Survival: Pool

Survival: Pool is the third level of Survival Mode introduced in Plants vs. Zombies and Plants vs. Zombies: Journey to the West. Set in Pool, the objective of this game is to survive five waves with one flag given for each wave.

Difficulty

 * Coming from Survival: Night, the player is greeted with a level which is more liberal when it comes to strategies.
 * The presence of the pool allows for a Garlic strategy to be deployed, as the player can easily predict in which lanes zombies will be diverted to. This also means that Gloom-shrooms are ideal here, both for the regular zombies and ones that appear in ambushes.
 * Other than Fume-shroom, the only other viable mushrooms for a daytime setting are Ice-shroom and Doom-shroom. What makes them excellent is that the player controls their activation and uses them when needed.
 * If the player doesn't want to base their strategy on mushrooms, they will need to secure the pool lane as ambush attacks appear frequently.
 * Gatling Peas with Torchwoods have proved to work great for this level. However, Pumpkins should be used to defend these costly and hard-to-set-up plants. Tall-nuts are better than Wall-nuts in this case; as peas will not be able to hit Snorkel Zombies underwater, Tall-nuts will be more durable than their "light" version.

Strategy 1: Fire Pea Gold Magnet
This is a strategy that is moderately hard to set up, but pays off by letting the rounds play themselves and still not lose any money.

Plants:
 * Sunflower
 * Repeater
 * Gatling Pea
 * Torchwood
 * Pumpkin
 * Magnet-shroom
 * Gold Magnet
 * Lily Pad
 * Potato Mine
 * Pumpkin
 * Instant Kill plants

Optional:
 * Imitater (Pumpkin) or (Potato Mine)
 * Marigold

Setup:

Start by planting your Sunflowers, as usual. When a zombie appears, use a Potato Mine. When you can afford them, plant Repeaters, their alignment being in a column. Put Torchwoods in front, and upgrade to Gatling Peas when you can (sooner is better). Place the Gold Magnets as seen in the picture (in front of torchwoods, inner land row). Now Pumpkin all the Gold Magnets and Torchwoods. At this point, you can leave and do anything else, as the round will pretty much play itself as long as the game is running. Optionally, you can add Marigolds to receive some more money. Note that, from testing, it's impossible to do the whole setup in a single flag.

Jackninja5's Strategy
Step 1:

Plants needed:

Sunflower Do what you did at the first flag of Survival: Day with Lily Pads but use Potato Mine for the first zombie. If you have enough time plant Twin Sunflowers on the Sunflowers. Use Tangle Kelp when the ambush zombies get out of the water. Yes I have a diagram:
 * Peashooter
 * Lily Pad
 * Snow Pea
 * Squash
 * Potato Mine
 * Tangle Kelp
 * Repeater (optional)
 * Gatling Pea (optional)
 * Twin Sunflower (optional)

S S P SP S S P SP LS LS LP LSP LS LS LP LSP S S P SP S S P SP


 * L = Lily Pad
 * S = Sunflower
 * P = Peashooter
 * SP = Snow Pea

Step 2:

You must choose:


 * Twin Sunflower
 * Repeater
 * Gatling Pea
 * Tall-nut (I don't trust Dolphin Riders but use them on ground too)
 * Lily Pad
 * Tangle Kelp (keep drowning the closest ambushes)
 * Torchwood (if you want)
 * Jalapeno (optional)
 * Squash (optional)
 * Cherry Bomb (optional)
 * Wall-nut (optional)

Last daytime level (Day and Pool are both in the day) I used a fire killing spree. Use a fire one if you want, but I am using an ice killing spree. I hate the cold but I want it to be unique. So replace Peashooters with Repeaters and use the Tall-nuts. Twin Sunflowers. Remember them? Do that Twin Sunflower thing again. You can do the Gatling Pea thing again too. And the diagram is now:

Note: R's and GP's! Put the GP’s on any R’s you want! TN’s go wherever you want too! I will show you what I did! Whatever you do, no difference!

TS TS R SP TN TS TS GP SP LS LS LGP LSP LTN LS LS LR LSP LTN S S R SP S S R SP TN


 * GP = Gatling Pea
 * TN = Tall-nut
 * R = Repeater

If you are using the fire killing spree, replace the Snow Pea with Torchwood.

Step number 3:

Choose these:

Keep using Twin Sunflowers, Gatling Peas, and Tall-nuts. Tangle Kelp never changes! Here is the diagram:
 * Twin Sunflower
 * Gatling Pea
 * Lily Pad
 * Tall-nut
 * Tangle Kelp
 * Squash
 * Coffee Bean and Doom-shroom (both optional; probably for a bomb as the Gatling Peas are like war soldiers)
 * Jalapeno (optional)
 * Cherry Bomb (optional)

TS TS GP SP TN TS TS GP SP TN LTS LTS LGP LSP LTN LTS LTS LGP LSP LTN S S GP SP TN S S GP SP TN

If you are using the fire killing spree, replace the Snow Pea with Torchwood.

Step four:

Football Zombies and Dancing Zombies are here! Choose: Don't worry about the Football Zombies! They will die by Gatling Peas and go slow! Keep the Twin Sunflower strategy up! Tangle Kelps; still use them! Tall-nuts should be with you when your Tall-nuts are damaged.
 * Twin Sunflower
 * Lily Pad
 * Tall-nut (replace damaged ones)
 * Tangle Kelp
 * Any plant

Final and last step:

Choose these plants: Just do the same thing again!
 * Twin Sunflower
 * Lily Pad
 * Tall-nut
 * Tangle Kelp
 * Any plant

Buttered Wintermelons
By BGB64

Plants

 * Sunflower
 * Potato Mine (optional)
 * Kernel-pult
 * Melon-pult
 * Lily Pad
 * Cattail (optional)
 * Tall-nut
 * Winter Melon (optional)

Strategy
Plant a column of Sunflowers at the furthest to the left, while using Potato Mines (if you picked them) or begin to plant a column of Kernel-pults in the second column. If you picked Twin Sunflowers, plant them as soon as possible. Plant the Tall-nuts in the fourth column from the right, only in the pool. Plant a column of Melon-pults in front of the Kernel-pults, and slowly upgrade them to Winter Melons. In the pool, between the Melon-pults, or Winter melons if upgraded, and the Tall-nuts, plant the Cattails.

Cob Cannon Strategy
Plants needed: (flag one) Plant four columns of Sunflowers (not at Lily Pads) as fast as possible. Potato Mines and Squashes are needed in this process. Eventually, they will need to upgrade them to Twin Sunflowers. All along the pool will be Cattails, but guarded with Pumpkins. This process will need many flags.
 * Sunflower
 * Imitated Sunflower
 * Twin Sunflower
 * Pumpkin
 * Lily Pad
 * Cattail
 * Potato Mine
 * Squash

Plants needed: (flag two) Continue planting Twin Sunflowers and Cattails. But dig up the forth column of Sunflowers. Plant a Kernel-pult in that place along with the space in front of it. There will be Cob Cannons there. Anything not done will be done in flag three and flag four.
 * Twin Sunflower (continued)
 * Pumpkin (for Cattail)
 * Cattail
 * Kernel-pult
 * Cob Cannon

Last, plant Spikeweeds in all missing spaces.

Active Coin Farming
This is the strategy for people who want to farm coins but are too worried about Jacks blowing up

Plants
Begin the level by planting as much Sunflower and Marigold as possible - the goal of this strategy is to get coins. Use Squashes to stall the incoming horde while you plant Gloom-shrooms and Garlics at exactly the positions as denoted in the picture. Start planting Gold Magnets and Spikerocks at the second flag.
 * Sunflower
 * Squash
 * Marigold + Imitater
 * Coffee Bean
 * Lily Pad
 * Fume-shroom + Gloom-shroom
 * Pumpkin
 * Garlic
 * Magnet-shroom + Gold Magnet
 * Spikeweed + Spikerock (optional)

Remember to always try to fill the lawn with as many Marigold as possible - at least 32 Marigolds can be safely planted safely. You can also fill in the six empty pool tiles with additional Marigolds and guard them with Pumpkins. This strategy allows you to gain over 11k gold after 5 flags.