Arqade is a question and answer site for passionate videogamers on all platforms. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I'm trying to collect all the achievements in Plants vs. Zombies on the iPhone. I need lots of money to buy all the plants so I've been trying to work out a way to basically farm some money in the game. I've tried using Marigolds and the Magnet with a bunch of Tall-Nuts to slow the last few zombies down considerably, but the Marigolds only spawn money a few times before stopping.
What is a good strategy for quickly earning money in Plants vs. Zombies?
For the iPhone version, I recommend using Marigolds on Lvl 1.1 (only the base zombie)
Basically you want to set up 3 lanes of marigolds with a single garlic at the front to divert the zombie into the other 2 lanes.
I hope this unicode art makes sense
┌─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┬─┐
│S│M│M│M│M│M│M│M│G│ ← Z
├─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┤
│P│T│W│ │ │ │ │ │ │ ← Z
├─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┤
│S│X│M│M│M│X│M│M│G│ ← Z
├─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┤
│P│T│W│ │ │ │ │ │ │ ← Z
├─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┼─┤
│S│M│M│M│M│M│M│M│G│ ← Z
└─┴─┴─┴─┴─┴─┴─┴─┴─┘
Legend:
The idea is to slow down how you kill the zombies. So as quickly as possibly, place the garlics to direct the zombies into the two lanes that are protected. After the initial setup, it's just a matter of placing the marigolds as quickly as possibly.
EDIT: I should have said that you place the gold magnet shrooms so that you get automatic coin collection; having two means less chance of a miss.
If you have not already, complete each puzzle at least once. The first time you finish each puzzle on the PC version, you're rewarded with a gem. The rewards for subsequent completions are usually (randomly) not as much, but still something. So if you find a puzzle you're quite good at, you might try beating it repeatedly.
As an improvement to Alastair's answer, towards the end of the game, when there's only 1 zombie left, get rid of all the spikerocks and peashooters and replace them with Marigolds. This way, the zombie won't die, and if you have Wall-nut first aid, you could just keep repairing the tallnut, allowing for potentially unlimited gold mining time.
I usually just do wall-nut bowling under Quick Play. If you can hit multiple zombies with a single wall-nut, you get bonus coins (one for the second zombie, two for the third, etc.)
Because you're on the iPod, you can't use the PC's survival or last stand for gold farming, and farming marigolds on 1.1 is too tedious for my taste (especially since, as you said, marigolds keep running out of money and have to be replanted).
Go to survival level's put a lot of big nutz to stop the zombies and something effective for killing it ... but not killing fast. Then put a lot of money flowers, maybe a gold magnet and ... it's up to you baby.
After completing adventure mode once, do adventure 2 and get to fog level 10 where there is the yeti zombie if you manage to kill him he gives you 4000 dollars (he will give you 5000 the first time you kill him).
