up your population of Yellows just as you did with the Reds on day 1. If you left the bulborb corpses you can have the Yellow collect them and further increase their number.

Note that a Red will happily take a yellow food pellet to its own onion, but you only get about half the seeds when the color of the pellet doen't match the onion. When Pikmin of multiple colors pick up food, it goes to the color onion which has the most Pikmin of that color carrying it, in other words it goes by vote.

If you have multiple colors in your party, they will separate themselves by color if you dismiss them using. This is useful because the different colors have different strengths and abilities. Right now you'll notice that Reds are strong fighters while Yellows can be thrown higher. The color of the next Pikmin to be thrown is shown at the bottom of the screen and holding down also separates the Pikmin by color.

Explore the area a bit with the Yellow and you'll notice that they will pick up glowing round rocks. These are bomb-rocks and Yellows can use them like grenades. They are tricky to handle though and a common mistake is to set them off at the wrong time, resulting in disaster for your forces. Yellows will automatically pick up bomb-rocks when they find them, but they are usally hidden a dark cranny. In The Forest of Hope you will most often find them in rusty tin cans. If you throw a Pikmin with a bomb, it will throw it at a nearby target, such as an enemy, if there is one, otherwise it will just wait with it. If you then call the Pikmin with it will detonate the bomb-rock before returning. To have the Pikmin return to your party while keeping the bomb-rock, just touch it. Pikmin dismissed with the button will keep their bomb-rocks when called.

Whimsical Radar
Continue on to the right of the Yellow onion (or where it originally landed if you're on another day now), you'll see a solid wall like the one near the space ship, and there are bomb-rocks in front of it. This is a big hint that you need the bomb-rocks to break down the wall. Get some Yellows and have them pick up the the bomb-rocks; there are 6 and you should probably get all of them. Collect the Yellows and throw them one at a time in the general area of the wall. Each one will toss its bomb at the wall and quickly retreat before it explodes. Be careful not to throw the next Pikmin until it's safe. You should only need three bomb-rocks to knock down the wall, but there is a tin can near the Yellow onion with 5 more if you need them.

If everything goes well then you'll have three bomb-rocks left over. There are other solid walls you can use them on; one of which is on the other side of the Yellow onion. But there isn't much you can do beyond this wall at the moment so you're better off using them on the wall near the ship. But don't lead your bomb carriers back there just yet since there's shortcut; just put them to one side for now.

Past the wall are some smalls bulborb and new enemies, sheargrubs, small insect larvae. They should be relatively easy to defeat, even though they fight in swarms. They usually appear near bridges and have an annoying habit of undoing any progress you've made in building them if left alone. If you have Reds with you then use them to clear the area since they make better fighters, but using Yellows should work as well.

On the left side of this area, on top of a ledge, is the Whimsical Radar, the most important part in the game. Once it's in your ship you can view a map of the region, including the locations of remaining parts. It's a high ledge so it's easier to get the part with Yellows, but Reds can still be thrown that high in a pinch.

On the right side is a path leading to the far side of the solid wall behind the ship. Take some Reds to clear the way first, then collect your bomb carriers to break down the wall creating a handy shortcut for the future. If you've created this shortcut before getting the radar then Pikmin will use it to carry the radar back to the ship, though the difference probably not significant.

Extraordinary Bolt
You'll need at least 9 bomb-rocks to get this, so you'll need at least that many Yellows with you and you'll need at least 30 Pikmin all together. You can find bomb-rocks in a tin can to the right of the pond, and more (as mentioned above) in another tin can near where the Yellow onion was first found. Go to the area where the Whimsical Radar was found and find the solid wall to the north. This wall is black which indicates it's tougher than the ones you've seen so far, and sure enough it will take 9 bomb-rocks to knock it down instead of 3. Once it's down though, the Extraordinary Bolt is just sitting there waiting for you to send it back to the ship.

Nova Blaster
This is an optional part, meaning you don't actually need it to escape the planet. You do need it though, if you want to get the 'happy' ending for the game. To get it, get a larger number of Pikmin, preferably Reds since there's some fighting to be done. Exit the start area via the gate where the solid wall was and look for a black lattice wall on the right. If for some reason you haven't knocked down the solid wall near the start you can take the long way through the area where the Yellow onion landed, or you can reach the lattice wall from the other side via the ledge where the Shock Absorber was. There's actually a tunnel next to the lattice wall so you and your Pikmin can go around it, but you won't be able to get the part through the tunnel. Break down the wall and clear the bulborbs from the passage beyond, being careful not to let any Pikmin wander into the puddle on the left. This is another chance to multitask since you can have some Pikmin working on the wall while you're fighting enemies with the rest. If you have some spare bomb-rocks, you can weaken the wall by throwing them at it; they don't just work on the solid walls. Just be sure not to use the bomb-rocks on a wall that's being worked on by other Pikmin. When the path is clear you'll find the Nova Blaster at the end. There is also a third tin can with bomb-rocks here.

What's next
There are more parts in this region, but you can't reach them yet (at least not without some difficult sequence breaking). There are five parts listed here, but since you already had one from The Impact Site, you only need four to move on to the next region.

If you find yourself with a large chunk of a day left but no more parts to collect, there are still things you can do. First, make sure you've knocked down all the walls you can reach at this point. The one near where the Yellow onion landed isn't needed now, but you'll save time later if you can get it out of the way. You can also build up your Pikmin numbers. Start by collecting the huge 20-seed yellow pellet on a ledge to the right as exit the start area via the gate where the solid wall was.

At this point you may want to know how well you're doing in terms of getting off the planet on time. Here's a list based on how many days it took you to complete the six tasks listed here (five parts and the Yellow onion).


 * 6 or more: You've definitely fallen behind but you may still get by if you skip some optional parts.
 * 5: Not bad for a beginner but you'll to improve your pace if you want to get all the parts in time.
 * 4: Could stand some improvement but you're still on track.
 * 3: Par, that's two tasks per day and you should be able to finish the game.
 * 2: Very good, that's three tasks per day and this could be a personal best.
 * 1 (4 parts): Excellent, five tasks in one day. Time to start bragging to your friends. It would be silly to spend a day on one part now, so get it when you come back to this region later in the game.