Well-Read Zombie

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Well-Read Zombie is a Zombie in Plants vs. Zombies 2, encountered in Penny's Pursuit, Arena, and Piñata Parties, wearing a civilized coat-suit and big nerdy glasses. If he could he'd be commuting, but he can't, so he walks on your lawn. He behaves like an entirely normal zombie at first, just walking along and reading his book. But the longer this zombie reads, the more educated he gets on lawn-invading topics from those who have experienced war before him. Below is a list of his abilities that he learns from reading:
*After 10 seconds of reading, he learns of the importance of protecting oneself. He then gets a cone and wears it, giving him 370 extra hitpoints.
*After 20 seconds of reading, he gets to know about the wonderful art of walking around things. This lets him ignore wall and ground plants, so neither can do anything to him; he just walks past.
*After 25 seconds of reading, he learns the cone is not where the evolutionary line of headgear stopped. He wears a bucket, putting it on top of the cone if you didn't destroy it, giving him an extra 1100 hitpoints.
*After 30 seconds of reading, he gets into the ZCorp management documents, helping him learn ZCorp Consultant's magical way of walking forwards, backwards, and into other lanes.
*After 35 seconds of reading, the book tells the fabled story of three pigs that built houses. Taking inspiration, he gives himself a brick helmet, granting him 2200 extra hitpoints.
*After 40 seconds of reading, the book delves into the specifics of his zombie buddies. This helps him learn the ability of the special zombie he is nearest to. If there isn't a special zombie on the lawn when he gets this ability, he'll just get a random one from ANY (reasonable) special zombie instead.
*After 50 seconds of reading, he decides one ability isn't enough. He reads about another special zombie, giving him a second unique ability that belongs to the nearest special zombie. If there is no unique second special zombie on the board, he, once again, picks a random (reasonable) special zombie ability from the whole game.
*After 60 seconds of reading, the book goes into gym routines and protein shake recipes. Somehow, this persuades him to run extra fast, boosting him to a Speedy speed.
*After a solid hour of reading, he's finished the entire book. With his newfound knowledge of the world he resides in, he throws the book at your house. You immediately lose. Tough shit.
==Origins==
Well-Read Zombie is partially based off of the design of Zombie Middle Manager. The design's glasses and depiction of a tidy Basic Zombie come from him.
The coat that he wears is an attempt at making him wear a trenchcoat instead of the normal Basic Zombie suit and tie. You can see how that turned out.
==Overview==
Well-Read Zombie absorbs 750 damage per shot to start with. At 375 damage per shot his arm falls off, and at 750 damage per shot he dies. At least, at first.
At 10 seconds of staying alive, he puts on a cone that adds 370 armor health. After 25 seconds, he puts on a bucket that adds 1100 armor health. And at 35 seconds, he wears bricks that add 2200 armor health.
==Almanac==
==Strategies==
When starting out, Well-Read Zombie isn't that dangerous of a foe. But as time goes on, he can quickly adapt to the lawn and your defenses, proving to be an issue way later if not dealt with quickly. It doesn't help that he starts out with such a bulky amount of health, ensuring his survival to later stages if you aren't totally prepared with a strong defense for his arrival. The best time to defeat him is before he hits 35 seconds of reading. When he hits this period, he wears bricks and becomes very powerful and hard to stop from reading further. Before then he's a bit annoying to take out, but much less than when he's wearing brick armor. Plants that deal lots of damage per shot like Magnifying Grass, Coconut Cannon and Citron make this easy to do, taking down 750 health with no problem if you land direct hits, and easily whittling down his cone and bucket forms. Banana Launcher and Missile Toe are among the best for this, as they can take him down easily by sniping him down before or during his cone stage. Magnet-shroom also makes it easy to take him out, immediately taking away his bucket as soon as he puts it on, leaving him vulnerable to your other plants. 
Chilling plants make defeating Well-Read Zombie much easier, since slowing him down also slows down the amounts of time it takes to read and gain new abilities. Cheap slowing plants like Snow Pea can help stall out his abilities if he appears in the early game before he gets out of hand, and heavy slowing plants like Winter Melon can stall out groups of them, and probably defeat them all at once. 
If Well-Read Zombie manages to get on his brick helmet, it gets a lot more annoying to defeat him, since how he's moving around like a ZCorp Consultant with all of this armor health. And the longer he stays alive, he's only going to get more annoying and dangerous from taking the abilities of nearby zombies. Before he gets to that point, it would be good to feed him a Shadow-shroom, since it should deal enough damage to take him out underneath all the armor health and annoying movement. While other plants like Chili Bean can be used as easy substitutes for Shadow-shroom, he has less health (so it's more likely Well-Read Zombie eats him before switching lanes) and Shadow-shroom stays useful throughout the level with their Plant Food ability. Book smarts do not equal poison survival smarts.
==Trivia==
*There were several planned abilities that didn't end up making it. A brief list:
**His original iteration would have made him reflect projectiles after 50 seconds and boost other zombies forward like Breakdancer Zombie after 40 seconds. There was no ability-stealing.
**Before being compacted into a single read ability at 30 seconds now, Well-Read Zombie had changing lanes and moving backwards separately acquired at 25 and 30 seconds respectively.
**At 120 seconds, he would've ignored all plants and mowers. He basically just ran straight for the house.
***This was also changed around several times to 180 and 100 seconds, but this iteration of 120 seconds came the closest to existence.
*Originally, his book could be destroyed. Destroying it would stop him from learning, and it absorbed 300 damage per shot. This was changed because that's really weak, and it also destroys the point of the zombie. You would basically never see any abilities past maybe 10 seconds.
*Well-Read Zombie's art went through three waves of revisions. Problems just kept popping up. I wept.
==Gallery==
WellReadHD.png|Well-Read Zombie in HD
WellReadTile.png|Well-Read Zombie as he appears in the almanac
Category:Zombies
Category:Creepes's Stuff
Category:Supporting Zombies
Category:Attacking Zombies
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