After much personal debate and consternation, I've decided the 'Melon-pult is..

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
Don't forget your Zen Garden. Gotta collect those plants.

Is the Zen Garden really worth the effort? The items needed for it seem awfully expensive.

Depends. If you've got the obsession, the gardens are a good way to continue it and fuel it. If you're ready to move on, filling out the gardens probably won't change your mind. You should take the time to get your golden sunflower, though--some of those minigames, puzzles, and survivals are a lot of fun.

Speaking of gardens, I did some counting last night and discovered I've got a real problem going. My quest for a completely unique day garden is a tougher challenge than I thought. there's 32 slots in the garden. I've got 8 colored flowers arranged as a spectrum in a box around my final spot (it's been my "cradle" for some time now). That means there's 24 slots for day plants. Count 'em up, and keep in mind that you don't get upgrade plants in the garden. If you count the flower pot from the roof missions, there's 25 day plants. Since the pot isn't eligible for the day garden, that means 24 plants for 24 slots. Crap! I need a cabbage-pult, a plant that I never use. I've started playing the roof survival and using the cabbage as my sole offensive plant in hopes of increasing my odds (which actually is pretty challenging from a game perspective), but no luck so far.

I would say, yes. Most definatly. Have you grown a few to maturity and sold them? You make tons of money if you find different kinds when you're playing the game, but still Marigolds give you a nice tidy profit. I never realized how much money you got for them till I had done my second run through of the game. I still couldn't afford to buy the last extra slot for plants. But after I sold most of them I could easily afford buying the extra plant slot and other goodies.

Plus get the fertalizer for the tree. It tells you some funny little tweaks for the game (Gotta love future zombies). Don't cheat and just look it up on the web. At least this way it gives you a goal other than just slaying zombies and lasting so many rounds.

Edit: DTE that's not a bad idea. I think I'll give it a shot. It is a lot harder than it sounds though. After two playthroughs I had 3/4 of the day garden filled up, but mostly with marigolds.

I didn't know it gives you plants that you are using. I always thought it was just random.

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
I didn't know it gives you plants that you are using. I always thought it was just random.

I don't know that, either. It's a theory, although it sorta kinda seems to hold water. For example, you will never ever in a million years (I think) get a water plant from a level without a pool. You will never ever in a million years (I think) get a mushroom from a daylight level. The "ranges on the selection table" *might* get tweaked based on the plants you use, but that's anecdotal at best and more likely a wild bit of wishful thinking.

edit- Play survival levels. Fill up your chocolate (10 bars) and then you'll get plants. Most of the time, a hard survival will net you 1 or 2 plants. Occasionally you'll get nothing and one time I got 3. Make sure you've got room for the plants to go into or you get nothing. As things get more full, you'll have to do more jockeying to deal with duplicates. The best time to sell a plant is actually after you get the double diamonds, rather than after the bugspray/Victrola (you actually lose money on bugspray).

Your right about getting plants on certain levels, like night plants on night levels etc. That's one of the "bits of wisdom" from the tree.

I think you might be right, I'll have to try it out and see what kinds of plants it gives(if I get plants, 9 out of ten times I'll get those silly chocolate bars instead)

I find it quite touching that all you tough blood-spilling warriors are focused on tenderly nurturing your Zen gardens. That thing is mostly an annoyance to me, the horticulturist and resident plant hugger. No self-respecting plant needs to be watered twenty times in a row, and the over-use of fertilizer and bug spray is a planet-despoiling toxic cocktail that would kill anything except kudzu vine in RL.

Plus I thought zen was all about being spiritual and non-materialistic, not making coins pop out of things.

"It tells you some funny little tweaks for the game (Gotta love future zombies). Don't cheat and just look it up on the web. At least this way it gives you a goal other than just slaying zombies and lasting so many rounds."

I tried to 'cheat' but it wouldn't let me because, at least with future zombie, I tried using it and the game told me 'You can't do that, The Tree has not given you that wisdom yet.'

Originally Posted by magerette
I find it quite touching that all you tough blood-spilling warriors are focused on tenderly nurturing your Zen gardens. That thing is mostly an annoyance to me, the horticulturist and resident plant hugger. No self-respecting plant needs to be watered twenty times in a row, and the over-use of fertilizer and bug spray is a planet-despoiling toxic cocktail that would kill anything except kudzu vine in RL.

Plus I thought zen was all about being spiritual and non-materialistic, not making coins pop out of things.

It's not about the coins, silly rabbit. It's a feng shui thing. I've got to get the layout right and duplicate plants just totally disrupts the aura doncha know. Very mystical. Very Asian.

Very relaxing as well. You can't help but be hypnotized by the swaying sunflowers. Back and forth, back and forth. Plust they're just so darn happy. You just can't help but wanna arrange them in happy little groups

Question: how do you know when it's time to sell your plants?

Right now most of my plants have stopped asking for water or fertilizer. They want me to get them some music apparently, but that music box thingy cost $15,000, which would pretty much wipe out my bank right now.

Fertilizer 1: 1 gold coin
Fertilizer 2: 2 gold coins
Fertilizer 3: 2 diamonds
Spray/music: 1 or 3 gold coins

The advantage to the spray/music "upgrade" is that you can do it over and over several times a day. If you're not going to do anything special with your garden, the most economically smart spot to sell off is after they spit out the double diamonds.

Thanks, although only some of them spit out double diamonds iirc. Some of them started asking for music after just 2 gold coins.

Flowers, maybe? Pretty sure all my regular plants have gone on that progression, but I haven't bought flowers from Dave (nor gotten them in-game) in quite some time.

Yep, I've got 2 or 3 Snow Peas that all spit out 2 diamonds after feeding them, but it's those damn cheap flowers that haven't been worth the money I've spent so far….

You don't have to be in a hurry to get the music box thingie--eventually you'll have more cash than you know what to do with. I bankrolled mine by selling off plants. Full grown plants will never sell for more than 8,000. and the marigolds 3,000. so when they reach that figure I sell them and start over. They'll continue to spit out gold and silver coins as long as you pander to their extravagant lifestyle, but I think they only spit out the blue diamonds once.(?) I could be wrong, though, as I'm not as devoted to the care and nurturing of the little buggers as some.

Any tips for the ZomBotamy mini game? That's the only one that I'm having a hard time finding a good strategy for.

Maybe lots of Wall-nuts/Tall-nuts will help.

Originally Posted by Kostaz
Maybe lots of Wall-nuts/Tall-nuts will help.

They actually mention that in the readme file, but I'm still struggling with that one. I can't seem to collect sun fast enough to get up wall-nuts and any type of offense together. The ranged attacks of the pea-shooter zombies keep taking out my sunflowers, despite the fact that I'm using the rake + 1 or 2 potato mines to try and buy time.

Forget the mines. Pumpkins, wallnuts, sunflower, Double sunflower upgrade, Chomper* (a must to take out the wallnutzombies, put them behind a tallnut or wallnut), repeater, gatling pea and torchwood. If there is another space available then take tallnut.

Put up the sunflowers as fast as you can. Try to make one column. When the first zombie appears wallnut him and then a chomper. Then try to put as man starfruit as you can down preferably behind another wallnut, if not put a pumpkin on them. Once you have a wall set up, if you can, start upgrading your sunflowers to the twin sunflower. Repair any holes that are made in the mean time and make sure you chomper the wallnutzombies. They're a pain in the butt. If everything is going to plan you should be able to start setting up the repeater, torchwoods then gatling repeater. Once that is done, no zombie can touch you.

It's a little chaotic, but it works for me. Good luck and I won't mention how hard the second zombotany is

My ideal placement for some of these harder minigames is a wall of wallnuts followed by chompers then starfruit then torchwoods and repeaters/gatling. Sometimes I make two columns of chompers.

Edit: Don't forget the pumpkins. They're a life saver on this game.

2nd Edit: I just tried out my own advice and it's harder than I remember, lol. I still think the way to go is with all walls, but maybe switch out the torchwood and repeaters with cold based attacks. I'm not sure how I passed this the first time, lol.

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
2nd Edit: I just tried out my own advice and it's harder than I remember, lol. I still think the way to go is with all walls, but maybe switch out the torchwood and repeaters with cold based attacks. I'm not sure how I passed this the first time, lol.

The problem is setting up all that stuff you mention with only a row of single sunflowers. There must be something we're missing here, I don't understand why Zombotany seems so much harder than any of the other mini-games.