Overview
Plants vs Zombies is a PC game by PopCap Games, the proud owner of over 30 games here on Steam. I bought Plants vs. Zombies on CD from a brick-and-mortar store, beat it, and set it aside. Then came the Steam Summer sale 2011. PopCap’s entire catalog of Steam games were on sale for $50 – That’s right, 32 PopCap games, all $10, a $320 value, on sale for $50. If you’re not feeling the lust, you’re not human. If you’ve heard people say “This Steam Summer sale isn’t as good as the memorable ones?” Yup, this Summer Sale was the one. If bundling Square Enix’s Hitman with Square Enix’s Tomb Raider doesn’t make since to you, imagine bundling NBA2Kxx with say, Tomb Raider. That’s how ridiculous the Steam Summer sales were in those days, ridiculously good, ridiculously bad.
Strategy
But I digress. I’ve been playing it, if not every month, every year, since its release, back in 2009. Below is a highly tuned build for getting past level 20 on Immortal, as it is a great way to farm money for Plants Vs Zombies, in order to get your tree closer to 1000 feet. Because who wouldn’t want dancing zombies with moustaches?
Early Game (in order of importance:)
Sunflower, Gray Sunflower (clone,) Land Mine, Potato Mine, Squash, Lilypad, Cat-tail, Melonpult, Spikeweed, Spikerock (upgraded spikeweed), Twin Sunflowers (upgraded Sunflower)
Sunflowers – These are better than their nightime counterparts the Sun-shroom, even in the dark. The game recommends 2 rows. Most of my gambits involve 3 rows, but with this build, you can fill up the first 6 rows with Sunflowers for the first few rounds. How? Cattails are awesome. More on that later.
Gray Sunflowers – Pick your clone plant to be sunflower and it will be gray. Buy it at the shop if you haven’t already. Allows for the best openings. Equip these until you’ve filled your first 3-6 rows with Sunflowers. Try to hold off on placing flowers on Lilypads for the maximum possible acceleration.
Potato Mine – grow 4 Sunflowers, alternating gray and plain, to start, then place a Potato Mine. If this seems like a hassle, buy a hoe from the shop before you start the game.
Squash – Grow 6 Sunflowers in, place a Squash. Keep filling those columns with sunflowers.
Cattail – The bombs hold off zombies until you can place your Cat-tail, which guards all 6 rows. Place it on the 5th and 6th columns from the left, giving room for 3-4 corn catapaults on the far left of the screen, which will be placed near the end of development. If you want to put 3 corn catapaults in the lake, place one in the 3rd column and 2 in the 4th column
Pumpkins – Guards the 6th column from zombie attacks
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Intermission:
Okay, it’s time to go over the overall strategy of Zombie Endless and why plants are being placed where they are, so you can understand why plants are being placed where they are:
Land squares: From left to right:
column 1 – vulnerable to mining zombies (far left)
column 2 – vulnerable to thrown midget zombies from gargantuars
column 3 – vulnerable to thrown midget zombies from gargantuars, though less so
column 4 – safe, though very rarely can be hit by midget zombies from gargantuars, if they are insta-killed when appearing on screen
column 5 – safe
column 6 – vulnerable to dolphin zombies
column 7 – vulnerable to pole vault zombies
column 8 – vulnerable to football zombies, and very rarely jack-in-the-box zombies
column 9 – vulnerable to everything (far right)
Since the water squares don’t have gargantuars, red-eyed gargantuars, football zombies, and mining zombies, the water is super-safe, and a great place to put your first 3 corn catapaults (more on that later.)
How to protect column 9 then? Well, the best thing is spikeweed upgraded to spikerock. Spikeweed costs 100 sun and is destroyed by a single Zamboni or catapault zombie, so it’s best to upgrade them all as soon as possible. Unfortunately, spikerock gets damaged, as shown by a missing spike in the animation, and can even get destroyed. Because all purple-background plants cost 50 more for each consecutive plant on the board of the same kind, going all-out on these is bad. I’ve experimented with this a lot, and 4 is too little, as bad luck with zambonis and catapaults causes too much mayhem, and 8 is too expensive to keep replacing, so I’ve stuck with 6. I place 2 rows of spikerocks on the upper and bottom corners of column 8, and one in each land space in column 9.
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Melonpult – not required early-game, as 3 Cat-tails take out the first stage nicely, with the help of bombs.
Double Sunflowers – kind of a waste of time, as Sunflowers pay for themselves quickly, and these don’t. If you insist, place them on the edges, on columns 4, 5, and 6, and the rows next to row 6, for a total of 8 double-sunflowers. That’s because rows 1-3 of Sunflowers will be bulldozed soon to make room for Melonpults.
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Middle-game strategy (in order of importance:)
– Melonpault, upgraded melonpault (winter, purple), pumpkins, extra pumpkins(gray clones), upgraded spikeweed(purple), Lilypads (don’t forget!), magnets, gold magnets, coffee beans(to wake up red magnets)
– Melon-pults do more damage than all the pea-shooters, as they have AoE, or Area of Effect. Melon-pults in the inside rows are better than in the outside rows because of AoE. This is the primary source of damage, as it can take out jack-in-the-box zombies before they explode, and everything lower, instantly, with 3 each row, covering columns 1-3. Why not columns 4-6? Because thrown midget zombies from gargantuars will hit your flowers in column 3 and, and if they do, there will be no damage in columns 1-3. Column 1 will soon be overloaded in mining zombies.
– Double the pumpkins – as I’ve shown above, nearly every row is dangerous. Rows 1, 3, and 7 need to be filled with pumpkins ASAP. To make this easy, switch your gray sunflowers from round 1 to gray pumpkins using the clone plant.
golden magnet – you do not need a coffee bean to awaken a golden magnet. Simply place it on a sleeping red magnet. This helps with hoarding OCD because it lessens the amount of mouse-clicking you do. Place one in the water, so it’s in the middle, because the area of effect is around 4 squares for golden magnets and does not collect the entire map if it’s in the edge.
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Late-game strategy:
In order of Importance:
coffee bean, Fume Shroom, Gloom Shroom(upgraded Fume Shroom,) Ice Shroom, pumpkins, clone pumpkins(gray), spikeweed, spikerock (upgraded spikeweed,) Winter Melon, Lilypad
Do Winter Melons help if there’s more than one in a row? The game’s advice on the tree says “no,” but I say “yes.” Because If a winter melon isn’t hitting the front row, like if there’s a midget zombie on row 4’s winter melonpult, then it’s “bad news bears.” With 6 columns of sunflowers, there should be no problem getting to 9990 sun, so use 2-3 columns of winter melonpults, maybe as a last resort if you don’t want to hit 9990.
Fiill the middle of the penultimate column (2nd to the right,) column 8, with 4 Gloom shrooms (upgraded Fume shrooms.) The only limiting factor of placing Gloom shrooms and magnets is the ability to place pumpkins, so doubing the pumpkin loadout is a must. Gloom-shrooms do huge amounts of damage in that row. I experimented with 6 Gloom-shrooms and it was too costly if they were bulldozed.
At first, I put extra-tall potato walls in the water for row 9, but now I think it’s best to put in Ice Shrooms. They’re asleep during the day, so when the Ice Shroom cooldown finishes, place another in row 9. Remember to protect them with pumpkins so they don’t get eaten. When red-eyed gigantuars start showing up, remember to clone your ice shrooms with gray ice shrooms.
Ok, I’m gonna die, now what?
Getting to 40 is tough so I suggest the following change to the mid-game gambit, in order to make it to the late-game.
1. It’s time to order a retreat to the build. Yup, the magnets don’t do the job anymore, so they get bulldozed. back the purples up one to where the magnets were. back the spikes up one to where the purples were. The miner zombies are too many to stop with a couple of magnets, anyway, so the catapaults are going to have to focus down miner zombies more often.
2. 4-5 catapaults aren’t enough. Make a 6th catapault, bulldozing one of three cat-tails. Yes this opens up a path for the balloon zombies to win the game, but a 6th catapault helps
3. you’ll need these 5 in the queue – spikes, upgraded spikes, frozen mushroom, gray frozen mushroom, coffee bean. What’s in the rest? Throw in whatever for emergencies – cherry bomb, squash, jalapeno pepper – the entire bomb arsenal. anything that’s destroyed can go in too – if it falls, throw it in the queue. but the first 5 is always, always in your queue every flight from now on. Forgetting will mean an unrecoverable set-back.
4. Watch the dolphin zombies – they’ll start damaging pumpkins faster and in greater numbers. Take care to repair damaged pumpkins. You’ll notice nicks in the pumpkins.