The Smash (PvZ:LW)

The Smash is the fourth and final mini-boss in The Sanctuary in Plants vs. Zombies: Lost World, appearing on Level 40A. As a mini-boss, The Smash does not have the ability to instantly clear lanes of plants and zombies or spawn zombies on his own (zombies will appear normally from the right side of the lawn during his battle). During his battle, The Smash works together with Impfinity and Immorticia and exploits Rock Beach's and Grove of Gloom's gimmicks to attack your plants, namely the rocks, tile-specific darkness and Sasquash gimmicks (Shroom Moors is meant to be included, but since they do not have any unique gimmicks, they are not mentioned here). The Sasquash, however, works differently here compared to their behaviour in Grove of Gloom and will help you during this battle, which will be explained later.
The Smash is able to smash the ground to send 3 - 5 small rocks flying upwards before crashing onto random tiles on the lawn, destroying any plants and zombies there and remaining there permanently, requiring either Moss-quito or flying plants to plant on them. Each rock also has a 40% chance of straying off and hitting the corrupted seed pods in the level instead, which can spawn The Wilted. The amount of Wilted that spawn depends on how many of the rocks hit the seed pods, with each hit spawning 2 - 3 Wilted plants. The Smash can also scream out loud to boost the speed of all zombies and Wilted plants on the field by doubling it for 8 seconds before the boost wears off.
Whenever The Smash performs one his attacks (smashing the ground or screaming), however, he adds a 20% chance for his next attack to wake and summmon the Sasquash. If his next attack doesn't successfully summon him, then this chance will be carried over to his next attack, increasing the chance to 40%, and will continue stacking until the Sasquash is woken in which the chance will reset back to 0%. When the Sasquash is woken up, he will proceed to ambush The Smash before he can carry out his next attack, attacking him and dealing 1800 DPS worth of damage to The Smash while also stunning him for 5 seconds. The Sasquash will immediately then leave. If there is a jack-o'-lantern on the lawn (see Grove of Gloom introduction for info), The Sasquash will not ambush The Smash, but will instead scream and give your plants a speed boost just like The Smash's scream, doubling the speed of all plants on your lawn, but this time for 16 seconds, double the amount of time The Smash's speed boost lasts for.
In this mini-boss fight and other mini-boss fights in The Sanctuary, large amounts of corrupted energy will concentrate on the battlefield and create rifts similarly to how this occurs during levels in level path E's (more about level paths here). See more about the possible reality rifts that can be created in the Reality rifts section of this page. Unlike normal boss fights, mini-boss fights like the one against The Smash is a normal level without a conveyor belt, but the moon in the background will enlarge due to the large amount of corrupted energy present, causing more moon to fall for the player to collect which should make the level somewhat easier.
==Almanac entry==
The Smash
Toughness: Undying
Speed: Hungry
A famous superzombie that will make your lawn quake under his gargantuan presence.
Special: Smashes the ground to send small rocks flying onto plants that stay permanently and disturb death pods to create more Wilted plants
Special: Screams to temporarily double the speed of all zombies and Wilted plants
The Smash doesn't mess around, he'll smash anything and everything. He'll break your car, he'll demolish your house, he'll destroy your interpersonal relationships and your mental wellbeing. The Smash makes no exceptions.
==Reality rifts==
During The Smash's battle, large amounts of stray corrupted energy surrounding the area can spontaneously create reality rifts. These rifts, unlike those from levels in level path E, are temporary, and, unlike previous corrupted boss fights, these rifts don't activate during certain phases but can activate and deactivate spontaneously at anytime. The following are the possible rifts that can be created:
* Darkness rift - Tiles that are left in the dark for a long while now have a chance to sprout new Wilted plants.
* Rock rift - Some rocks on the lawn may eventually 'hatch', which gradually crack open and disappear to reveal zombies from inside.
==Phases==
The Smash is able to perform one of the following actions:
* He can smash the ground and send small rocks flying that either land onto random tiles or knock into and disturb corrupted seed pods. When they land on the lawn, they destroy any plants and zombies on the tile they landed on and remain there as rocks, requiring Moss-quito or flying plants to plant on them. The ones that disturb the seed pods will spawn some of The Wilted.
* He can scream to temporarily boost the speed of all zombies and Wilted plants on the lawn by doubling it.
Phase	Health 	Summoned zombies	Attacks
1 	11000DPS	 	Sends small rocks flying that can either destroy plants and zombies and remain on the lawn as rocks or disturb corrupted seed pods.
2 	13000DPS	 	Screams to temporarily double the speed of all zombies and Wilted plants.
3 	16000DPS	* 	Sends small rocks flying that can either destroy plants and zombies and remain on the lawn as rocks or disturb corrupted seed pods.
Screams to temporarily double the speed of all zombies and Wilted plants.
* - Revenant Zombie appears in their corrupted form in this phase.
==Strategies==
Given that the battle against The Smash will involve Rock Beach's and Grove of Gloom's gimmicks, and the fact that one of his attacks involve throwing more rocks onto the lawn, Moss-quito will be essential to allow you to plant on rocks, if you're not using flying plants, and you'll need some light source like Planterns to be able to see the whole lawn clearly. Unlike all the previous mini-boss fights, none of The Smash's attacks are preventable unless the Sasquash comes in to interrupt him, which is determined by chance, so there is no definite way for you to be able to interrupt his attacks by yourself. However, there are still ways to adapt and try to withstand them as much as you can.
The Smash's ground smashing attack that sends rocks flying is bound to hit some of your plants, and you won't be able to choose which. To adapt to this, you'll need to build a defense that is robust against these sort of attacks. Defenses where all the plants are equally as important and do not depend on each other to much to upkeep the defense's overall strength are key. There's two approaches to build a defense like this. One type of defense involves using a variety of different plants where all of their strengths are equivalent to one another. Setting up a defense with Havocados and Bloomerangs has an unbalance since these two plants have very different strengths and depend on each other in different ways. Losing your Bloomerangs to the rocks means you are left with mainly slow-hitting plants, and losing your Havocados means you are left with weaker-hitting plants, which are not ideal in this situation. If you were to set up a defense with plants like Electric Peashooter and Lightning Reed (note that they have somewhat different abilities in PvZ:LW, which you can check [] and scroll to the changes section), although they both are different in some ways, their strengths aren't too different and one plant can hold out for the other if the other plant's numbers are running low due to the rock attacks. The second type of defense involves relying on the same plant as the only main offensive plant, while using other plants just for sun-production, defense, supporting, etc. One example is using Starfruit as your only main offensive plant. Starfruit holds out well alone due to their multi-directional attacks, allowing them to perform well against hordes when spammed enough (additionally, especially for this boss battle, they can light up small areas so you can see most of the rest of the lawn (this ability is also new for Starfruit in PvZ:LW)). Since the rocks will only be hitting the same offensive plant every time they land in your defenses, your defense's integrity won't be affected too much, since there are not that many plants with important roles that other plants depend on lost.
The Smash's scream attack can be dangerous if not countered properly, as the temporary speed boost given, which doubles the speed of every single zombie and Wilted plant on the lawn, can enable the horde to overwhelm your defenses. There's two ways you can deal with this, one of them being to resort to slowing and stalling plants to try to weaken the effect of the speed boost. A defense utilizing ice synergy is already a good option you can use to do this, as plants like Chillily and Cold Snapdragon can slow the horde down and effectively negate the speed boost. Another strategy you may try is to do the same thing and boost the speed of your own plants by using Loudspeaker. Note that Loudspeaker, however, only provides an unstackable 50% speed boost and not 100%, and using him in your defense will not be ideal when trying to implement a strategy that can withstand The Smash's ground smash attack (as explained previously). Regardless, it's always a good idea to have strong defensive plants that can hold back the sped up horde while your offensive plants try to take them out. Ironwood and Evergreen are one of the toughest defensive plants in the game and could be handy in this battle, albeit note their reliance on other plants in order to be effective, where fire/electric plants are needed to prevent Ironwood from rusting and green plants to allow Evergreen to regenerate health, so be weary when using them if you're trying to build a defense that adapts to The Smash's ground smash attack. You can, however, make your offense only consist of these types of plants (mainly fire/electric plants or green plants), that is also a good choice to adapt to the aforementioned attack.
The Sasquash during this battle acts as a support teammate for you during this battle, randomly showing up to ambush The Smash to stop his attacks, deal damage to him and stun him as well, which is advantageous. You are able to alter his behaviour, however, by using the same jack-o'-lanterns that were meant to ward him off back in Grove of Gloom. Here, they prevent him from arriving as usual, but he will now instead do a different action and double the speed of all your plants by 16 seconds, which is also beneficial in its own way. Depending on your preferred strategy, you can change the Sasquash's behaviour in order to suit your playstyle. If you need more support to attack The Smash directly and stop some of his attacks, leaving the Sasquash's behaviour unaltered would be more suitable for you, but if you prefer to rely on your defenses and give them a speed boost from time to time and even have a chance to counter The Smash's own scream attack, using a jack-o'-lantern to alter The Sasquash's behaviour may suit your strategy more.
The darkness rift can be troublesome if left uncontrolled, as you might be caught off guard by any new Wilted plants that spawn out of your sight. However, this rift can be easily countered by ensuring to keep at least the majority of your lawn lit up. Using Planterns regularly (or better yet jack-o'-lanterns, since they are permanent (Planterns disappear after a while in PvZ:LW), although take note this will affect the Sasquash's behaviour) or spamming plants like Starfruit (providing both offense and light) will help to achieve this.
The rock rift is another troublesome rift, since The Smash's ground smashing attack cannot be controlled and the rocks will inevitably drop in random places, so, if any of them hatch, the best thing you can do is to prepare your defense for such events. Defenses that utilize multi-directional plants like Starfruit and Rotobaga are the most robust against these types of situations, as these plants can attack zombies no matter where they spawn, so, anywhere the rocks land, it's most likely that many of your offensive plants will be able to deal with the zombies that hatch from them easily. If you defense doesn't utilize these, there are ways to make it easier for your defense to deal with zombies that hatch in inconvenient places. Stalling and pushing zombies back will make it easier for your plants to take them out before they do any serious damage, and plants like Treeze (with their multi-directional freezing ability) and Hurrikale (with their ability to push zombies back) are good for these situations.
==Gallery==
The Smash (PvZ-LW).png|The Smash (HD)
About to smash the ground (The Smash).png|The Smash about to smash the ground to send small rocks flying
Screaming (The Smash).png|The Smash screaming to boost the speed of zombies and Wilted plants
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