Crate

Artwork of a Crate.

Crates are objects used to transfer objects such as piñatas, plants, and buildings from one owned garden to another, relocate in the same garden, or to send to a different player as a gift or trade. Fannie Franker (or Gretchen Fetchem in Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise) runs the Post Office where all of the player's crates are stored. Players can pack up to five of the same type of item to a crate. Players can also add Chocolate Coins to the crate to send as a gift. Players can store an unknown large amount of crates in Viva Piñata and Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, and up to three crates in Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise.

Only one crate can be placed in the garden at a time. In addition, when a crate with items is sent to the post office, the game is automatically saved.

Crates being able to store buildings makes it quicker to move buildings across the same garden or to a different garden, as Willy Builder does not need to enter the garden and start building, which can take several minutes. In addition, this allows the building to be built closer to the edge of the garden than when constructed using Willy Builder.

There is also a second type of crate used by Langston Lickatoad to allow players to transfer piñatas to him to complete factory challenges by sending a set of piñatas to a party. In Viva Piñata, this crate is a free and quick way to convert the Dry Soil that a new garden starts out with to regular soil. In Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise there is a pre-installed crate generator that generates crates that allow players to send piñatas at full candiosity to a party at will. This crate does not disallow a crate from the Post Office from being placed in the garden.

Limitations

Crates containing Dragonache piñatas cannot be sent to other players. The player list will only show the user when a Dragonache is stored in the crate.

Attempting to open a create with a piñata that has a sour version in a garden where the owner does not have the correct Tower of Sour block to prevent that sour species from entering the garden will result in a sour piñata of that species being inserted into the garden instead of the normal species of that kind.

Due to the servers that managed the transferring of crates being shut down, sending a crate to another player will cause the crate to become lost, preventing transfer of items to other players in Viva Piñata. The servers are not accessed when selecting to send the crate to yourself, which allows users to continue using crates for item storage. Since crates can be dumped in other player's gardens in Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, players are still able to transfer items over Xbox Live with an Xbox Live Gold subscription, or to players on the same local network.

Trivia

• During development, packages were intended to be carried by balloons attached by a postman helper. This was considered one of the "real gems" of the developers' discarded ideas.