I get the Zirconium Rotor, Pilot's Seat, #2 Ionium Jet, Chronos Reactor, and the Bowsprit.
Here's a video showing how it's done:
Footage of all of the days together is available here.
An annotated map of this location is here
and here.
If you did everything properly on day seven then this day should be
manageable.
The most I've bred on this day is 82 Pikmin.
Challenges
As on day seven, at any point in this day a
Swooping Snitchbug
may pop up. There are some places where you have to ignore the Snitchbug,
because a battle may alert monsters that you would rather ignore.
However even with this difficulty this level works out properly
fairly often.
Difficulty
This day doesn't seem too hard. Maybe that's just because it comes right after day seven,
and anything seems easy after that.
What to do
Take out almost one hundred blues - leaving room to take out one to four yellows - enough to carry the bomb
rocks needed to knock down the wall near the double bridges (the one that
you damaged the previous day). Once everybody is out, head towards the wall. Dismiss the blues, pick up
the nearby bomb rocks and use them to destroy the wall. I then throw the yellows onto the nearby
twig, to give them something useful to do.
Leave your blues there and walk through the just cleared gap. The white wooden wall
blocking the Zirconium Rotor is your target. There is a
Yellow Wollywog
to the left that you must distract. Use Olimar to draw him two jumps farther to the left.
Now go back for your blues and carry them past the Yellow Wollywog you just drew away -
he should be far enough away to not chase you. Drop your Pikmin off at the black wooden
wall (they might as well beat up on it to keep themselves occupied, although this usually
has no value) and go over to the other Yellow Wollywog. This guy you need to draw away in
the opposite direction - to the right of the white wooden wall (but as far to the left
of the watery passage as you can go). If a Snitchbug comes by at this point you probably
can't safely attack him, and you may be in trouble if you don't. Just hope that it
doesn't happen.
With the Wollywogs out of the way, grab your blues and start knocking down the white
wall. The trick here is that when you knock down the wall and go get the Rotor, the first
Yellow Wollywog that you distracted is going to jump over the wall and start crushing
your guys. So, once they've start knocking down the wall, go back to that first Yellow
Wollywog and lure him away from the wall, one jump. Then run back to the white wall, before
he tries to follow you. If the Wollywogs return you may still be able to succeed. Don't panic,
and hope that the Rotor and your Pikmin can escape without being squashed. It works surprisingly
frequently.
Once the wall is down, run in and grab the Zirconium Rotor. Put fifty Pikmin on it. Take the
rest (should be forty six to forty nine of them) and head straight towards the Pilot's Seat.
Put about twenty five on carrying the Pilot's Seat and take the rest to
beat up the Shearwigs
nearby, on the route
back. Once you've killed the Shearwigs, put some of your Pikmin on carrying back the Shearwigs
and add the rest to the Pilot's seat. The idea is to get all of your Pikmin busy, so you
don't have to babysit them. The Pilot's Seat can hold 45 Pikmin, and the Shearwigs can hold
four, so you should always be able to give all your Pikmin work. However it can be hard.
The overhead view can help to find the empty spots on the part, but hitting that spot on a moving
part is tricky.
In fact, it may be worth taking out fewer than 100 Pikmin, because having to walk back with a
Pikmin can be very slow - slower than the few seconds it takes to pick a couple of Pikmin.
Now all of the Pikmin are busy, and Olimar is on his own. It's time to
kill a Water Dumple!
Head towards the Water Dumples and kill one of them, to soften them up for later.
After killing a Water Dumple, head back to the where you left the yellows (remember,
you left them building the twig pole?), and grab them.
You could actually leave them at the top of the twig for longer, but if the Snitchbug
catches them you will wish you hadn't. Take them back to the Onions and put them away.
Two parts down, three to go. You are now going to get the #2 Ionium Jet and the
Chronos Reactor. You can use twenty five to carry the Ionium Jet and forty to carry
the Chronos Reactor. Plus, you will use twenty to convert to yellows. So, you should
take at least eighty five blue Pikmin. You can take more if you want to get food. If you want
to get food, make sure you get out one hundred, so you don't have to do any picking.
Head towards the Reactor and Jet, walking through the water to avoid most monsters.
Avoid both of the
Puffy Blowhogs - killing them
is time consuming and has no value.
Go straight through and
kill the Water Dumples.
I like to use up to 25 Pikmin to carry the Water Dumple bodies back - they have better
food density than most pellets.
Go get the #2 Ionium Jet. If you are harvesting food then you should put just 15 Pikmin on
this part, because it doesn't have to go back quickly, whereas the Chronos Reactor does.
Throw a bunch of Pikmin up onto the pedestal with the Yellow Candypop Bud. Quickly convert
twenty of them (should be two rounds worth - ten a round)
and toss them onto the sandbar, then use them to get the Chronos Reactor.
As soon as they have carried the Chronos Reactor near the water, whistle them away from it
and into the corner of the sand bar. It is important that they are far enough away from
the Reactor so that when you dismiss them they don't volunteer to start carrying it again.
You will be leaving the yellows there for the rest of the day - say goodbye.
Use the remaining blues to carry the Chronos Reactor back. You want to have forty Pikmin
so that it goes back as quickly as possible - time is of the essence.
Four parts down, one to go.
Once both parts and all of your Pikmin are back, take them towards the twig pole that leads
towards the lair of the Armored Cannon Beetle. Toss a couple of them on the geyser behind
the skull, to open it up, and send the rest of them up the pole. Once they are all up the
pole (toss them at the bottom of it if necessary), ride the geyser up and get them.
Separate them into two groups and guide half of them onto building the bridge down,
and then take the other half and
kill the Armored Cannon Beetle.
If you've got lots of time and Pikmin you can take back both the Bowsprit and the Beetle
body. It's worth quite a few Pikmin, and there is a certain joy in harvesting excessive
numbers of Pikmin. I like to put 30-35 Pikmin on the Bowsprit and send it off first, and then
put 45-50 Pikmin on the Beetle carcass, so it can catch up, and hopefully get home in time.
With the Bowsprit on the way back it's time to go spend some quality time with the yellows
that you abandoned a few hours ago. Remember them? Go back to that sandbar and whistle
for them. As soon as your blue Pikmin have safely returned to the ship area, end the day,
before any Snitchbugs show up to cause trouble.
That's it. Just one day left.
As usual there are a depressing number of ways to fail on this level. Snitchbugs account
for a lot of them, as do various kinds of user error. The most surprising one was when
one of the Yellow Wollywogs jumped up into the tree stump on the way to the Armored Cannon
Beetle - I didn't know they could jump that high!
