Primal Peashooter


 * For the more uses, see Peashooter and Peashooter (disambiguation).

Primal Peashooter is the first plant obtained in Jurassic Marsh in Plants vs. Zombies 2. It is the primal version of Peashooter. Every three seconds, it shoots a rock-like pea that either immobilizes a zombie for half a second or sends it back a tile. The only normal zombie immune to its knockback capability is Jurassic Bully. Due to its knockback effect, stunned zombies that are knocked back will no longer be immobilized.

Origins
Like its modern counterpart, Primal Peashooter is based off the plant Pisum sativum. The term peashooter is normally used to refer to a toy version of a blowgun, or as slang for small or low-caliber firearms.

Almanac entry
Sun cost: 175

DAMAGE: Normal

RANGE: Straight

RECHARGE: Fast

Primal Peashooters shoot heavy stunning peas at zombies.

Special: primal peas occasionally knock zombies back

Primal Peashooter may be primitive, but that doesn't stop him from enrolling and excelling in several software development correspondence courses.

Plant Food effect
When fed Plant Food, Primal Peashooter gains Stegosaurus plates on its head and will shoot five rock peas that look identical to its regular ones. However, they deal five normal damage shots and have an area of effect of a tile, pushing all zombies located on it.

Strategies
Primal Peashooter is a powerful plant for taking out single zombies, regardless of their health, as the zombies are greatly delayed from the push backwards. However, its slow rate of fire allows large groups of zombies to damage the defenses easily, especially if the player does not deploy a large number of Primal Peashooters on the lawn.
 * Primal Peashooter should not be paired with Celery Stalker or any lobbed-shot plants with exception of Melon-pult, Winter Melon, and Pepper-pult, since it is possible that the peas will knock back the zombies and make Celery Stalker vulnerable, and the lobbed projectiles are more likely to miss their targets. However, Primal Peashooters work well with splash-damaging plants like Dandelion, Fume Shroom, Phatbeet, and Snapdragon, since the knockback effect is effective in clustering crowds of zombies.
 * The Plant Food upgrade of this plant is weak as far as damage is concerned, but it is great for knocking zombies back to the beginning of the lawn, which will allow the player to have more time and restore lost plants either by Intensive Carrot or replanting.
 * An advantage of Primal Peashooter's projectiles is when knocking zombies back, it momentarily throws them a short distance off the ground, opening up a chance for them to be eliminated by Blover, as any zombie that does not touch the ground before the Blover activates will be blown away. This means that, save for Jurassic Bully and Zombots, these peas, when combined with Blover, can knock any pushable zombies, even Gargantuars, with one hit. This can be done most easily when Primal Peashooter is boosted.
 * Like other peashooting plants, Primal Peashooter can be combined with Torchwood to cause more damage to the zombies, besides that stunning and knocking zombies back capacity continues to operate.
 * In Ancient Egypt, Primal Peashooter is useful for stopping sandstorms because its projectile can immediately end this attack, forcing the zombie to come out of the storm. This also applies to snowstorms in Frostbite Caves.
 * In Pirate Seas, Primal Peashooter is useful for combating zombies in water lanes if the zombies are on land. Swashbuckler Zombie and Imp Pirate Zombies can be pushed back into the water if they are airborne but sometimes will not kill them due to the glitch that they will walk on water.

Trivia

 * It is one of the five plants that can knock back zombies without Plant Food.
 * It also is the first offensive plant that can knock back zombies.
 * It is the second offensive plant that can immobilize zombies, the first being Kernel-pult.
 * If it hits a Pianist Zombie, the piano music will reset to the beginning.
 * Although Excavator Zombies will not be damaged by Primal Peashooter, the latter can still stun or push him back.
 * However, the Excavator Zombie can be damaged if Primal Peashooter is fed with Plant Food while zombies are in front of Excavator Zombie. This is because the Plant Food peas do splash damage.
 * Lost Pilot Zombies can get pushed back by Primal Peashooter, even when dangling in the air. However, it will not fall to the ground after getting pushed back, until after a few seconds or if Blover is used.
 * Primal Peashooter and Pea Pod shoot the least amount of peas in their Plant Food upgrade, with only five peas.
 * However, Fire Peashooter breathes a stream of fire when given Plant Food, instead of shooting any peas at all.
 * Primal Peashooter makes a cough-like sound when using its Plant Food upgrade.
 * Although Primal Peashooter's projectile is different than other peashooting plants, when Primal Peashooter's projectile passes through a normal or napalm Torchwood, Primal Peashooter's becomes a common Peashooter's fire pea or napalm pea respectively. However, these fire/napalm peas are larger than normal.
 * Its projectiles can knock back Barrel Roller Zombie's barrel, but not frozen blocks and arcade machines.
 * This may be an effect of how the game works. As a pirate barrel is listed as a zombie by the game's coding (as it could be stunned, stalled, and pushed even by other plants with such capabilities).