Pikmin 3: No Fruit, No Problem - 0 Fruit in 2h24m

Published on , 1934 words, 8 minutes to read

A Pikmin 3 challenge run where I don't make the fruit counter increase.

Want to watch this in your video player of choice? Take this:
https://cdn.xeiaso.net/file/christine-static/video/2024/pikmin-3-0-fruit/2/index.m3u8

Recently I saw @TheBacklogs do a Pikmin 3 challenge run where they collected 0 fruit to beat the game. I thought I could do better, so I beat it in 2 hours 24 minutes.

Full run without commentary: https://youtu.be/nHFIn74-mLk
@TheBacklogs' run: https://youtu.be/eSEUdgVX7o4
My website: https://xeiaso.net
My Mastodon: https://pony.social/@cadey
My Youtube: https://youtube.com/@Cadey
YouTube version: https://youtu.be/HVkoPhpzpeM

Transcript

Cadey is coffee
<Cadey>

This is a direct inlining of the script for your convenience when using control-f. The intended experience is to watch the video above. Enjoy!

Pikmin 3 is a simple game. You start out crashing on a ship, find your friends, collect pikmin types to get past puzzles, and most importantly you collect fruit to save your home planet Koppai from its impending doom.

However, due to some interesting implementation on Nintendo's part, it's actually possible to complete the game without collecting any fruit...

...asterisk.

Pikmin is a series of real-time strategy envrionmental puzzle games made by Nintendo. It's kind of annoyingly hard to describe the Pikmin series in a single word. It's a combination of the high points of Age of Empires and Super Metroid. You control swarms of units to get past lock-and-key puzzles.

However, in Pikmin 3 you're on a strict time limit. Your captains need fruit juice to live. You harvest fruit juice from the fruit you collect to save Koppai. And yet, you can beat the game and leave the planet and doom your planet to starve.

Today I'm going to talk about how I beat Pikmin 3 Delu on easy mode in 2 hours 24 minutes with zero fruit collected.

I was inspired to do this run after watching a video by The Backlogs where they managed to do pikmin 3 0 fruit in 15 in-game days. I think that they did a valiant effort, however as I was watching their video...

I thought I could do better.

If you want to watch the entire 2 hour run without commentary, the link is in the description.

So I started a new run, and got past day one where you get the red onion and 21 red pikmin. You build a bridge, push a box, break a wall, and blast off into the stratosphere for day two.

Day Two

Day two is where things start to pick up. You land in the Garden of Hope because you find your crewmate Brittany's signals. There's just one problem, she's stuck behind a glass wall that your pikmin can't break. You need to get the Rock pikmin to break them.

So you do that, save Brittany, and break the glass wall by your base, so you can fight the Armored Mawdad to get the cell phone needed to get to the next area.

In my initial runs, this is where I had a lot of resets. The pathing for this is super tight. You need to have everything moving constantly. After about 15 resets, I think I found the path that works the most consistently. You need to speed your way to the rock pikmin but take care to NOT collect the adult bulborb for the red onion. The rock pikmin need that to make fighting the armored mawdad easier.

Once you have the bridge built, have Aleph and Brittany race over to the boss and fight it. When fighting the armored mawdad, make sure to break its jaws. This makes it unable to kill any of your pikmin. If you lose more than 10 pikmin, you need to restart the day because you won't have enough for the later days. Other than that, it's almost free. Have your rock pikmin focus on the last bit of the tail so your reds can seal the deal. It's all easy from there.

Blast off once you get the phone and head to get Charlie.

Day Three

Today you need to collect Charlie, but first you have a detour to get the Yellow pikmin. Collect all the pikmin you can, they are invaluable.

However we run into the first barrier of the run. We run out of food. Like I said earlier, your crew needs fruit juice to live, but we're not allowed to collect any fruit, right?

Here's the asterisk in this run, there's a way to collect fruit without making the fruit counter increase. It's all thanks to the fact that Pikmin 3 has multi-part fruit. The fruit isn't considered "collected" until all of the parts are collected. This means you can collect all the fruit you want just as long as you don't collect the last part.

In this stage there's two sets of grapes and a kiwi that are on the critical path to Charlie. The grapes are the sketchy one because you need to collect exactly nineteen of them. Station one of your captains at the base, listen for the sound of fruit being collected, and whistle the pikmin after they leave to go back to the stem. With that and the kiwi, you should have about 3 days of juice.

Kill the boss, save Charlie, onward and upwards!

Day Four

Day 4 is the last day you need to collect any fruit. It's also when you fight one of my favorite bosses in the game: the sandbelching meerslug.

When you trim all the fat, this day is really easy. Throw your friends up the ledge, kill the beetle larva, push the bag down, then switch out all your pikmin for reds. Fight the boss, appreciate their terrain deformation tech (seriously, Pikmin 3 is one of the most gorgeous games Nintendo has ever made), kill the boss, collect the watermelon parts save that last one, and then you're done.

In my run I collected the starfruit in the area, but you don't need it to have enough juice to beat the game.

Now, onto the Twilight River!

Day 5

This day sucks so much. It's easily the point where I reset the most in all of my practice and PB runs. The timing for everything is ridiculously tight. Start by ditching your friends and grabbing 20 rocks and 30 yellows. Run past the pink onion cutscene trigger and head over the river. At the same time, have Brittany grab 30 yellows and auto-walk towards the electric gate. Have Charlie do the same with 20 rocks. Navigate Brittany into the cave and bridge the electric gap. Once you get past the cutscene and whistle back all your guys, have her auto-walk towards the pile of bridge parts. Switch to Charlie. Have charlie take out the blowhog near the cave and the joustmite near the base. Return charlie to the onion and put away his rocks. The wall near Aleph will be done and all of the rocks will be waiting where the bridge parts were originally, grab both sets and kill the wollyhop with a shower of rocks. Throw five rock pikmin on the spicy berry plant and have your yellows grab the bridge parts. Have the remaining rock pikmin join Charlie at the onion.

Throw a rock at the spider on the web, throw a buddy at the onion, and then grow your stock of wing pikmin to 40. Send your buddies down the river with 50 yellows and 10 rocks. They'll need to break down walls and pave the way for Louie to come back later. The routing for getting the bridge built is really tight, but if you put 6 wings on one pile, 5 wings on another, and the rest on the last one you can just barely make it in time.

Assemble everyone and then you're onto the scornet maestro. If you have about 40 wing pikmin for the boss fight, you should be fine. If you don't, it'll be more annoying and waste time that you desperately need to get Louie back to the ship. Don't bother picking up the bodies, focus purely on Louie. Once Louie is halfway towards the gate, put 20 wing pikmin on the scornet majestro body. Spicy sprays will help you here, but it's really a race against the clock no matter what you do. If you get lucky, the wing pikmin get bigger numbers, if you don't it's no big deal. Once Louie is in the ship, you can move onto the next day where you best the Quaggled Mireclops.

Day 6

All that's left are the blue pikmin now. Louie stole all our food, but even without that food you can still technically beat the game. Get the blue pikmin, use wing pikmin to beat up a boss, grab the parts of the platform, and leave 10 wing pikmin near the bridge. They will bring back Louie when you beat the boss. Otherwise you want 20 rocks, and the rest should be blues. The dead bodies you pile up will more than supply all the blues you'll need for the rest of the run. The mireclops is an easy fight, especially thanks to all of the spicy spray you built up yesterday. Don't worry too much about losses unless it's rock losses before you break the crystal. Lose all your rocks before that? Restart.

Otherwise just drag Louie back to the ship, get everyone in your party, and end the day. Now all that's left is the final boss.

Day 7

The game is almost over and you no longer need to worry about anything but finishing this maze. Throw 10 wing pikmin on Brittany and have her run circles around the maze. Blow up walls and make your way through the maze. All that's left is the final boss.

Station one of the captains at the onion and slowly whittle it down. Victory is easy from here.

Analyzing the run

If I were to improve this run, here's what I'd improve:

Overall, I'm very happy with this run. I thought it was jus a meme run at first, but it's actually surprising at how completable the game is without collecting any fruit...

...asterisk.

Extra thanks to my Patrons! I've been playing with new tools, equipment, and camera tricks. I'm getting a lot more comfortable shooting video in manual and I'm starting to totally remove autofocus from my video and photography workflows. I want to also thank my patrons for sticking with me during my bout with writer's block. Specifically, I want to thank:

for sponsoring me at the $10 tier or above. I also want to thank everyone else that supports me.

Other than that, have a good day, make sure to like that subscribe button and stay hydrated!

Facts and circumstances may have changed since publication. Please contact me before jumping to conclusions if something seems wrong or unclear.

Tags: pikmin, speedrun