Missile Toe

*Missile Toes launch cold blasts that freeze and slow zombies.*

**While she is called Missile Toe, Missile Toe has no toes and, properly speaking, lacks missiles. How'd she get her name? Nepotism! Pure favoritism!**

**Missile Toe** is a premium plant in *Plants vs. Zombies 2: Reflourished*. She costs 75 gems to purchase.

Missile Toe's usage is similar to Banana Launcher. If you tap her, she will shoot a snowball onto a selected tile, which freezes zombies in a 1x1 area for 5 seconds and chills them for another 5 seconds afterwards (10 seconds total). Affected zombies also take a miniscule 5 damage on impact. After firing, Missile Toe will take 15 seconds to reload.

## Almanac entry

**Missile Toe**

Missile Toes launch cold blasts that freeze and slow zombies.

Usage: tap to arm, tap on target tile to fire
Range: anywhere on lawn
Special: on impact, freezes zombies in a 1x3 area, then chills them after

While she is called Missile Toe, Missile Toe has no toes and, properly speaking, lacks missiles. How'd she get her name? Nepotism! Pure favoritism!

## Plant Food effect

When Missile Toe is fed with Plant Food, she will launch 10 snowballs at random tiles on the lawn, landing with a 3 second delay between each snowball.

After the effect ends, Missile Toe will need to reload to be able to fire again unless Plant Food is used on her when she is fully reloaded or newly-activated.

## Strategies

In essence, Missile Toe is a reusable mixture of Iceberg Lettuce and Stunion. Both can be aimed wherever desired to freeze a tight pack of zombies when it counts, buying extra time to destroy affected targets through other means. Missile Toe even does some small damage that can be used to clear out Zombie Chickens, at least if timed well.

Missile Toe shines most in her ability to permanently stall small packs of zombies. With her freeze duration, reload time and execution error in mind, four Missile Toes is enough to indefinitely freeze a targeted pack of zombies through good manual timings. Doing so comes with a high price tag and a low area of effect, though. Lane redirection such as Garlic and Void Orchid can thus be useful for pooling zombies into fewer lanes, making it easier to permanently freeze the greater horde. Defensive plants like Wall-nut, and certain stalling plants like Snow Pea, Primal Peashooter and Hurrikale, are also useful, as their respective high health and slowdown can bunch up zombies within the same lane.

However, using Missile Toe is also quite an active process for a manually controllable plant - especially when used to incite permanent freezing. No indicators are given for how long it takes until a frozen zombie thaws, and Missile Toe hits a limited area, so she requires active attention to know where and when her snowball can be aimed and fired. As a result, it may sometime be easier to use Missile Toe's single use contemporaries if wishing for manual zombie stall, or any standard stalling plant that can slow zombies without manual controls.

Keep in mind that compared to Iceberg Lettuce and Stunion, Missile Toe is incredibly expensive, making her impractical for standard use. Iceberg Lettuce and Stunion can be used without dedicating much sun or space (unless using Spikeweed or other ground plants), while having a swifter activation that makes it easier to avoid missing targets and can even block zombies with good timing. Keep these differences in mind when choosing to stall zombies through manual means.

## Balance changes

### Initial launch

* ▲ -300 Sun
* ▲ -10 second arm time
* ▲ Affects a 3x3 area
* ▼ -1195 damage
* ▼ +10 second recharge

### Version 1.1

* ▲ Plant Food: 10 projectiles now fired, with 3 second delay between each projectile landing.

### Version 1.1.4

* ▲ Freeze Duration: 0s -> 5s
* ▼ Reduced AoE: 3x3 -> 1x1
* ▼ Arming Time: 10s -> 15s
* Target audience: General
	+ Developer note: Missile Toe was initially reworked to be a "Stallia Launcher" rather than an objectively better Banana Launcher which is what it was in Vanilla, this was done to give it a new role that isn't just being better than another plant. Unfortunately though, this rework struggled to find use as the amount of micromanagement required for the effect was just not worth it, especially since it can easily be applied using other plants which require much less micromanagement such as Snow Pea or Winter Melon. This has caused us to rework it into an "Iceberg Lettuce Launcher" (or iceberg lettuce pez dispenser, as we internally called it), having reduced range and an increased arming time, but now with the ability to apply a powerful 5 second freeze to one tile. Being able to apply a freeze effect is something that no other plant in the game can do except for instas, meaning that this rework also helps it find a more unique place compared to other stallers than it previously did. We really hope that you try this change out and find it as effective and fun to use as we did.

### Version 1.2

* Now becomes faded out while reloading
	+ Developer note: Missile Toe has received some quality of life improvements to her animations, making her recharging animation more apparent.

## Trivia

* Missile Toe's "Class Star" costume is based on Monika, one of the main characters of *Doki Doki Literature Club!*.
* Missile Toe’s “Intoegalactic Princess” costume is based on Rosalina from the Mario series.
	+ It is also Snap's developer costume, one of the level designers for the mod.