Pikmin Bloom

I’ve been playing Pikmin Bloom for . . . a week now? And it’s something to do, but I’m afraid I don’t get it.

It took me pretty much a week to figure out Pokemon Go and way less time to figure out Wizards Unite, since the activities in Wizards Unite pretty much map 1-to-1 to Pokemon Go. You walk, you catch Pokemon/return Foundables. You can use berries and make better throws to make it easier to catch Pokemon. You can use potions and make better traces to make it easier to return Foundables. You can get balls and other supplies from Pokestops. You can get spell energy from inns and potion ingredients from greenhouses. And so on and so on.

In Pikmin Bloom, it seems that you walk with a troop of Pikmin (plant-like critters), but you don’t pick up the supplies and Pikmin sprouts that are on the map yourself, you have to have your Pikmin do it for you?

I accidentally got a postcard and I sent it to one of my two Pikmin Bloom friends. The one that’s not Evelyn. I figured that I’d figure it out and send a card to Evelyn pretty soon. It’s been days and I haven’t been able to figure it out, so Evelyn is still going postcardless.

I’ve kind of read at some articles on the game, but it’s just not gelling.

So I am supposed to meet Evelyn tomorrow evening (November 13). I’ll try to get out earlier than that and go downtown and noodle around with this game and figure out if there’s a way to reliably get postcards, whether I can actually pick up fruit myself, and what I’m supposed to do with those giant flowers in the game.

Update: I still don’t have any postcards to send after playing off and on (mostly on) for five hours. I did find a lot of open flowers, though. Today was the first Pikmin Bloom Community Day, and the only goal was to walk 10,000 steps. The notification on my phone said until 8:00. Okay, it actually said “hasta . . . 20:00, hora local,” and no matter how I add it up, that’s 8:00 pm. Everything else I can find says that it ended at 6:00. I did make my 10,000 steps by 8:00, though, so let’s see if I get my badge or not.

ETA (11/17/21):

  1. I haven’t seen the badge for Community Day yet. I suspect I can just give up on that. I guess the event did end at 6:00.
  2. I’ve figured out a way to pretty predictably get postcards. Defeat a mushroom.
  3. I can hear you now, “A mushroom?” And, yes, a mushroom. Mushrooms are to Pikmin Bloom what gym battles are to Pokemon Go. They appear at certain times at Pokestop and gym locations and you can send X number of your Pikmin to tear down the mushroom. So far, every time my Pikmin have defeated a mushroom, they’ve gotten two pieces of fruit and a postcard.