HALP! PVZ

[Derrick Heyoka]

OK I'm officially requesting aid!  I could look the solution up online, but it seems like it'd be more fun if I ask my friends for advice.  I'm trying to get to level 40 in Survival: Endless in PVZ on my iPad.  In this version, it's a backyard level (with a pool), during the day.  The "board" is six rows (two of which are water) and nine columns.  I've managed to get through 32 flags, but those last eight strike me as an impossible gulf.  I have a screenshot of my most successful "build", but I figure I'll refrain from sharing it yet, lest I taint the tenuous memories of your years old PVZ play time.

If no one cares I'll just look it up online, eventually, probably. 

SEND HALP!

[otter]

I don't have survival in my game, but the most devastating zombie killing I know of is (from right to left), is two garlic balls on the aisle next to the water and then a line of gloom-shrooms.  Gloom-shrooms do damage in neighboring aisles and can harm everything passing equally.  So even if there are 20 zombies, they all take the same damage as a single zombie.  I also like to toss magnets (how do they work?) into the mix as a dual-purpose debuffer/something for the dolphins to jump over:

Depending on your font, this may look terrible. 
E=Empty land
S=Gloom shroom
G=Garlic
M=Magnet
W=Empty water

EEEEEEEEE
SSSSSSSGG
WWWMWWWWW
WWWMWWWWW
SSSSSSSGG
EEEEEEEEE

Toss some sunflowers to the left-half of the empties for light.  Maybe fill the ground empties with thorns.

Slots:
Sunflower
Java Bean
Lilly Pad
Fume-Shroom
Gloom-Shroom
Magnet
Garlic
Spikeweed
Cherry Bomb or Spikerock?

[Derrick Heyoka]

Holy crap, that is COMPLETELY freaky, I'll give it a shot.  I don't have a lot of experience with garlic, because it seems like each zombies takes a bite out of the garlic when they get to it, eventually destroying it.  There are soooo many zombies out at once I'd assumed it'd be a micromanagement nightmare (though I do see you've doubled on up garlic, which must be to help mitigate that), I'm also assuming it doesn't affect zombonies or gargantaurs.  I'll let you know how it goes.  Thanks! 

[otter]

You need two garlic to catch the pole-vaulters, and yes you need to really keep on top of replacing the garlic.  But since you're not doing too much else, it's not too bad.

If you have Zombonies you might need to preface the garlic with spikerock, meaning one less shroom, making things all the more terrifying.

Gargantaurs?  Crap.  Maybe that should be a doomshroom in that last slot.

[Derrick Heyoka]

Oh yeah I've been rolling with all three of the right-most columns full of spikeweeds and spikerocks, but there are soooo many vehicles and gargantaurs (including the tougher, red eyed ones) that they overwhelm them.  o_O  I may need to think about giving doomshrooms another chance though now that you mention it...

[Derrick Heyoka]

All right I thought you might enjoy seeing a shot of your beautiful destruction.  As you can see, I had to make a couple small additions (winter melons because slowing motherfuckers down is kind of crucial), and cat tails to deal with balloon fuckers.  I had no idea how nasty gloom shrooms were (I've only ever used them for protecting my very left-most column from miner zombies) - so I wasn't sure what their range was.  So while this configuration was busy impressing the fuck out of me for killing shit, in the 11th flag suddenly miners began tunneling under and running rampant, simultaneously bungee zombies appeared that level and began stealing plants, and they ate my brains.  Both of those I can deal with, it'll take some reconfiguring, just thought you might want to see it.

I think the real problem is going to be zombonies and gargantaurs, I'm just waiting to see how or if garlic affects them at all (so I'll need to get past flag 10). 

[Lucy St. Jude]

Garlic doesn't affect zombonies or gargantuans at all, they just run them over / crush them, respectively.  I find a couple of cornapults deal pretty well with gargantuans and the upgraded spikes work well for zombonies.

[Derrick Heyoka]

Confirmation eh?  Dooooomed. 

[otter]

Thar's 12 different types of plants there...  I'm guessing survival is different than the regular game in regards to plants?

[Derrick Heyoka]

The only way they're different that I'm aware of is that the upgrades (e.g., winter melon, gloom shroom, spikerock) have an escalating cost.  Each time you plant one, the next one gets more expensive, so yeah those final gloom shrooms ain't fucking cheap, same with those winter melons.  And by the time the vehicles and gargantaurs have me planting my 15th+ spikerock, shit gets real.

[Derrick Heyoka]

Guess I may as well show you my best build so far, after game after game, tweak after tweak, this is my most current / ultimate build, the one that's taken me through 32 flags.

As you can see, I have two columns of spikerocks on each ground row, and a third spikeweed, they are still overwhelmed eventually by the insane numbers of vehicles and gargantaurs.  Not only do I play like this, but I bring spikeweeds with me, and I bring the clone plant with me for yet another spikeweed, AND I bring the spikerock upgrade.  During those later levels, I spend half of my time just dropping new spikeweeds as quickly as I can, and then replacing spikerocks as soon as they refresh, it's non-stop.

The other half of the time (near the end) is spent dropping cherry bombs, squash, and corn cob missiles on the red-eyed gargantaurs, trying to put them down.  I bring peppers too if I'm able, it's all still not enough to kill them come those late twenties / early thirties.

The gloom shrooms on the far left are to deal with tunneling zombies, they work better than any other solution I've found, though maybe I've missed something, it sucks having to devote a whole column to the backend defense.  Also, you might notice the umbrella plant thingies, they protect the six left-most columns of my plants from bungees and basketball launchers, I haven't found any other defense from those things, but it definitely sucks having to devote four spaces to that.  Unfortunately those bungee bastards will still come down from time to time and steal my spikerocks or tallnuts, haven't found any way to handle that, I just suck it up and replace them (or die trying).

Oh, and the cat tails are for balloon defense, let me know if you have a better balloon defense that doesn't use up my spots.

[Derrick Heyoka]

Oh and in actually I'd prefer to swap the placement of the winter melons in the pool with the left-most sunflowers in the pool (small change), I just messed that up on this play through.  Also there's no reason why some of my sunflowers aren't protected by a pumpkin, I just hadn't had a chance to do it yet, and the back half of the pool is the safest area so it could wait.

[Derrick Heyoka]

Otterface got an ipad2, downloaded pvz, and got to flag 30 with the following.  I'm putting this here for archival reasons. 

    SWwwGmGt*
    SWwwmGGt*
    SCCpppmt*

    (bottom is mirror of top, pumpkins on everything but concentrated on places that midgets get thrown, miners hit, and mobs come out of the water)
    S - double sunflower CC -Corn Cannon p - pussywillow W - Ice melon w - melon G - Gloomshroom - m Magnet t - Tallnut * spike/cherry/jalapeno/squash/etc.   

[Lucy St. Jude]

I got to 37 today on PC, I'll post my spec

[Lucy St. Jude]

wWWWwwtss
GfWWfWtss
CCWSSSpGt

bottom is mirror of top, pumpkins on everything

S - double sunflower
CC -Corn Cannon
p - pussywillow
W - winter melon
w - regular melon waiting to be upgraded to winter melon
G - Gloomshroom
t - Tallnut
s - spike
f - fern


I think I'll try adding more Gloomshrooms to the front lines in my next incarnation

[Derrick Heyoka]

Nice!  I'm having trouble seeing how gloom shrooms help with gargantaurs or bobsleds though.  Let me know how the next incarnation goes!

[otter]

I did a similar thing with the glooms that Joc did up front (although I didn't use tall nuts at all, just 4 glooms with pumpkins) and found them to be really nasty effective.  I didn't think of putting them in the back though, that's pretty intriguing.  As miners are what kilt me on that particular test, I'll have to try that out.

I've also had some good luck just using plain fume-shrooms behind the first line of tall-nuts on the ground.  They're cheap, so if they get stomped it's not a big deal, and they do damage to all zombies in the blow-zone. 

[Derrick Heyoka]

Yeeeah I didn't finally stop worrying about miners until I decided to try the back row gloom shrooms, and even still sometimes one or two break through in and around 30, but they don't manage to cause much grief or live long with the pumpkins reinforcing things.  OH, I missed the gloom shroom near the front of the pool.  THAT seems really clever, no vehicles or gargantaurs there!

[otter]

SgGGGFgss
MfMMMMgss
SCCCCccgg

S-double sunflower/g-gloom/G-gatpea/F-torch wood/s-spike weed/M-ice melon/CC-corn cannon/c-cattail.       Pumpkins on everything.

45 flags.   

[Derrick Heyoka]

Christ.  Fucking A.  I gave up on gatling / torch woods a while back, guess that was the wrong move.  Nice!