Piranha Plant

The Piranha Plant item puts a potted piranha plant in front of the kart, which will lunge forward and bite at other racers and objects in front of it.

Use

Once activated, the piranha plant will chomp when it has been at least 36 frames since the last chomp, and one of the following conditions are met:

• the item button is pressed and released
• the item button is held down
• a suitable target is within reach (see below)
• it has been 95 frames since the last chomp

If the item button is held down, the piranha plant will chomp 7 times and will last for 4.5 seconds. If the item button is not pressed and the plant only chomps at the air, it will chomp 6 times and last for 10 seconds.[video]

The piranha plant will chomp at the nearest target within its reach. It cannot reach behind it, but can reach anything that is within range in front of the player's kart. Valid targets are racers, coins, bloopers, green shells, red shells, bananas, and traffic cones.

When the piranha plant chomps, the player recieves a small boost equivalent to a mini-turbo boost. That means your mini-turbo stat also affects the acceleration, speed, and length of the piranha plant boosts.

The piranha plant item remains in your first item slot until it is fully used up.

Obtaining

The piranha plant item can be obtained by opening an item box while in 2nd-8th place (assuming a 12-player room). The highest chances of pulling this item are in 3rd-5th place, where you have a 0.5% to 6.7% chance depending on your distance from 1st place. You cannot get a piranha plant until 0:20 seconds into the race, and you cannot hold more than one piranha plant at a time.

For detailed information on item box probabilities, scroll down to the Probability Calculator.