Plants vs Zombies: Tips and hints

Plants vs Zombies is one of the most addictive tower defence-style games but later levels can get hectic at the best of times.
Read on for some essential Plants vs Zombies tips and hints.

Daytime tips and hints

• Your selection of plants is completely down to you, but we recommend the following: Sunflower (or Twin Sunflower if you have one), Pea Shooter, Repeater, Snow Pea, Wall Nut (or Tall Nut), Cherry Bomb, Gatling Repeater or Threepeater (if you have them) and Squash.
• Start off by planting a couple of Sunflowers in the left-hand side of the screen. Leave two columns on the left-hand side purely for sunflowers.
• When you see a zombie shuffling from the right, place a pea shooter three spaces from the left in the corresponding row.
• Repeat this tactic until you have filled the third column with Pea Shooters.
• Next you’ll want to grow Snow Pea Shooters, and place them in the fourth column (see the image above to get an idea of how your battleground should generally look)
• Keep planting Sunflowers until they fill the two columns on the far left.
• It sounds obvious but keep selecting the suns that fall to the ground. If you ignore them you’ll have less to spend on new plants.
• Plant Threepeaters in the middle three rows in column five.
• Once your sunlight is growing rapidly, you can shovel out your old Pea Shooters and replace them with Repeaters for extra firepower. Or you can plant Repeaters in column five or six.
• Plant some Wall Nuts or Tall Nuts in column eight.
• If things get particularly hectic, wait until loads of zombies are clustered in a 3×3 grid and use a Cherry Bomb in the middle square to take them all out at once. Alternatively, use a Squash to take out a rogue zombie.
• On later levels, once you’ve amassed a ton of sunlight, you can delete a row of Sunflowers and replace them with Repeaters for extra attack power.

Nighttime tips and hints

• You can follow the general advice above but make sure you take the following with you: Sun Shroom, Scaredy Shroom, Puff Shroom, Fume Shroom, Repeater, Ice Shroom, Wall Nut and Grave Buster.
• Plant Sun Shrooms in favour of Sunflowers, and plant Puff Shrooms to take out the first few zombies for free. You can plant the latter around the middle of the lawn.
• Plant Scaredy Shrooms where the Pea Shooters would go in the daytime (third column from the left). They’re cheaper but will need defending as they pop underground when enemies approach.
• To defend Scaredy Shrooms, plant Repeaters to the right of them. To the right of these, plant Fume Shrooms. Defend these with Wall Nuts and Ice Shrooms.
• Use Grave Busters to take out any graves on the lawn, which stops them from constantly respawning new zombies.
• As your sunlight increases, remove Puff Shrooms from your lawn and replace them with a stronger unit.
• On levels with fog – and to take out airborne zombies – use a Blover.

How to tackle digger zombies

• Plant a Split Pea in each row in column four or five to stop the diggers tearing up your Sunflowers.

Pool tip

• Just treat this as a daytime level but take lily pads to let you grow plants in the water.

Roof tips and hints

• We advise picking the following: Plant pot, Sunflower, Cabbage Pult, Kernel Pult, Cactus, Snow Pea, Melon Pult and Umbrella Leaf.
• For these stages it’s a good idea to keep the far-left column for sunflowers, then use the second-from-left column for Cabbages and the third-from-left forCcorn Kernels. Then you can grow some more Sunflowers in the fourth row, and replace Cabbages with Melons later on.
• In the fifth column you can plant Cacti or Pea Shooters (if you chose them), but we recommend Cacti as they can pop airborne enemies in one go.
• Avoid planting horizontal attack flowers in the four left columns. Due to the slope they won’t work – use them only from the fifth column onwards.
• To save some time and slow down zombies momentarily, you can build a pot plant in front of them.
• Use Snow Peas or Wall Nuts to defend yourself in column seven.
• Plant some Umbrella Leafs here and there to repel airborne zombies.

Do you have any tips and hints for Plants vs Zombies? Feel free to share them below.

Dom Sacco

Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.

As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.