Magnifying Grass

Magnifying Grass is the sixth plant obtained in Far Future and the thirty-third plant listed in the Almanac Entry of Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time. It uses sun earned by the player as its weapon by turning them into a bolt of damage when tapped. Each shot deals 27.5 damage, which costs 50 sun to fire.

Almanac Entry
Sun cost: 50

DAMAGE:  Huge

RANGE: Straight

RECHARGE: Fast

Magnifying Grass turns sun into a bolt of colorful damage.

Special: tap to spend sun for an attack

Magnifying Grass understands the inherent power of a rainbow. Beneath her stoic features she takes great joy in delivering radiant multicolored destruction to the zombie horde.

Plant Food
When fed with Plant Food, it shoots a rainbow that burns zombies ahead of it one by one. This effect will last longer for every sun-producing plant except Sun Bean that is present on the lawn. If there are none, the effect will only last for 3.5 seconds. The beam can also bounce off to other Magnifying Grasses.

Level upgrade

 * Level 2
 * ???: Hold and fully charge the Magnifying Grass to deal triple the amount of normal damage at the cost of 100 sun.
 * Combat Training: Magnifying Grass has 50% more attack power and health (150% of initial).
 * Level 3
 * ???: Now the charged attack deals quadruple amount of damage that its normal state at the cost of 100 sun with its attack power.
 * Cell Activation: Magnifying Grass has another 50% attack power and health boost (200% of initial).
 * Level 4
 * Ability Awaken: Magnifying Grass can be boosted sometimes when planted.

Costumed
Its sun beam can deal a greater amount of damage.

Strategies
This is among the strongest and most effective plants in the game, as long as the player has enough sun available. It can very quickly and easily kill the most dangerous enemies in the game in a few hits or even a single hit, including the Surfer Zombie, Jester Zombie and the Wizard Zombie in a single shot for 50 sun (the Jester Zombie cannot reflect a Magnifying Grass projectile), a Zombie King for two shots, costing 100 sun, a Mecha-Football Zombie for 4 shots/200 sun, and a Gargantuar for 7 shots, costing 350 sun. It's also useful for clearing out obstructive Tombstones at 2 shots, costing 100 sun each. Its rapid recharge time allows multiple of them to be deployed anywhere quickly to dispose of key threats. Even using this plant exclusively as the lawn's offense, the player should have no problems generating enough sun in most levels if two columns of Twin Sunflowers are planted, or even overproducing regular Sunflowers. Its Plant Food attack is also very effective when combined with Power Tiles and Tile Turnips.

Its major weaknesses are levels with limited sun or planting options (such as Last Stand), and against "pack enemies" such as the Zombie Chicken. Levels with heavy zombie crowds throughout the waves can also drain sun quickly unless the player is using other plants to help control numbers (see below).


 * Bring a Potato Mine with you because it costs only 25 sun and greatly helps you to replace Magnifying Grass in these cases:
 * It can instantly kill a Buckethead Zombie and its variants, a Poncho Zombie and a Knight Zombie. (This is also true to Chili Bean and Squash)
 * It deals 90 damage, meaning it will save you about 125 sun (27.5 x 3 = 82.5 so its cost for three shots is 150 sun, then do the subtraction 150 - 25 = 125 sun) for machined zombies.
 * It kills many zombies at once (when they are all in the same square). This is also true to Squash.
 * Use Puff-shroom to kill regular zombies.
 * Its damage is 27.75 damage shots, meaning it wastes 50 sun to kill a Conehead Zombie and its variants by itself; so use Puff-shroom to reduce its health in order not to waste 50 sun.
 * Use a Cherry Bomb when there are at least four or more zombies in a 3x3 square or Jalapeno when there are three or more zombies in a lane. The more zombies there are, the higher amount of sun you can save.
 * It takes 100 sun to destroy a tombstone, so the best way is to use the Grave Buster.
 * Sun-shroom is also effective with the Magnifying Grass as it can produce large amounts of sun when fully grown.
 * Magnifying Grass is great used with the Sun Bean with Plant Food. The Sun Bean (with Plant Food) will produce tons of sun if used on a tough zombie. You can then use the Magnifying Grass.
 * It works well with the Tile Turnip. If you have at least three power tiles with Magnifying Grass on them, feeding one Plant Food can destroy a Gargantuar or Gargantuar Prime and huge waves of zombies very quickly. However, the Tile Turnip costs a lot of sun, if when using this strategy, keep a lot of sun producing plants in the back rows of the lawn.
 * It takes 100 sun to destroy an ice block in Frostbite Caves. The best way to do is to use a Hot Potato, so you will save up some sun for tougher zombies (Hunter Zombies, Dodo Rider Zombies, Sloth Gargantuars).

Moreover, in Pyramid of Doom, Magnifying Grasses also serve as an alternative means of countering sandstorms as Mummy Zombies die before the sandstorm disappears. However, in higher levels, it may follow up another set of Mummy Zombies while the sandstorms themselves do not abate immediately, which only wastes your sun bank in the process. In fact, it will not help clearing out the upcoming sets if placed in the third column as the Mummy Zombies themselves land on the third column.

This plant is also very effective in the Chinese version, because of the lack of plants you earn via natural progression.

Trivia

 * Magnifying Grass was first shown off in Plants vs. Zombies: Official Guide to Protecting Your Brains, and files were discovered in the game's coding. However, it was confirmed once an image revealed by Electronic Arts showed the Far Future had its seed packet.
 * It works by spending sun to use an attack, hence the name Magnifying Grass.
 * Its name is a pun on "magnifying glass".
 * This, Coconut Cannon, Cob Cannon, Fire Gourd, and Banana Launcher are the only plants that require player imput.
 * The concept of Magnifying Grass is the same as when sunlight passes through a prism. Sunlight seems colorless but when passed into a prism, it breaks, forming six colors which is the visible spectrum. The sun passes into the Magnifying Grass, forming a rainbow.
 * A Magnifying Grass could kill a Poncho Zombie with a grate in one shot as long as it has its poncho. This is because that the Poncho Zombie with its poncho is assumed to have 12.5 health. But this was fixed in the 2.4.1 update.
 * Magnifying Grass is one of the fifteen plants that can be used before their seed packet is obtained. The other plants are Threepeater, Winter Melon, Kernel-pult, Snapdragon, Bonk Choy, Coconut Cannon, Repeater, Melon-pult, Puff-shroom, Sun-shroom, Lily Pad, Tangle Kelp, Bowling Bulb, Lightning Reed, Guacodile, and Banana Launcher.
 * The Magnifying Grass Plant Food is similar to Shamrock and Shamrockstar, as all three shoot rainbows.
 * It is required to fire off 500 sun in a level in order to achieve the achievement Grass Effect.
 * When Magnifying Grass uses its Plant Food ability, it burns the zombies it kills. This is a reference to when sun rays are focused using a magnifying glass, the ray can burn objects.
 * However, it is unknown why Magnifying Grass' normal attack does not burn zombies too, even though it is also a focused sun ray.
 * Technically, it is not focused, but split, hence explaining the lack of burning by normal attack.
 * Coincidentally, both its cost and its power require 50 sun.
 * Unlike other interactive plants, at the end of any level, Magnifying Grass can still be tapped on and will use its ray attack. This also happened with the Banana Launcher before the 3.1 update.
 * A glitch can occur when the player uses Plant Food on Magnifying Grass, the zombie will not get burnt, but will fall down and the Magnifying Grass will keep firing at the same spot until the effect ends, instead of firing at another zombie.
 * In Plants vs. Zombies: Official Guide to Protecting Your Brains, Magnifying Grass is refered to as male, although in the game, it is female.
 * Camel Zombies take 21 normal damage shots and took two shots from Magnifying Grass to be killed, even though all Conehead Zombie variants takes 28 normal damage shots and took two Magnifying Grass' beam to be killed. However, in the 2.4.1 update, this was fixed.
 * Magnifying Grass' attack only deals about seven damage in the Chinese version of Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time, while it still spends 50 sun to attack. The bug was fixed in 1.2.1 update.
 * Aside from projectiles fired upon by its Plant Food upgrade, Magnifying Grass's sun beam and pinecones lobbed by Sap-fling when not fed with Plant Food are the only projectiles that cannot be deflected by Jester Zombie.
 * In the Chinese version, its Plant Food effect is not extended by Sun-shroom.