Piklopedia (Pikmin 2)

The Piklopedia is an in-game list of all the enemies and plants in Pikmin 2 that the player has come in contact with throughout their exploration. The player can access the Piklopedia's menu by pressing when on the area selection menu.

This catalog also keeps track of how many Pikmin have been lost to each enemy, how many of said enemy the player has defeated so far, and how many Pokos the enemy is worth. For fields that cannot be counted, four dashes appear instead. On top of that, it also contains notes written down by Olimar and Louie. Selecting the slot of a creature that has not been seen yet will just produce static on the main "screen", and their grid slots will show their Piklopedia number, instead of their icon.

Pikpik carrots can be thrown at enemies to see their reaction, although the throws cannot be directly aimed – not even with the New Play Control! remake's enhanced cursor – and are loosely based on the direction the camera is facing. Ultra-bitter sprays can also be used on the non-plant creatures by pressing ; this does not affect the in-game spray count, and can be used before those sprays are even discovered.

The Piklopedia is the counterpart to the Treasure Hoard, which shares the same music.

Once the debt is repaid, both the Piklopedia and Treasure Hoard's unseen entries become shown, albeit still unfilled. This was most likely added to help the player track down the last few entries they are missing.

Olimar's notes
Olimar's notes focus on giving information about the creature, including its scientific name, habits, biological features, and mysteries. They can be read by picking an entry and pressing. His notes are always available as long as the entry is available.

Louie's notes
Louie's notes provide recipes on how to cook the creature. They can be read by picking an entry and pressing. His notes only become available when the player defeats the Titan Dweevil and recovers Louie as a treasure for the first time. Once this happens, a global flag is set in the game's save data, and his notes become available forever, for any Story Mode slot, even if the original slot is deleted.

Recipe oddities
Interestingly, Louie references ingredients found on Earth (cultivated in oxygen). These ingredients could not possibly be known by Louie, as Hocotate has a severely different climate. A possible explanation would be that Hocotatian plants often have similar appearances to those found on Earth, meaning that Louie would be using the names he is familiar with for a completely different plant.

In addition, the following notes conflict with the way enemies die in-game in some way:


 * These enemies do not leave a corpse (in Pikmin 2 specifically):
 * Beady Long Legs
 * Greater Spotted Jellyfloat
 * Lesser Spotted Jellyfloat
 * Man-at-Legs
 * Puffy Blowhog
 * Raging Long Legs
 * Titan Dweevil
 * Withering Blowhog
 * The Fiery Bulblax extinguishes itself upon defeat, but Louie's notes use the beast's flames as a cooking aid.
 * The Hairy Bulborb loses hair as it loses health, and has none by the time it is dead.
 * The Waterwraith is notable for not only not leaving any corpse, but its physical form being anchored to another dimension.

These same sort of oddities also exist in Pikmin 3 Deluxe Piklopedia as listed here.

Areas
When using the Piklopedia and the Treasure Hoard, the scenery will change depending on what area the ship is hovering on, on the area selection screen. Each object seen will spawn in a different, pre-specified location of the area. The Valley of Repose, the Awakening Wood and the Perplexing Pool have some notable differences compared to their in-game counterparts, while the Wistful Wild is barely any different. For a list of differences in the two versions of an area, please read the corresponding area article. The following maps illustrate a top-down view of the Piklopedia and Treasure Hoard versions of the areas, excluding the Wistful Wild, which only has differences in background theme and barely any changes to the level design at all.

These slightly changed areas were also seen in prerelease material.

Entry criteria
To unlock an entry in the Piklopedia, the player must find one of that object during gameplay and do something specific to it, which varies from entry to entry.

To note is that some entries will only be unlocked, and their kill/death stats will only be updated, if the player interacts with a specific variant of that object. For instance, having a buried Armored Cannon Beetle Larva kill 3 Pikmin and then be killed will not result in any change in the Piklopedia. The following is a list of all entries with this limitation:
 * : only the free-roaming variant counts; the buried one does not.
 * : only the free-roaming variant counts; the tower one does not.
 * Candypop Buds: throwing in one Pikmin is enough, it does not need to wither.
 * : only the large healthy variant counts; the small healthy, large dead, and small dead ones do not.
 * : only the red variant counts; the green one does not.
 * : only the large variant counts; the small one does not.

Enemies that can die
Some enemies can actually die whilst on the Piklopedia.


 * Volatile Dweevils blow up when awakened.
 * Mandiblards will lose health if they touch water, and can even drown.
 * Due to a glitch, if one petrifies a Hermit Crawmad on dry land and throws several Pikpik carrots, the creature will gradually lose health, and can die.

Trivia

 * A dummy icon texture named  can be found within the Piklopedia's icon texture files. It's unused in the game, and it must have been used during development to represent enemies that had no icons at the time.
 * The icon textures for the Glowstem and Queen Candypop Bud have exact duplicates inside the game's files.
 * Fiery Bulblax icon.png The icon for the Fiery Bulblax is 80 &times; 80 in size. This size is only used for boss icons, whereas normal enemies have icons that are 40 &times; 40. This indicates that in some early stage in development, the Fiery Bulblax was meant to be a boss, as are the other two "Bulblax" grub-dogs.
 * Thrown pikpik carrots will rotate to "face" the creature. Their stems will bend away from it.
 * If a pikpik carrot lands near a Red Bulborb, Hairy Bulborb, or Orange Bulborb just as it is about to go to sleep, its yawning and lying down animations will be sped up.
 * According to Louie's notes, the following creatures are inedible: Hydro Dweevil, Munge Dweevil, Volatile Dweevil, Crimson Candypop Bud, Golden Candypop Bud, Queen Candypop Bud, Mamuta, Glowstem, Clover, Foxtail, Shoot, Beady Long Legs, Waterwraith, Shaggy Long Legs, Baldy Long Legs, and Plasm Wraith.
 * In addition, the Doodlebug has no cooking tips and is suggested to be inedible, but is not outright stated as such, the Ivory Candypop Bud is not suggested to be inedible, but spoils upon seconds of picking, and the Raging Long Legs, like the Doodlebug, is not outright claimed as inedible, but Louie's suggestion of feeding it to "unpleasant in-laws" implies that it probably shouldn't be eaten anyway.
 * The Bulborb icon used to represent the Piklopedia within the area selection menu is unique and does not seem to be exactly derived from any particular Bulborb variant in Pikmin 2. Peculiarly, when examined very closely, the icon seems to be derived from the model of the juvenile Bulbmin (as evidenced by its completely black eyes, leg coloration and proportions, and white spot placement) with the leaf stem removed. Interestingly, the internal name for the texture is, whereas the internal name for Bulborbs is usually spelled  . In the Switch re release, a modified version of this icon is used as the standby icon for Bulbmin, strengthening the connection.
 * The Piklopedia bears many similarities to the Pokédex from the Pokémon series, as both are an encyclopedia of creatures, and both behave very similarly.
 * The entries of most of the returning enemies from Pikmin are derived from the descriptions given to the creatures in the Pikmin Nintendo Player's Guide.
 * According to Olimar's notes on the Shoot in the Japanese version, the team's reports on the planet's wildlife are based on information obtained using "portable scanners", with the hope that researchers will become interested in studying it.