Fight

A Sparrowmint engaged in a fight with the Sweetle in Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise.

A fight is a battle between two Piñatas, or between a Piñata and a Ruffian. Fights are generally unwanted and usually result in a piñata getting sick.

Fighting Process

When a battle starts, both characters take turns attacking their opponent with missiles. In Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise, a health gauge for both piñatas appear when the battle starts. An alert will appear, and in Viva Piñata and Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, the alert can be selected to view it from a cinematic angle.

Eventually, a character will win the fight. In Viva Piñata and Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, the losing piñata will become sick immediately and the winning piñata's victory counter will increment, which counts towards Medal accessories. Winning 2 fights will reward the piñata with a Bronze Medal, and winning 7 fights and 17 fights will earn a Silver Medal and Gold Medal respectively. Obtaining the Gold Medal for the first time unlocks an achievement in Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, and having a blue variant Roario with a Gold Medal is required for completing one of Langston's destination challenges. These accessories do not count towards the five accessory limit when purchasing accessories from Paper Pets.

In Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise, when a Piñata loses a fight it gets destroyed immediately and its Life Candy is dropped on the floor for the piñata to eat.

In Viva Piñata and Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, piñatas fight using species dependent missiles, which may be a reference to a common stereotype of the species or a reference to another game. For example, the Smelba fires socks at the opponent. The Fizzlybear species will spit puzzle pieces in a fight, which is a reference to the Banjo-Kazooie series in which the main objective is to collect golden jigsaw puzzle pieces or "Jiggies".

In Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise, piñatas fight using generic triangle missiles which explode in a mixture of red star and heart shapes.

Starting a Fight

Fights automatically occur when two Piñatas have a conflict, and can also happen if they just don't like each other. There are many species which are natural rivals like the Barkbark and the Kittyfloss which have a baked in conflict, and will fight if they run into each other. A fight can also be manually triggered by tapping a piñata with the shovel repeatedly. A piñata that is about to fight will turn red and look angry. Ruffians will also start fights with Piñatas and will always win against them.

In Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise, a fight will always occur if another piñata is attempting to eat another one, whether the player ordered it to do so or a wild one does it by instinct, and the predator will always win the fight and destroy the other piñata. This allows it to eat the prey's Life Candy easily.

Prevention

Wild-card piñatas do not start fights with other piñatas. As such, having a garden of only wild-card piñatas is a way to prevent fights in the garden.

Hitting an angry piñata with a shovel or watering them with the watering can may stop it from fighting in Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, but this can lower their happiness, and this is not guaranteed to work. In Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise, fights will always be stopped if the watering can is used on one of the piñatas before the health gauges show up.

A Bonboon in the garden may stop some potential fights from starting. A Sour Bonboon will randomly trigger other piñatas to fight even fights for other Piñatas.

Building a fence trapping a species that has a conflict with another species in the garden helps prevent it from fighting.

Having a Red Eye Rainbow in the garden will reduce the chance of fights not triggered by the player from occurring.

Gallery

A Sparrowmint fighting a Whirlm in Viva Piñata: Pocket Paradise.

A Ruffian's reaction to winning a fight in Viva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise.

A Smelba throwing a sock at an enemy Smelba.