Sol Invictus

Difficulty: Medium

Sol Invictus is an achievement unlockable on PlayStation Vita, Android, and iOS versions of Plants vs. Zombies. In order to unlock it, the player must complete Last Stand with 2000 sun remaining.

Spiking Them Slowly Strategy
The Spiking Them Slowly strategy will show you how to earn the Achievement. This may be a problem for winning, though. The biggest problem is when two Football Zombies come into one lane and your Magnet-shroom steals one hat at that time. One of the Football Zombies might get past the Gloom-shrooms and eat the Snow Pea and you'll lose. If you fail on this strategy, try one of the other ones.



Select Lily Pads, Snow Peas, Coffee Beans, Magnet-shrooms, Fume-shrooms, Gloom-shrooms, Garlic, Spikeweeds. That will leave 1 alternate plant, if you have 9 slots. Choose Scaredy-shrooms or Squashes as insurance only. They are not necessary to win or earn the Achievement.

You could also put a third Gloom-shroom in each row and use three Spikeweeds in each lane.

Plant Roles
Four Snow Peas slow the zombies as they walk the two Gloom-shrooms or five Spikeweeds gauntlet or advance in the pool, maximizing zombie damage and carnage. Two consecutive Garlics are needed in the two lanes next to the pool to steer zombies down the outside paths, serve as backup, and repulse Pole Vaulting Zombies into the correct row. Two Magnet-shrooms are all that are needed. It may look sparse and relatively unprotected, but as long as you replace the eaten Garlics quickly, you don't need to worry about the largest waves.

Replace the Garlic when Eaten
thumb|300px|rightThis bare-bones strategy wins the Sol Invictus achievement with 2200 sun and there is very little wiggle room for any deviations or extra plants. It is critical that you be vigilant about replacing the Garlic when eaten, and only when the plant is completely gone. Do not get distracted with collecting coins, and do not replace the Garlic with the shovel or you may lose valuable seconds. If a zombie gets to the Gloom-shrooms, you may lose.

The Largest threat is the Jack-in-the-Box Zombie if it manages to explode. Since this method leaves you with up to 200 extra sun, you can use Squashes (four total) as your alternate plant for the last two flag onslaughts only.

Alternate Strategy: The list of plants to choose is Lily Pad, Repeater, Torchwood, Magnet-shroom, Coffee Bean, Garlic, Tall-nut, Tangle Kelp and Squash. However, 2,000 sun are required when the fifth flag is finished, not every end of a flag. You get 250 sun after each flag. The build: .    .     .     .     .     .     M     G     G          R     R     T. .    .     .     .     .          R[L]. T[L] TN[L]. .    .     .     .          R[L]. T[L] TN[L]. .    .     .     .          R     R     T. .    .     .     .     .          .     .     .     .     .     .     M     G     G


 * 1) The consecutive Garlics are for the Pole Vaulting Zombies. This will keep them away from eating your Magnet-shrooms which are very important by the way. Keep the Tall-nuts away as possible from the last row so that they would be destroyed immediately.
 * 2) Just replace the Garlics when eaten.
 * 3) As you continue and gain more sun, add two other Repeaters and two Magnet-shrooms. The final arrangement of plants is shown below.
 * 4) You can use the Tangle Kelp and Squash for emergency.

Another Strategy
Choose Starfruit, Garlic, Repeater, Gatling Pea and Torchwood. Plant the two inner land rows full of Starfruit, except the last two places, where you plant Garlics. Then plant two Repeaters on each of the outer lanes. Make one of them in each lane a Gatling Pea and put a Torchwood right in front of it. Keep going, replace your Garlics when you need to, and you should be fine. This also gets you the Pool's Closed achievement as well as Don't Pea in the Pool.

A strategy for iPod Touch/iPhone/iPad version
On the plant picking screen choose Lily Pad, Cattail, Garlic, Coffee Bean, Fume-shroom, Gloom-shroom, Pumpkin and some random plants that you won't actually use.

Start out by planting four Cattails to the left of the pool, Then plant three Garlics to the right on the rows above and below the pool, followed by four Gloom-shrooms to the left of the Garlics, the right most one having a Pumpkin around it. Then sit back and enjoy the show. Remember that you have 50 sun extra so it is recommended to replace the first Garlic that's eaten. Note: Jack-in-the-box Zombies can and may get far enough to destroy Gloom-shrooms. You may want to use the spare 50 sun on a Squash.

CT = Cattail. G = Garlic. GS = Gloom-shroom. (P) = Pumpkin.

A variation to this method is to replace the right most Garlic 3 times instead of using a Pumpkin.

A variation that will not earn the Don't Pea in the Pool achievement, but leaves a lot of extra sun, is to only use two Cattails and instead use two Snow Peas, placing one in the left most position in the top and bottom lanes. Using this method, if you don't use Pumpkins, you have enough leeway to replace the Garlic several times and use a couple Tangle Kelp for extra protection in the pool.

Great Balls of Fire Strategy
Select the Repeater, Gatling Pea, Torchwood, Lily Pad, Garlic, Magnet-shroom, Coffee Bean, Tangle Kelp and Pumpkin plants at the choose your plants screen. Place two Garlics in the lanes next to the pool at the far right of the screen. Immediately to the left of these two Garlics, place a Magnet-shroom. Next, in the very top and bottom lanes, at the far left of the screen, place two Gatling Peas, with a Torchwood right in front of them. Then, place four Lily Pads to the far left in the pool, and put Repeaters on the left most pads and Torchwoods on the one to the right. This should leave you with 1450 sun left over, meaning that you have a leeway of 450 to spend and still be able to get the achievement.



This strategy should easily deal with the zombies on land as long as you make sure to replace the Garlic when it gets eaten. The only possible problem is Dolphin Rider Zombies in the water. If they get started with zombies to the left of them, then they will not be killed before they reach your Torchwood. If they are going to reach your plants, drown them with the Tangle Kelp. If two of these zombies happen to spawn in the same lane at the same time, one of them will probably make it to your plants. This is not necessarily the end though. If this happens, place a Pumpkin over the Repeater it is eating. Depending on where the rest of the zombies are, the Repeater may be able to kill the Dolphin Rider Zombie and kill the remaining zombies in time. Alternatively, you may select the Imitater and have it copy the Tangle Kelp at the choose you plants screen, but since the Imitater takes a little while to change over I find it's not the best option to kill Dolphin Rider Zombies.

Addition by a user: 

''I used instead of two Gatling Peas, four Repeaters. Saved me 200 Sun, enough for four Garlics.''

If your having trouble keeping up with replacing Garlic, then get the Imitater and have it copy the Garlic at the choose your plants screen. This is not needed, but may make your life easier. You should easily be able to afford replacing the Garlics and can even afford replacing the Magnet-shroom if you mess up, though you will need to use Garlic to send the zombies to the other lane, effectively moving the set up a space to the left. This is unlikely to happen though.

Marigoldless strategy
This is my own strategy and does not require any special needs G is Garlic.

GS is Gloom-shroom.

Ms is Magnet-shroom.

T is Tall-nut.

Add two Magnet-shrooms in later waves and Coffee Bean the other one.

Replace frontal Garlic every wave and back Garlic after the second wave

 Fully Automatic Method (added by a user): 

I wanted to find a way that would work without any updates needed in-between. This method works unless you get real unlucky with the Jack-in-the-Box Zombies. RP = Repeater, FP = Frozen pea, SP = Single pea, GS = Gloom-shroom, FS = Fume-shroom, G = Garlic, M = Magnet

Requires all ten slots. This method leaves you with 1,000 sun initially, and at the end you'll have 2,000 sun and one or two Garlic left in each row most of the time. Because of the Jack-in-the-Box Zombies, you do need some slow-down and firepower in the Garlic rows.

The Gauntlet
This strategy uses only three types of plant (needs five slots).

T. . . . . . . .           . G G G G G g g g            T ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ T ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ . G G G G G g g g           T. . . . . . ..

G = Gloom-shroom g = Garlic T = Tall-nut

Replace up to three Garlic, as needed. Worked on the first try (on iPad).

To save another 150 Sun (for Garlic), replace the top and bottom Tall-nuts with regular Wall-nuts, since they don't get much action. You do need the pool Tall-nuts though, to block the Dolphin Rider Zombies.

Obtain with Don't Pea in the Pool and Pool's Closed
Take the Coffee Bean, Fume-shroom, Gloom-shroom, Pumpkin, and the Garlic. You can take any other plants you want, but you won't need to use them (I'd recommend Wall-nut).

Set it up like this:

G = Gloom-shroom

= Pumpkin

g = Garlic

Replace the garlics as needed. You should get all three achievements at once.

Cob Cob! Too late!
This is literally just 5 cob cannons,lily pads and flower pots. This will also get you Defcorn 5.

Trivia

 * "Sol Invictus" translates from Latin literally to "sun invincible", or "invincible sun".
 * The picture looks like a piggy bank being filled with Sun to save some.
 * The PlayStation Vita version has two icons for this achievement, relating to Roll Some Heads.
 * If you look closely, you can see that the piggy bank on the picture has Crazy Dave's eyes.