Arena (formerly known as Battlez until 7.5.1) is a player vs. player game mode in Plants vs. Zombies 2 that was introduced in the 6.6.1 update. This mode is unlocked after getting the Map of Space-Time-Ness from Ancient Egypt - Day 1 and obtaining at least six plants.
To start a match, the player has to use a Gauntlet. Gauntlets can be bought with gems. However, every four hours, the player receives a free play. The player can press the 'FREE GAUNTLETS' button, which is located to the left of the Play Button, to watch an advertisement and obtain a free gauntlet. Up to four free Gauntlets per day can be obtained by watching ads.
When an opponent is found, the player will usually choose five plants, with the first slot reserved for the plant of the week. Once the plants are chosen, the player is set in the Last Stand format, then after setting-up, the "battle" begins. The player gains points based on the distance the zombies are away from the house, and their starting health. Zombies in the yellow zone are worth their full potential of points, while zombies in the red, blue, and brown zones being worth 60%, 40%, and 20% of their potential respectively. Points can also be scored by removing most forms of armor through any method. Zombies buffed by Cardio Zombie are worth extra points. Destroying Gravestones and Surfboards are also worth a small amount points.
This mode is time-based, and the zombies have significantly more health, with higher leagues having even higher health. Zombies can often survive multiple instant-kills. Zombies will also eat significantly faster causing most plants to be eaten instantly. The faster the player kills the zombies, the more health they will have. Having a non-defensive plant getting eaten will result in a penalty, causing the zombie health to be reduced and therefore significantly reducing the score they will give. Having a sun-producing plant getting eaten or manually launching a Lawnmower will result in a big penalty, and if a zombie activates a mower, this will result in a huge penalty. Winning a match of Arena is brought about by getting a higher score than your opponent, and grants the player five Crowns, whereas losing a match only yields one crown. Surrendering will count as a loss, but will grant no crowns.
As the player wins matches, they will collect rewards from a reward streak, found under the Play Button. The rewards get better as the player wins more consecutive matches. If the player breaks a streak, they can pay 10 gems to retain it, with the cost increasing by ten gems per retain, and caps at 250 gems. If they reset their streak, the cost to retain goes back to 10 gems. As of the new update, after a win streak of 7, the rewards will reset.
Current possible rewards for the Reward Streak (in order):
Each week, there will be a different type of tournament that the player will have to compete in. Each type of tournament has its own way of changing the gameplay (the change can be quite minor, however). For example, a tournament can shorten the time it takes for a match to finish. It could also be quite major (for example, from 17th July - 19th July 2018 Grapeshot's Double Shot Tournament lasted 2 days and the rewards were drastically decreased).
Also, this mode also has several different leagues; the player gets promoted if they place top 3 in their league by having a number of crowns higher than all but two or less other players in their league. If they are placed in one of the last three spots, they will be demoted to the league before that one (this is not the case in the lower leagues, where special methods are required to be demoted). Several gems, mints and coins are rewarded in promotions.
It has been noted that this mode does appear to be lacking a "real" matchmaking feature that pairs you with another player fairly. There have been reports of people that had low-leveled plants to still be paired with a person with max-leveled plants or still high-leveled plants. Players can also be paired against bots that solely calculate their score based on the players.
Maximum promotion rewards
League
Mint Rewards
Gem Rewards
Coin Rewards
Jade
120
270
9000
Gold
100
210
6000
Silver
80
165
5400
Bronze
60
132
4800
Iron
50
108
4200
Brick
40
90
3600
Wood
30
75
3000
Soil
20
60
2400
Seasons List
Seasons were firstly introduced in the v7.3.1 update. In Seasons, the players could get rewards after they collect crowns from all of the tournaments, such as coins, gems, piñata, or seed packets of the featured plants. Each season has one featured plant and also new tournament called Boosterama where all plants are boosted and in the end of each Seasons, there is a Boss Fight Tournament. Seasons list are below here:
Season number
Season name
Featured plant
Season duration
Number of reward
Tournament that occured within this season
1
Zoybean Pod's Birthdayz Season
April 30, 2019 - May 28, 2019
8
•Zoybean Pod's Tournament •Apple Mortar's Tournament •Apple Mortar's Boosterama •Wasabi Whip's Tournament •Zoybean Pod & Friends VS Zomboss Tournament
According to a PopCap community manager (referred to Haemophilus EA on Reddit), the player is not actually fighting against other players in real-time, rather, just "ghosts". The score progression seen in gameplay is just a replay of the "ghost" player's previous Arena round.
Other affirmations that support this are:
You can spend infinite time on the pause menu, Choose Your Seeds screen, and the Last Stand defense preparation stage.
Arena requires internet to play. However, if a player has entered a match and disables internet connection, it is still possible to play the entire match. At the end of the match, the player will be prompted to reconnect to internet or exit Arena. If it was a win, exiting Arena will not make the player lose their streak.
If you exit your game while you get demoted/qualified/promoted to a league, you still get your previous league even before you get demoted or promoted.
If two people tie up at the end of the match, they will win
However, it has been noted that if the players tie during a match, the player who caught up will have an enlarged score number. The player with a higher score would also have an enlarged score number. This suggests that if the players tie at the end of a match, the player who caught up will win.File:Enlargedscore.jpg
As can be seen here, the player with a higher score has an enlarged score number. If there is a tie, then the player who caught up will have an enlarged score number.
If the player looks closely at the opponent's score when it gets higher, the score will become bigger and later smaller and so on until the player manages to get his score higher.
The setting in this mode is the same as Player's House and Modern Day worlds, but in the style of Dark Ages.
This can be seen that if a zombie in this mode eats a boosted Hypno-shroom, it transforms into a hypnotized Dark Ages Gargantuar.
All the Flag Zombies that appear in this mode are Peasant Flag Zombies from Dark Ages.
It also plays its music which is similar to its own world.
This is the only mode in the game, other than Cannons Away where zombies cannot eat your brains. This is because when a lawn mower is activated, it is automatically regenerated. If a zombie somehow manages to reach your house, it will be destroyed.
Also, plants that are boosted in the Zen Garden will not have their boost in this mode.
However, in Boosted Tournaments, all plants except for instants are boosted, even if they aren't in the Zen Garden.
World exclusive plants cannot be used in this mode, even if there are special mechanics that can be affected by them
Before the 6.9.1 update, Neon Mixtape Tour zombies in this mode did not have their jam abilities.
When being awarded for winning a match, no extra Crowns are given for obtaining higher scores or beating your opponent by a small amount.
Removing armor and destroying gravestones score points. However, removing graves using Grave Buster will not score points.
The player does not get points for the zombies destroyed by lawnmowers.
However, it scores points when it destroys a surfboard.
This was fixed in later updates.
Even the zombies who gets destroyed by the Zombot won't give you points.
If the player manages to defeat all the zombies before the time runs out, the results screen will pop up, despite the amount of time remaining.
If plants are thrown into the air toward another tile (for example by a portal or Potato Mine's Plant Food effect) as time reaches 0:00, the player will see the plants 'jumping' off the screen as they receive their Crowns.
Surprise attacks from other worlds are also present, such as sandstorms, bot swarms, parachute rains and more.
During last stand setup, you can dig up pre-placed Plants (If there's any) to get more Sun.
However in the later updates, the pre-placed Plants can't be dig up to get more Sun.
Somehow, you can dig up the pre-placed Plant in the seed selection while looking at the lawn.
So far, there have been no tournaments that feature endangered plants, planting limits, or flowers.
Blover is restricted from most tournaments in Arena.
This is because Blover can be used to insta-kill any zombies when combined with plants such as Primal Peashooter.
In the textures for the trophies that identify for each league, there appears to be an unused crystal-like trophy.
If the current tournament is about to end (a day left), there's a practice room for the upcoming tournament in the Travel Log. Completing the "practice" will give you three mints.
Boss Fight Tournaments are similar to the majority of the Chinese version's boss battles where you set up your plants before you fight the boss.
Tournament-related
Lightning Reed's Brainstorm Tournament is the only tournament where the special plant is a free plant.
Sometimes, in Electric Currant's Garden Party and Snow Pea's All-out Tournament, if a zombie is killed over a rail, very few points will be given, that is, the points that would be obtained in the lowest scoring zone, even if the rail was in the highest scoring zone.
In Electric Blueberry's Brainstorm Tournament, if a kicked Super-Fan Imp lands on one of Dave's mold colonies, it will blow up, scoring points according to where it landed. The points will only be scored after it has disintegrated.
Bombegranate's Garden Party Tournament, Explode-O-Nut's All-Out Tournament, Gold Bloom's Garden Party Tournament and Power Lily's Tournament happened twice.
The first Grapeshot's Double Shot Tournament is identical to Caulipower's Escalating Tournament, except that Caulipower was replaced by Grapeshot as the plant of the week.
In Snow Pea's All-Out Tournament, it is possible for plants to exist under Zombie Kings by planting on an empty minecart and moving it under the Zombie King.
Arma-mint's Garden Party Tournament was the first tournament where the special plant is a Power Mint.
Contain-mint's Tournament was the first tournament that had a Buffz & Bruisez feature in it.
In Parsnip's Tournament, you can earn seed packets for Shadow Peashooter from the Reward streak, despite not being the plant of the week.
In Jack O' Lantern's Tournament, there are frozen level 10 fire plants pre-placed, which is ironic because fire plants are usually immune to freezing. Additionally, the Plant Food tombstones are extremely tough, requiring 30000 dps to break them.
In Missile Toe's Tournament, the frozen plants that are seen on the lawn are maxed out. This can be seen as the projectiles are different as well as the Sunflowers producing more sun.
In Gold Bloom's Tournament, the players are given plants that are maxed out instead of choosing them.
In Starfruit's Tournament, the seed selection screen fools the players that they'll be fighting only Basic Zombies and Hamsterballs. It is proven that PopCap lied when the match starts, the incoming zombies are the same from Electric Peashooter's Tournament, excluding the Cardio Zombie.
However, the Hunter Zombie has normal speed as it is summoned by the Sandstorm! ambush.
Besides, only few Tomb Raiser Zombie has faster speed.
For some reason, in the Electrici-tea's Tournament advertisement, the Bombard-mint family is weak. However, in the season review and the gameplay, the Bombard-mint family is ineffective.
Electrici-tea & Friends VS Zomboss Tournament is the first BOSS FIGHT tournament to feature different zombies from different worlds.
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are shoveled up)
, Portals
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on Minecart and rail, Dark Ages tombstones, Plant Food tombstones
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(frozen)
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