Plants Vs. Zombies Catch-All

Harkonis wrote:
demonbox wrote:
wonderpug wrote:
demonbox wrote:

I thought there was no way I would play this game through again-- fun but I enjoy the mingames and puzzles more. I sold the flowers in my Zen Garden to CD then couldn't purchase more flowers. My poor Zen Garden was empty, empty. Turns out that the way to gather more flowers, from what it seems, is that I need to replay the main adventure.

Crazy Dave gets new plants in stock once a day (or is it every two days?) You can also get plants as random drops; I got most of my Zen garden stocked from playing through all the survival mode challenges.

I have not had this luck. He's been out of plants for three days at least for me. Not sure if he's just waiting on me to purchase the night garden or what-- but I haven't seen a return of the green yet.

That is odd, every day at midnight (real time) he restocks 3 new marigolds for me.

He's crazy, you know, so glitches in behavior are to be expected.

Hypatian wrote:

Really, I guess what I wonder is: wow... how much are all those corn cannons needed? Do you end up having the dangerous stuff coming on so strong that you need to completely flatten an area in order to recover and re-plant spikes?

Also wondering: do winter melons do less damage than normal melons? I was under the impression that the winter melon upgrade added functionality, but didn't decrease the original damage output.

In endless mode, you definitely end up needing "nuke from orbit" kind of firepower eventually.

I believe winter melons do the same damage, but fire slightly slower.

I got in another 90 minutes of this lastnight and still love it. I especially enjoy reading through the flavor text within the Almanac. I've been telling everyone at work about this game and need to make the rounds to see who has taken the plunge.

EDIT: Listening to the podcast now. You guys beat me to the almanac

Hypatian wrote:

Really, I guess what I wonder is: wow... how much are all those corn cannons needed? Do you end up having the dangerous stuff coming on so strong that you need to completely flatten an area in order to recover and re-plant spikes?

Also wondering: do winter melons do less damage than normal melons? I was under the impression that the winter melon upgrade added functionality, but didn't decrease the original damage output.

Actually, I made a new setup with 8 cob cannons, that did include a couple of umbrellas, and was able to get 37 flags on the first crack. In the later waves, the difficulties come from level 2 gigantaurs and zombonis. Those red-eyed gigantaurs laugh off 3 cob missiles, so yes, you definitely need at least 4 cobs. The 8 cob setup was able to hold them off for quite awhile, but eventually you just can't do anything to stop the endless procession of zombonis and red eyes.

Winter melons possibly do more damage and definitely have an aoe slow (seems to be a 3x3 area around impact; you can use it to slow neighboring lanes). They are supposed to fire at half speed according to the card, but I did a quick test on the Last Stand minigame and confirmed that they fire at the exact same rate. In other words, always winterize. The card lists their damage as "very heavy" instead of the regular melon's "heavy," but I don't trust what the card says after that last experiment.

Mr Crinkle wrote:

stuff

What in that setup takes care of miners? Seems like it's always around wave 8-9 that it throws a dozen miners at me repeatedly while gigantaurs smash the front. They eat everything in the back.

LilCodger wrote:

What in that setup takes care of miners? Seems like it's always around wave 8-9 that it throws a dozen miners at me repeatedly while gigantaurs smash the front. They eat everything in the back. :(

He said the corncob nukes are for miners. They've definitely been a problem for me in endless zombie mod.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
LilCodger wrote:

What in that setup takes care of miners? Seems like it's always around wave 8-9 that it throws a dozen miners at me repeatedly while gigantaurs smash the front. They eat everything in the back. :(

He said the corncob nukes are for miners. They've definitely been a problem for me in endless zombie mod.

I did some experimentation and fixed that with the mushroom that upgrades to shoot in 8 directions. As long as your far back plant is in a pumpkin, and you monitor them for refreshes, you can safeguard 2 lanes with one mushroom. Which leaves the other slot in the column open for an umbrella. Woocha!

So the layout in the back of the top lane is:
Melon|8-way shroom|Blah
Melon|Umbrella|Blah

and in the bottom:

Melon|Umbrella|Blah
Melon|8-way shroom|Blah

Thus you have umbrella coverage for your rear water plants as well. Which is quite sexy, and saves many a nuke.

So you just moved your corn cobs up two spaces?

Thinking about it carefully, my land rows went like this:

Twin Sunflower | 8-way Shroom or Umbrella | Winter Melon | Cob | Cob (2nd space, same cob) | Winter Melon | Tall-nut | Spike | Spike

My water rows went something like:

Cob | Cob | Cattail | Cob | Cob | Twin Sunflower or Gold Magnet or freeze shroom | Twin Sunflower | Tall-nut | 8-way Shroom

And I believe at some point I replaced the forward sunflowers with more winter melons, but I don't recall clearly. Next time I'm going to try squeezing another cob in the water row (as they don't get hit by gigantaurs and zombonis, they are by far the easiest rows to keep alive), giving me 3 cobs per water row and 10 overall. In the end, only cobs can hold back the horde.

This endless mode discussion is making my head hurt.

On a side note, I just finished the first survival challenge, and when I got seven or eight machine gunners and seven or eight repreaters on the screen, my frame rate dropped drastically. Anyone else have this problem?

Lost my save data. Needless to say, I am rather disappointed.

I'm not going to lie, by about world 3, I was getting pretty sick of this Plants vs Zombies phenomenon. Now that I've finished Adventure Mode, I am quite thoroughly done with it. Which is why I was surprised to see people in this thread go so far as to be discussing their different setups in such detail. And looking through the many reviews this game has garnered, clearly the critics are also quite enamored with Popcap's latest jewel (HAR HAR).

I'm feeling quite lonely over here in the corner with my general distaste for this game.

speaking of saves, where are they stored and how can I back them up?

JonH wrote:

I'm not going to lie, by about world 3, I was getting pretty sick of this Plants vs Zombies phenomenon. Now that I've finished Adventure Mode, I am quite thoroughly done with it. Which is why I was surprised to see people in this thread go so far as to be discussing their different setups in such detail. And looking through the many reviews this game has garnered, clearly the critics are also quite enamored with Popcap's latest jewel (HAR HAR).

I'm feeling quite lonely over here in the corner with my general distaste for this game. :(

Don't worry, you're not alone.

...Probably. I sure love it.

HaciendaSquish wrote:
JonH wrote:

I'm not going to lie, by about world 3, I was getting pretty sick of this Plants vs Zombies phenomenon. Now that I've finished Adventure Mode, I am quite thoroughly done with it. Which is why I was surprised to see people in this thread go so far as to be discussing their different setups in such detail. And looking through the many reviews this game has garnered, clearly the critics are also quite enamored with Popcap's latest jewel (HAR HAR).

I'm feeling quite lonely over here in the corner with my general distaste for this game. :(

Don't worry, you're not alone.

...Probably. I sure love it.

The fact you finished Adventure Mode is some evidence it couldn't be that bad, right? For a game that was $10 at release it isn't bad at all IMO. I would have liked more of a challenge. However, six months from now (x-mas) I believe we'll be getting an expansion.

JonH wrote:

I'm feeling quite lonely over here in the corner with my general distaste for this game. :(

You're not on your own. I got $10 of entertainment from it, and I haven't quite finished Adventure mode yet, but it's already beginning to irritate me. My girlfriend, on the other hand, played some of it on my computer, promptly bought it for her own, and has been completely nuts about it ever since. Takes all kinds, I guess.

Adventure mode is just a mildly-entertaining (and sometimes annoying) intro you have to go through before you can play survival mode.

I'm on my second run through Adventure mode (in the fog pool levels). I've also finished all the puzzle and mini-games, plus most of Survival.

Its annoying that Popcap doesn't seem to have a forum for suggestions and the like. There are a lot of improvements to be made. Like the ability to move cards around on the bar for instance.

2nd run through Adventure mode done, all min-games, puzzles, and survival modes finished (except for endless ones, natch). Even identified the secret ? zombie.

Did you grow the tree?

demonbox wrote:

Did you grow the tree?

Does it do anything past 200ft?

I've grown the tree, but it's not that tall. It's far too easy to spend money.

Worth $10, but definitely mellow compared to, say, GemCraft Zero.

Played through the demo. It is super cute, and fun, but I think I got about all the fun I will get out of it. Although, if I need a something to kill some time, I may throw $10 at it. I wish I could play games at work. This would be the perfect game to have going when i'm on a call that I don't need to pay too much attention to.

JonH wrote:

I'm not going to lie, by about world 3, I was getting pretty sick of this Plants vs Zombies phenomenon. Now that I've finished Adventure Mode, I am quite thoroughly done with it. Which is why I was surprised to see people in this thread go so far as to be discussing their different setups in such detail. And looking through the many reviews this game has garnered, clearly the critics are also quite enamored with Popcap's latest jewel (HAR HAR).

I'm feeling quite lonely over here in the corner with my general distaste for this game. :(

Well I played through the demo and I saw what I had to see. So you're not alone! It's a good timewaster I guess but I wouldn't buy that. (and apparently you did so I guess you liked it even better than I did)

I have put about 20 hours into this so far (halfway through the rooftop... how much more is left in the adventure mode?) and could easily put in another 20+. I am looking forward to completing all of the puzzles/mini games and getting to the survival mode stat.

I respect the opinions of those that just have not clicked with this title, but I am definitely a fan.

Fyedaddy wrote:

(halfway through the rooftop... how much more is left in the adventure mode?)

Rooftops is the final episode.
BUT! Completing it unlocks the mini games + Survival modes which can give you another 10 or so hours easily! Also, you can play through the story mode again and it will be a little harder this time.

So last night we had DnD night at a buddy's house. He had is PC hooked up to his 47inch tv I downloaded steam real fast to show them the game. As I was getting sh*t for just being a steam fanboy for buying what ever they told me to.

5 hours later we had been just taking turns at the mouse playing this all night. No DnD was played. But 5 more copies of PvZ were sold.

Who knew it could be a spectator sport?

Not only did the missus enjoy watching me play, but she has since installed Steam and bought her own copy.

It's the first video game she's ever bought. She always professed to hate video games.