Plants vs. Zombies

This achievement can be obtained only in Endless Survival mode. To unlock this mode you are required to beat all 10 stages of Survival mode.

Survival more is all about having a good setup to survive as much flags as possible. For those who wonder, 40 flags is 20 levels. This achievement will unlock once you get past 40 flags and get your brains eaten.

So what is a good setup? There are many good setups out there. I will go through some of them to illustrate the finer points of lawn defence. I would advise you have at least 9 slots and unlocked all plants. It would however not hurt to have more slots!

Below you will find the setup I got my idea from. Thanks to wARtist at www.hubpages.com. I tweaked it a bit to suit my needs. Let's first go through it and I will detail the changes when we get there.

- 6 front slots in pool -> Gloom-Shrooms with Pumpkins: They will attack everything around them, obliterating normal zombies that get into the pool and making short work of everything in the two adjacent lanes that is not moving to fast. The only downside is that in levels with massive Dolphin Riders you will be hard pressed on the 3^rd column from the right and need to keep an eye on the pumpkins.

- Spikerocks on 3^rd column from right (as will be referenced all columns): They will keep out unwanted Zombonis and damage zombies that make it that far. In addition they give you more time to deal with Gargantuars.

- 4^th column in the pool: I did not use double magnets. I had enough cash at that point and to be honest I think that the controls are good enough to pick up money yourself. Instead I opted for an Umbrella Leaf and a Twin Sunflower. If you are not in need of more sun power than I suggest having a Winder Melon. They will slow down Dolphin Riders and alleviate the attacks on the Gloom-Shrooms. The Umbrella Leaf is great for protecting against the Bungee Zombies. More on those later!

- 5^th column in pool: Cattails. They are your lifeline in levels with Balloon Zombies. In addition they will be able to attack Imps that are thrown by the Gargantuars.

4^th and 5^th column - Cob Cannons: They pack a serious punch and together with the remaining pool slots, those 8 cannons will form a near seamless rotation and will be able to take out masses of zombies. Two cobs will take out normal Gargantuars while you will still have 2 cobs in reserve on each side (well up and down) should more Gargantuars show up or should the red-eyed ones show. They are also great when waves of Football Zombies keep coming or when you quickly need to clear Dolphin Riders or Digger Zombies that threaten your plants.

Remaining pool slots: See 4^th and 5^th column.

6^th and 7^th column: While the outer row (relative to the edge of the screen) is packed with two Winter Melons the inner row (the one near the pool) holds Twin Sunflowers to net you some funds. The Winter Melons will keep the outer row in check since it will not be covered from the Gloom-Shrooms. The area damage comes in handy but the row will need a Cob Cannon shot from time to time.

8^th column: I used a different setup. The outer row was identical, having Gloom-Shrooms. In the inner row however I planted Umbrella Leafs. The Gloom-Shrooms will be able to deal with Imps and Digger Zombies. The Pumpkins will need some maintenance but they should be okay as long as you keep an eye on them. The Umbrella Leafs are used to deflect Basketballs and Bungee Zombies. While they are infrequent they can seriously mess up your defences.

9^th column: Winter Melons. They slow hordes of zombies and pack a punch. If you should be rushed by Digger Zombies who take out a Winter Melon, plant a Spikerock in it's place. Revert to the original setting if needed on the next level.

With this setup you should be good to go. Focus to get your Cattails up and running in the beginning while setting up Kernel-Pults in the non-pool lanes. Obviously you should have more Sunflowers in the beginning, I recommend the usual two rows, and replace them slowly later on.

Once you have your setup ready you should always choose some explosive power from the plant menu. it will come in handy to deal with incoming hordes. I also recommend having some Ice-Shrooms ready. Activate them with a Coffee Bean if needed. In levels with Zombonis I also recommend choosing Spikeweed and Spikerock to replace damaged defences.

The greatest threats:
- Bungee Zombies: You should be able to deflect nearly all of them with your Umbrella Leafs. If not than only one or two should remain. As they are slowed by your Winter Melons they will suffer heavy damage and usually not be able to pick up any plant. If you want to be absolutely sure they do not get anything, plant an Ice-Shroom as soon as you see the target markers and activate it as quickly as possible. This will freeze the Bungee Zombies for easy pickings. Note that if you do not use that many Umbrella Leafs then two Bungee Zombies might remain in a row. You will only be able to kill one of those and most certainly loose a plant.

Jumpers (Dolphin Riders and Pole Vaulting Zombies): While the latter are to weak to really pose any danger, the Dolphin Riders can seriously damage your Gloom-Shroom defences. In those levels I suggest packing double Pumpkins (using the option to clone a plant) and keeping a close eye on that row. You might also want to use a Cob Cannon shot in the vicinity just to be sure.

Diggers: They do not pose a threat if they do not show up in masses. Your lone Gloom-Shroom should be able to take them out fairly quickly. However, the leftmost column will need some maintenance. Double Pumpkin load-out is also recommended on these levels as continuous spawning Diggers might eat through it eventually.

Jack-In-The-Box Zombie: While the zombie poses no threat, his explosives do. In levels with those kind of zombies you might want to have a Cob Cannon rotation in order to blast the incoming zombies and minimise the risk of blowing up your Spikerock or Gloom-Shroom defences. You can also use Cherry Bombs, Ice-Shrooms and the like to get rid of them quickly.

I hope I could give you some details on how to get to at least 40 flags. If you should struggle then feel free to leave a comment or message me directly. Keep in mind that this is not he only setup.

Inspiration and Sources: http://hubpages.com/hub/Plants-Vs-Zombies-Survival-Endless-2...

Update: As reported by Jayour, there is supposed to be a perfect setup which requires very little effort. You should have enough info on zombie types to see why this is working and I suggest you try it should you get desperate or fail with other setups! I have not tried it and would recommend you use the original setting I proposed first!


Review 25 September 2014: Revised some spelling.
Review 19 February 2017: Fixed image links, broken after certificate expired.
Review 27 March 2017: Fixed broken images after Dropbox changed their link policies.
Review 23 November 2023: Dropbox changed policies gain, moving to imgur.

Follow this video and make sure you always keep your eyes open for the ballon zombies because this set up will allow you to kill anything on land even those inraged giants really easily but it has no real defense agaisnt air so keep a blower on hand when you see the flying zombies ot push them back. Hope this helps :)

Edit: As stated in the comments by there is a way to fix this plan to defend against air without the need for blowers. In the video there are to gold magnets placed behind some shrroms replace these with cattails and one of the sunflowers as well this will fix any problems. Also this video is not mine all credit goes to IamSooty

I used a guide that I found on a different site for this. The setup is pretty similar to Epsilon Theta's original setup, if not exactly the same. One reason I liked this one is because it kinda gives you step by step on what to plant, and will show you pictures to show you how your setup should be looking like. When you get to a point where you can switch plants you may need to look ahead a little bit to see what kind of stuff you may be planting just in case there's something else you'll need that wasn't being said to be planted yet 'cause you didn't make it that far yet. Definitely don't wanna waste time waiting to pick plants again 'cause you don't the ones you need The only things I do differently is instead of just one Spikerock in front of the Cob Cannons I try to get Spikerocks on all of the remaining rows up there. I'd suggest when everything is planted to always have the Spikeweed and Spikerock because you'll need to be replacing them when they're destroyed by Gargantuans and Zombonis.The other thing is to keep an eye on your Cattails, and maybe the Sunflowers and Winter Melons in the row behind them when there are Bungee Zombies. You will need to use a Cob Cannon to save the Cattails for sure, not entirely sure about the others I mentioned though. I take no credit for the guide, Dian Ara's Quest I believe is the person that made it. All credit goes to them, I just wanted to share it in case someone likes to kinda have a little bit of a step by step to building your defenses like me. Now that I said all of that. here is the link to the guide.


https://dianaraquest.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/plants-vs-zomb...

Here I'm showing the updated setup doing the last two flags (39 & 40) so you guys can see it in action an also see what you need to do while using it.
One of the Twin Sunflower is missing because a bungee zombie took it, you need to freeze them to avoid that in some cases. Didn't have the twin sunflower equipped at the moment so i planted a gloom shroom instead, did the job.
The most annoying zombies are Giga Gargantuars, you need to help your plants to beat them using Cherry bombs, Squashes and Jalapenos.
Save money for repairs, this is important since pumpkins deteriorate as flags go by, also as you can see in the video below some Giga Gargantuars get far enough to smash the Fume shrooms on the outside lanes so keep an eye on that.
This setup holds pretty well without too much effort.

This is the best strategy i found for this achievement, follow this video this and you should be good

Btw, this achievement glitched out for me, where it popped ingame but was locked in my profile, if that happens to you, try to unlock an achievement in some other game, from what i could tell, if you get some other achievement, the Xbox will "realize" that you should have had some other achievement in your account and will unlock it for you. If that doesn't work, then you'll be forced to wait around 72 hours for it to unlock, this happens with a lot of 360 titles, so just pointing that out there since it happened to me