Explosive Escape

Explosive Escape
Ability for
Cooldown	Instant
Rarity	N/A

Explosive Escape is an ability for the Z-Mech in Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2 and Plants vs. Zombies: Battle for Neighborville. When used, the Imp inside the Z-Mech will eject from Z-Mech. Meanwhile, the Z-Mech will explode and deal 150 damage to any nearby plants. This is a single-use ability as it destroys the Z-Mech. It is an ability shared by all Z-Mech variants. Unlike most other abilities, the Explosive Escape must be activated twice to take effect.

Explosive Escape cutscene

Stickerbook description

Don't go down in flames. Imp can launch his way to safety as the Z-Mech's core explodes, taking out any plants caught in the radius.

Strategies

With

One way to use this ability is to fight a group of plants until you are on low health, and then use this ability. By doing this, you will distract and possibly harm your enemies, and possibly regain some health. And hey, even if you do die fighting the plants, you will at least be revivable, whereas if you die in your mech, you are not. Once (or if) the plants are running away, make sure to take the opportunity to attack them. They have to focus on getting away from the mech, and will probably be distracted. This ability is very effective against AI, as they don't know to run away from the exploding mech.

Against

This ability can do massive area damage, so if you are a plant, you should try to get away from the mech as fast as possible. Since the mech doesn't explode immediately, you do have some time to get away, just beware the imp that will come flying out of the mech, as the explosion won't harm him and he will probably attack the retreating plants.

Balancing changes

November 2016 Patch

• Decreased delay to eject from Mech from 1 second to 0.2 seconds.

Gallery

Imp using Explosive Escape

Imp using Explosive Escape in E3 gameplay

Explosive Escape's default icon

Explosive Escape's icon (after pushing the triangle/number 2 button for the first time)

Explosive Escape's icon (confirmation of using the ability)

Explosive Escape's icon (collapsed)

Explosive Escape's scrapped icon

Trivia

• After pressing the button for the first time, the button will eventually close again if the 2/Y/Triangle button is not pressed for a short while.
• The fact that two attempts are needed to activate this ability is a reference to how emergency switches often have a barricade that must be destroyed in order to trigger the switch, which is useful for preventing accidental triggering events.
• Explosive Escape was going to actually have an icon in very early development. It was replaced in classic with the black and yellow stripes with the button underneath.
  • You can still see this icon today, but it is a glitch and is extremely rare. It appears for a split second when the current "icon" becomes invisible when you use explosive escape.
  • It was shown on the official site before the game was released.
• The Party Mech's Explosive Escape is actually replaced by the "Explosive Party". This is similar to the Party Citron Ball.
• Its name is yet another instance of an alliterative name.

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