Fruits are the reason for Alph, Brittany and Charlie's visit to PNF-404 – by retrieving pieces of fruit scattered around the planet, and extracting the seeds, they are able to solve the hunger problem in their home planet, Koppai.
Similarly to ship parts and treasures in the previous two games, the collection of these items is necessary in order to complete the game, and they are normally found in specific locations, commonly accompanied by some sort of challenge which must be completed to access them. Some fruits are split into parts, where all parts must be recovered before the fruit is recognized. On top of working towards the goal of kick-starting cultivation on Koppai, the fruits are directly useful to the explorers, as they need to feed on their juice every day.
In total, there are 66 fruits, belonging to 30 different types, with some of them having served as treasures in Pikmin 2, bearing the same name. There is a grand total of 98 days' worth of juice, including the three bottles the explorers keep at the start as provisions. Day 99 can be played, but the Koppaites will have no juice at the end, causing a game over. In the Ultra-Spicy difficulty in Pikmin 3 Deluxe, there are only 49 bottles worth of juice, as the amount of juice provided from each fruit is halved. Interestingly, by highlighting day 1 on the day selection menu, it'll show that at the start of that day, the explorers had 7 bottles of juice. Given that at the end of the day, there are only three bottles on the inventory, this means that when the Drake crash-landed, four of the provisions got lost.
Juice
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The collection of fruits serves more than just completing the overall goal: fruit collected is juiced at the end of the day to provide rations for the explorers. Juice is stored into bottles, and a bottle is only closed and made available if it's filled to the top. For this, the leaders will even mix juices of different fruits, if need be. After everything has been juiced, the crew grabs the oldest bottle and consumes it, regardless of how many people there are to feed on it. As such, the amount of juice the player has will determine the amount of days left they can explore. If a day ends and there are no more bottles of juice, the player is taken to the game over screen, although they are allowed to retry from a previous day.
Different fruits provide different amounts of juice, with the lowest possible being half a cup, the maximum being 3, and the average being 1.4. The bottles have some Koppaite text on them. On the glass, there is the text 
("FJ"), which could mean "fruit juice". On the frame, the word 
("survival") can be read.
A completed bottle of juice, after the juicing sequence.
Some of the many colors of juice found in Pikmin 3.
- GameOver.jpeg
The Game Over screen that is shown when the crew runs out of juice.
Blending
When two different juices are placed on the same bottle, the resulting juice's color will end up as a blend between the two. This is purely aesthetic and affects only the color seen on the bottle. To determine the final color, the game averages the hue and value components of both the existing and the new juice. This works fine for most cases, but can have some oddities; in the case where the player collects a Juicy Gaggle and a Zest Bomb and their juices are combined, this results in the color #00FFE5, which is a vibrant blue. Although this color blend is correct, it does not look very natural; indeed, in the real world, combining raspberry and lime juice results in a grayish brown mix.
That said, there is an exception for the first fruit of a saved game. When the player collects the first fruit, a cutscene plays showing said fruit being juiced. For unknown reasons, this cutscene affects the coloring calculations. If this fruit did not fill up a bottle, then when the player collects a second fruit, the resulting juice color will be more biased towards the first fruit collected. This can be seen easily with the aforementioned Juicy Gaggle and Zest Bomb – if the player collects one of these as their first fruit, the resulting "blue" juice will end up being greener or bluer than normal.[1]
List
In addition, the following two special types of fruits can be found in Mission Mode and Bingo Battle:
| Icon | Name |
|---|---|
|
Golden Sunseed |
|
Golden Grenade |
Fruit File
- Main article: KopPad.
The Fruit File is one of the options available on the KopPad. It provides information on all collected pieces of fruit, and by tapping on a fruit, the player can read Brittany's Notes on it.
Piktamin U
"Piktamin U" is a fictional vitamin that the Koppaites claim is in some fruits. Its name is a pun on "vitamin" with "Pik" at the start, and the "U" is the vitamin's name, in reference to the Wii U. Oddly, even the Golden Sunseed, which seems to be more of a treasure and less of a food, is said to have a lot of Piktamin U, in a Mission Mode tip.[2]
Treasures as fruits
In Pikmin 2, some treasures are actually fruits. They do not serve the same purpose as the collectibles in Pikmin 3, but are fruits nevertheless:
Cupid's Grenade: same as the Pikmin 3 fruit. It weighs 3 instead of 1.
Sunseed Berry: same as the Pikmin 3 fruit. It weighs 5 instead of 3.
Combustion Berry: a larger strawberry.
Seed of Greed: a chestnut; botanically a fruit.
Disguised Delicacy: same as the Pikmin 3 fruit. However, it is only one slice and weighs 15 instead of 5.
Insect Condo: same as the Pikmin 3 fruit. It weighs 15 instead of 10.
Citrus Lump: same as the Pikmin 3 fruit. It weighs 15 instead of 5.
Love Nugget: a tomato; tomatoes are considered vegetables for culinary purposes, but are botanically fruits.
Infernal Vegetable: a bell pepper; likewise, bell peppers are botanically fruits.
Badges
In Pikmin 3 Deluxe, there are five badges the player can gain from collecting fruits:
- Bearing Fruit - Collecting a fruit in story mode.
- Fruitful Endeavor - Collecting 20 fruits in story mode.
- Fruit Force - Collecting 30 fruits in story mode.
- Fruit Ballad - Collecting all 66 fruits in story mode.
- Efficiency Expert - Having 30 days' worth of juice reserve.
Bearing Fruit. The badge shows a Sunseed Berry.
Fruitful Endeavor. The badge shows a Sunseed Berry and a Slapstick Crescent.
Fruit Force. The badge shows an Insect Condo, a Citrus Lump, and some Dawn Pustules.
Fruit Ballad. The badge shows all six fruits seen in the previous badges.
Efficiency Expert. The badge shows three bottles of juice.
Gallery
At the end of the day, Brittany recaps and juices the collected fruits, and analyzes new ones.
Some more fruit. In this image, all pieces of fruit are of undiscovered types.
Some more fruit with 2 new types.
- Every Tropical Wilds Fruit.jpeg
Every fruit from the Tropical Wilds.
Trivia
- According to Brittany's notes, Alph is allergic to both the Heroine's Tear and the Scaly Custard, although the latter is only stated in the European version.
- Including Mission Mode and Bingo Battle, the Cupid's Grenade is the most common normal fruit in Pikmin 3, appearing 20 times. The most common golden fruit is the Golden Grenade, appearing 23 times.
- All the fruits in Pikmin 3 appear to be fresh and undamaged, which is odd, considering some of them are buried, underwater, not growing on any plant (except a few), and even ingested by creatures. This is likely to make them more easily recognizable.
- Next to the Sunseed Berry in the Garden of Hope along the path to the Rock Onion, an unripe strawberry on a stem can be seen to the right of the ripe fruit. While this fruit never grows, it implies that more fruit can grow on PNF-404 over time.
- The Fruit Files for Dawn Pustules and Dusk Pustules state 20 Pikmin are needed to carry them. While there are 20 grapes to carry in each, just one Pikmin can hypothetically handle the entire task by carrying one at a time.
Names in other languages
| Language | Name | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
 French |
Nourriture | Nourishment |
 German |
Nahrungsquelle | Source of nourishment |
 Italian |
Cibo | Food |
 Spanish |
Alimento | Nourishment |
Piktamin U
| Language | Name | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
 Japanese |
ピコミン? Pikomin |
|
 Chinese(traditional) |
皮他命U Pítāmìng U |
From 皮克敏 (Pikmin) and 維他命 |
 Chinese(simplified) |
皮他命U Pítāmìng U |
From 皮克敏 (Pikmin) and 维他命 |
| French |
Pictamine U | From "Pikmin" and "vitamine" (vitamin) |
| German |
Pikamin U | From "Pikmin" and "Vitamin" (vitamin) |
| Italian |
Pikamina U | From "Pikmin" and "vitamina" (vitamin) |
 Korean |
피타민 U pitamin U |
|
| Spanish |
Piktamina U | From "Pikmin" and "vitamina" (vitamin) |
See also
References
- ^ YouTube video demonstrating the different outcomes for blue juice, published on September 21st, 2020, retrieved on September 23rd, 2020
- ^ “Golden Sunseeds are packed with Piktamin U! One of these gives you
× 200!” – Loading screen tip in Mission Mode
