Viva Pinata - On Leveling

The leveling system is a pretty good idea and it's not particularly difficult to understand. Basically, each award you get carries with it a certain amount of experience. Leveling is the basic way of unlocking things. Almost everything requires you to be certain level first and then maybe requires something else.

The game keeps track of which awards you've gotten and which awards are known to you. It will NOT show you awards for pinatas or plants that you don't know exist yet but the awards are essentially the same for each species. That is NOT to say that they provide the same amount of experience. As an example, early plants maybe gain you a few petals on the experience meter but toward the end you will get a chance to grow the Oak tree which can give you over 40 petals of experience. Generally, the further into the awards section something is, the more experience you will gain from getting the award.

The main ways you are going to level up are from getting the main awards for pinatas, including visiting, residing, romancing, master romancing, and the three different variations and from growing plants to full maturity. Plants will grant you experience the first time you successfully fertilize them the first, second, and third times as well as for it reaching maturity. If you miss the first fertilizing step and get the second and third, when you go back to grow the tree again, you will won't get the last growth bonus award until you successfully fertilize the tree all three times, not just when you fertilize it the time you missed on the last attempt.