Hard Soil

Hard Soil
Hard Soil
Dried out and sun baked. This soil should be removed before you can build a new garden.
Level	1
Base Value	0 chocolate coins

Hard Soil, also known as cracked earth, is a special type of surface only seen in Viva Piñata and Pocket Paradise. It is utterly inhospitable to life, unable to grow any type of plant, nor attract even the most basic of piñata. Buildings, decorations, fences, and other structures cannot be placed on hard soil. Crates are an exception, and can be placed on hard soil. Moving it again will cause it to remove the hard soil beneath it.

Every new garden will be filled with hard soil, that must be removed by whacking it with your shovel. The first garden will also contain garden junk, that will also remove hard soil upon being destroyed.

Hard soil is the result of Professor Pester's attack on Jardiniero's garden, the same garden that you have now been saddled with. Despite making it seem like restoring the garden is impossible, hard soil will give way to normal, healthy soil upon being removed.

Because the game takes place in a different garden, Trouble in Paradise does not feature hard soil at all.

Removal

Your first task upon starting the game is to clear the land, removing all debris and removing the hard soil. Leafos gifts you your first shovel to do this, even the rundown shovel she gives you works well enough to plow the land. When over hard soil, you can press A on your controller to begin automatically removing cracked earth. Simply move around the garden, and try not to miss any awkward bits of soil that may be annoying to remove later.

Other items can remove hard soil, though they are not available till later in the game and cannot help you with the initial removal. Crates can be used to remove any hard soil underneath them. Ponds can be dug in hard soil, destroying it in the process. These methods are good for removing any tiny stray patches your shovel fails to remove on it's own.

Uses

The only real use for hard soil is for hatching a Dragonache. Hatching a Dragonache on hard soil will create the gold variant. However, once hard soil has been removed, it can never be replaced in your garden. Because of this, a patch of it must be saved since the start of your garden if you wish to obtain the gold Dragonache.

A simpler method is to start a secondary garden, as new gardens will be covered in fresh hard soil, and without all the clutter found in the initial garden. This will allow you to quickly and easily obtain your gold Dragonache, though you will need to put in the work of finding a new egg for that garden.

Gallery

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  Flat icon for hard soil

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  A new garden filled with hard soil