Puff-shroom


 * For other uses, please refer to Puff-shroom (disambiguation) page.

Puff-shroom is a mushroom appearing in both main Plants vs. Zombies series games as an unlockable plant. Although he has a limited firing range of three tiles, he does not cost any sun and can deal as much damage as a Peashooter, making him a good choice for Night and Fog levels where sun does not fall from the sky.

Origins
His name is a combination of the word "puff," which means a short burst of breath or wind, referring to how he puffs little spores as his attack, and the suffix "-shroom" referring to how he is a mushroom.

Plants vs. Zombies
Puff-shroom is unlocked after the player beats Level 1-10, making him the first plant unlocked in the Night area. He is also the first mushroom unlocked in the game. In this game, he has an aquatic counterpart called Sea-shroom.

Plants vs. Zombies 2
Puff-shroom makes his return in Plants vs. Zombies 2 as the second plant to be obtained in the Dark Ages with the same sun cost as his counterpart from the first game. In this game, Puff-shroom will flicker and disappear after a minute, but all Puff-shrooms on the lawn will have their timer reset if Plant Food is used on one of them. Puff-shroom has also had his health reduced to half that of a regular plant (three bites). Witch Hazel has the ability to turn zombies into Puff-shrooms.

Boosting 20 Puff-shrooms with a single Plant Food will earn the player the Fungus Humongous achievement.

Plants vs. Zombies
Puff-shroom 

Puff-shrooms are cheap, but can only fire a short distance.

Damage: normal

Range: short

Sleeps during the day

"I only recently became aware of the existence of zombies," says Puff-shroom. "Like many fungi, I'd just assumed they were fairy tales or movie monsters. This whole experience has been a huge eye-opener for me."

Cost: 0

Recharge: Fast

Plant Food effect
When fed Plant Food, he will unleash 30 spores for two seconds, three spaces in front of him. Every Puff-shroom on the screen is also activated, which is a bit similar to Power Tiles. This also resets the duration of all the Puff-shrooms on the field, making them last as if they were just freshly planted. If some of the Puff-shrooms are planted on Power Tiles, the effect will last longer and green outlines will be coming out from the Power Tiles. In the Chinese version, the spores can shoot through the lawn.

Costumed
Puff-shroom deals twice the damage and its plant food projectile travels farther.

Strategies
Due to his zero sun cost and poor offensive potential, Puff-shroom serves the role of a "cannon fodder", a highly disposable plant meant to be planted and eaten in great quantity to stall zombies. Regardless, Puff-shroom can be useful for both offensive and defensive purpose:

Offensively, Puff-shroom is useful as a deterrent against basic Zombies in the early game, a role that can also be occupied by instant use plants such as Potato Mine, Stunion and Squash. Compared to the aforementioned plants, Puff-shroom benefits from his ability to be massed in great numbers with little negative impact, and therefore will be able to last until the middle game. However, his offensive potential will prove to be inefficient as the level progresses and zombie density rapidly increases, while instant use plants can continue to work efficiently.

Defensively, Puff-shroom serves well as a makeshift wall against most enemies because of his sun cost. Puff-shroom is particularly effective in stalling Gargantuars, as they will take the same amount of time to attack a Puff-shroom as any other plant while not dealing any economical damage to the player, even in the day. Puff-shroom does not work however against several other zombies that can crush or circumvent plants, such as Explorer Zombie, Pianist Zombie and Mecha-Football Zombie.

Puff-shroom should ideally be placed at the frontline to support other offensive plants. This will somewhat negate Puff-shroom's range issue, as well as allow him to absorb the horde's attacks if they manage to break through the firing zone.

Plants vs. Zombies
Puff-shroom is a highly useful plant in ZomBotany and ZomBotany 2, as he is too short to be hit with peas, making him a good choice for both attacking and stopping Squash Zombies. However, he requires Coffee Beans to able to function properly, removing one of his biggest advantages - being free. Puff-shroom can also be used to force Pole Vaulting Zombies to jump when replaying Adventure Mode.

Photosensitive
Puff-shroom is vital for obtaining the Nintendo DS achievement Photosensitive. The rest of the selected plants are not important, since the player cannot plant them. Wall-nuts, Potato Mines, and Scaredy-shrooms can be used, but the player can only plant either one Wall-nut or two of the others. The easiest level to achieve this is on Level 2-1, as the only zombies that appear are the regular Zombie and the Newspaper Zombie. Simply plant three to four columns of Puff-shrooms at the back of the lawn (the player should not plant Sunflowers, as they may be tempted to collect sun, therefore failing this achievement). Due to their free sun cost, the player should not worry if the zombies eat his or her Puff-shrooms and instead continue to plant and replace his or her Puff-shrooms, and he or she should easily achieve Photosensitive.

Plants vs. Zombies 2
Puff-shroom has been significantly nerfed in terms of basic function, as he now has a timed lifespan and will disappear after 60 seconds - without Plant Food or Imitater, the player will only be able to maintain a maximum of ten Puff-shrooms on the lawn at any given movement. Because of this, Puff-shroom can no longer be planted in large quantities and therefore will lose his effectiveness even faster than he did in the first game. He also has less overall health, taking only 1.5 bites from a zombie before being destroyed. However, this is all compensated by his powerful Plant Food ability, which will spread to all Puff-shrooms currently present on the lawn, dealing a massive amount of damage and resetting their duration in the progress, without the need of Power Tiles or Tile Turnip.

In Dark Ages, Puff-shroom should not be used to fight Jester Zombies, as they can reflect Puff-shroom's projectile. Puff-shroom is also a poor choice in the Big Wave Beach as his biggest advantage of "being free" cannot be used effectively, since he cannot be planted in the water without the use of Lily Pad, which costs 25 sun to plant.

The player can make great use of Puff-shrooms in levels that require the player to not spend too much sun. Being free, Puff-shroom won't detract from the sun counter, meaning the player is free to plant as many Puff-shrooms as he/she chooses. However, it is not recommended to use Puff-shrooms in levels where there is a limit to the number of plants that can be lost, since he automatically disappears after 60 seconds, which counts as a plant lost.

General

 * In the French translations, the name Puff-shroom is translated as "Champi-gnon," which is a pun on the words "champignon" (a mushroom) and "gnon" (a French argot term, meaning the act of punching).

Specific to Plants vs. Zombies

 * He, Sun-shroom, Spikeweed, and Spikerock are the only plants which, when planted, may not be in the center of a square on the lawn. They may get planted slightly to the left, right or up.
 * He is one of the two cheapest plants in Versus Mode, requiring only 25 sun for the cost of the Coffee Bean with the other being the Potato Mine.
 * Even if he is at the edge of the red line in Versus Mode, he cannot shoot the Target Zombies, as the distance is just slightly over three squares long. The only time he can shoot the Target Zombie, however, is if his spore goes past a dead zombie about to fall down.
 * On the iPad version of Plants vs. Zombies, the spore range increases to four squares.
 * On the Nintendo DS and online versions of Plants vs. Zombies, if he shoots an already dead zombie (after falling), the spore will pass through the entire lawn.
 * The player will receive a warning for refusing to bring Puff-shrooms on Level 2-1. The warning will say "This Level will be extremely difficult without Puff-shrooms. Are you sure you wish to continue without them?"
 * He, Twin Sunflower, Sunflower, Sun-shroom, and Sea-shroom are the only plants that cannot be used in Last Stand and the iOS puzzle mode variation.
 * He can be considered as the opposite to Scaredy-shroom, as Puff-shroom can only attack zombies in a close range and Scaredy-shroom can only attack zombies in a far range.
 * Even though his spores technically come out of his mouth, if the player looks closely it can be seen that they come out of his head.
 * In the Java version, if player forgot to bring Puff-shroom at night levels, the game will still proceed without warning the player to choose him.

Specific to Plants vs. Zombies 2

 * He is the first plant that initiates a chain reaction of Plant Food ability, even if there are no Power Tiles from Tile Turnips or from Far Future to aid him from doing so, unless there is only one Puff-shroom present on the lawn. The second one is the Groundcherry, which activates a chain reaction for sun-producing plants on-screen, and the third is Sunflower Singer which also initiates a chain reaction of other Sunflower Singers.
 * He is the only plant to do this in the international version.
 * If he is planted on Power Tiles, the tiles will pulsate as the Plant Food effect is triggered, but nothing else will happen.
 * If the level has been completed but the reward has not been collected and he is about to fade, he will stay on the lawn instead.
 * In his Almanac entry, Sporebook is a pun on Facebook, Shroomstagram is a pun on Instagram, FungusedIn is a pun for LinkedIn, and Lawn Area Network is a pun on Local Area Network.
 * However, in the Chinese version they renamed these to: Mushroom Blog (菇博), Mushroom Mail (菇信) and Beautiful Mushroom Show (美菇秀秀).
 * They are all Chinese puns of Sina Weibo, WeChat and Meitu, all of which are Chinese social media.
 * This does make sense since most of international social media are not accessible in China, or being blocked by CCP.
 * In Dark Ages - Night 12 and Inzanity epic quests with them, if the player lets the endangered Puff-shrooms disappear, instead of saying "THE ZOMBIES ATE YOUR PLANT!", the game over text says "PUFF-SHROOM DID NOT SURVIVE!".
 * As of the 2.9 update, he now has an "about to open mouth" sprite when fed with Plant Food.
 * Even though he has the lowest health out of all non-instant use plants, he does not have his own health category on the Almanac.
 * Though this is probably due to lack of space, as a plant's Almanac entry can only have a maximum of three categories, those being recharge speed, range and damage respectively.
 * The splatter created when a spore hits a target is a recolor of the splatter caused when a pea hits a target.
 * The sound that he makes when he disappears is identical to the sound that Stunion makes when he disappears.