Plants vs. Zombies: The Final Showdown/Technical Stuff

This page is for technical info (like wave spawns, zombie's point cost and "weight"). If you don't like numbers, leave now! You have been warned!

Description
This basically explains the point cost of zombies and their weight, two vital systems to determining waves.

Zombie Wave Point Cost
Wave point cost is how many points this zombie is worth when the wave is being built. Example, if the wave will consist of only 20 points, and this zombie is worth 5 points, the wave might randomly pick this zombie 4 times (for a total of 20 points) and this wave would only be made up of 4 zombies. If there are 4 points left to be picked on the wave and this zombie is worth 5 points, it will be skipped because the wave doesn't have enough points to buy it.

Zombie Weight
Weight of the zombie is the odds that it will be picked and wave points spent on it. The larger the weight, the more likely to be picked. A value of 0 means it is never picked (but spawned via special circumstances, like the old backup dancers, the flag carrier, or the old boss). A value of 1 is super rare, like the yeti. Values from PvZ1 were 1000, 1500, 2000, 3000, 3500, 4000.

Waves
The points available for each wave in a regular level. Eventually, I'll add info for the wave points available in specific Conveyor-belt Levels and other special levels. Every tenth wave is a Huge Wave, led by a Flag Zombie. These Huge Waves are in Bold.

For comparison, the estimated wave difficulty in the original PvZ (for the first five flags) was:

1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4, 10, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 20, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 11, 11, 11, 12, 30, 13, 13, 13, 14, 14, 15, 15, 15, 16, 40, 17, 17, 17, 18, 18, 19, 19, 19, 20, 50.

Regular Level Waves
Five flags:

1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 7, 8, 8, 9, 10, 10, 11, 12, 12, 24, 13, 14, 14, 15, 16, 16, 17, 18, 18, 36, 19, 20, 20, 21, 22, 22, 23, 24, 24, 48, 25, 26, 26, 27, 28, 28, 29, 30, 30, 60.

Challenge Zones
In Challenge Zones, the difficulty of each wave is increased by 5% of their regular difficulty with each level. Decimals rounded down if they're less than .5, or rounded up if they are .5 or higher.

Level 2's Wave Difficulty for one flag:

1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 6, 13.

As you can see, the only change is the first flag, which has a difficulty of 13 instead of 12. This is because 12 + 5% = 12.6. 12.6 gets rounded up to 13.

At level 21, the wave difficulty would be increased by 100% (or doubled), like this:

1, 2, 4, 4, 6, 6, 8, 10, 12, 24.

Notice how the first wave still has a difficulty of 1. The first wave doesn't ever increase in difficulty. Take level 101 for example:

1, 5, 10, 10, 15, 15, 20, 25, 30, 60.

If the first wave increased in difficulty, it would be 5, not 1.

Zombies
A list of the point cost and weight of zombies. In other words, how difficult a wave would have to be before a zombie could be picked, and how likely the zombie is to be picked.

Zombie
Point cost: 1.

Weight: 4000.

Conehead Zombie
Point cost: 2.

Weight: 3500.

Flag Zombie
Point cost: 1.

Weight: 0, spawned during Huge Waves only.

Buckethead Zombie
Point cost: 4.

Weight: 3500.

Pole Vaulting Zombie
Point cost: 3.

Weight: 3000.

Jack-in-the-Box Zombie
Point cost: 3.

Weight: 2000.

Diamondhead Zombie
Point cost: 8.

Weight: 3500.

Billboard Zombies (3x)
Point cost: 3.

Weight: 3000.

Billboard Zombies (4x)
Point cost: 4.

Weight: 3000.

Billboard Zombies (5x)
Point cost: 5.

Weight: 3000.

Disco Zombie
Point cost: 5.

Weight: 2000.

Backup Dancer
Point cost: 0.

Weight: 0, spawned by Disco Zombies.

Football Zombie
Point cost: 6.

Weight: 3000.

Zombully
Point cost: 5.

Weight: 3000.

INCOMPLETE LIST, will be finished later.

Plant Food
Simply info about when a zombie carrying Plant Food will spawn.

In regular levels, the first wave and every huge wave has a zombie which carries Plant Food.

In conveyor-belt levels, the first and second waves have a zombie which carries Plant Food, and every huge wave, and every wave which is halfway in between the huge waves (like the fifth, fifteenth and twenty-fifth waves).

In Challenge Zones, the first zombie will always carry Plant Food no matter what (since overall, the Challenge Zones are MUCH harder than in PvZ2). In levels 4 to 10, there's only a 50% chance of a zombie carrying Plant Food in each huge wave. In levels 11 to 20, that goes down to 33%. In levels 21 to 40, that goes down to 25%. In levels 41+, it's only a 10% chance.