Toadstool

*Toadstools gulp down zombies whole, then produce sun.*

**Toadstool just can't stand being idle. "I keep everything that I want to do on lists, and keep the lists where I can see them so that I'm always motivated!" she said. Whenever there's work to be done, she's always the first to hop to it.**

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

Toadstool can eat most types of zombies in 2.5 tiles in front of her, but will take 23 seconds to fully digest an enemy, during which Toadstool is vulnerable to attacks. After digestion, Toadstool produces 25 sun.

When confronted with inedible targets such as tombstones, mechanical threats and Gargantuars, Toadstool will instead use her tongue to repeatedly attack, dealing 50 damage. While this is a quarter the damage of Chomper, Toadstool attacks at 5x the speed (every 0.3 seconds), thus causing the damage per second to be slightly higher than Chomper's. Inedible zombies include:

* Gargantuar variants (including Gargantuar Prime and Jurassic Gargantuar)
* Imp Cannon
* Barrel Roller Zombie (with his barrel)
* Pianist Zombie
* Zombie Chicken and Ice Weasel
* Zombie Bull
* Robo-Cone Zombie
* Disco-tron 3000
* Mecha-Football Zombie
* Zombie King
* Fisherman Zombie
* Robo Dodo Rider
* Jurassic Bully

When a Witch Hazel is fed Plant Food, she will turn a zombie into a Toadstool.

## Almanac entry

**Toadstool**

Toadstools gulp down zombies whole, then produce sun.

Weakness: takes 23 seconds to swallow a zombie

Toadstool just can't stand being idle. "I keep everything that I want to do on lists, and keep the lists where I can see them so that I'm always motivated!" she said. Whenever there's work to be done, she's always the first to hop to it.

## Plant Food effect

When fed Plant Food, Toadstool lengthens her tongue and grabs up to four random zombies in a 5x3 area, then chews for a short amount of time and produces 50 sun for each zombie she ate after digestion. If there are any inedible zombies in the area, Toadstool will instead attempt to attack them; if there are no targets available, Toadstool will do nothing.

## Strategies

Toadstool's greatest advantage over other Chomper-like plants is her ability to generate sun from the zombies that she devours. Her digestion time allows her to produce up to around 3/4ths the sun amount of a Sunflower at best, serving to help negate Toadstool's initial sun cost in longer levels. Shine Vine can be utilised to double the sun gain, improving cost negation and even making it feasible to earn a profit. Like Chomper, Toadstool has a limited range that makes her best utilised along the frontline, with the increased range granted by her tongue allowing her to catch various endangering zombies like All-Star Zombie, Excavator Zombie or Newspaper Zombie that would otherwise overrun the defense.

Toadstool works well with wall plants, protecting her during digestion. Alternatively, her range also allows for upwards of three Toadstools to be planted alongside each other in the same lane, with the back-most Toadstools taking down zombies that start to eat the front-most Toadstool. If planting three Toadstools, most wall plants will cause the back-most Toadstool to fall out of range. Instead, Pumpkin can be planted on top of the front-most Toadstool, protecting her while maintaining the benefits of having triple Toadstools.

While Toadstool's single target capabilities are great, she lacks the ability to deal with larger hordes. Supplementing Toadstool with multi-hit or area of effect plants like Bloomerang and Laser Bean will allow for weeding out large hordes more easily, which can also serve to defeat low health zombies that may otherwise be consumed by Toadstool, wasting her attack.

Like Chomper, Toadstool can also be used as a replacement for a single-use plant due to her ability to instantly devour zombies. Doing so requires shoveling upgrades, which can reduce Toadstool's effective sun cost to be on par with an unpowered Grimrose. While more expensive than Chomper, Toadstool is able to devour zombies much faster on initial planting, allowing for greater reactivity when used this way. Keep Toadstool's sluggish recharge in mind as well, as using her like a single-use plant may make it more difficult to replace Toadstools within the main defense if they get destroyed.

## Balance changes

### Initial launch

* ▼ +75 sun
* ▼ +20 second recharge

### Version 1.1.1

* ▲ Sun Cost: 275 -> 225
* ▲ Chew Time: 30 -> 23
* ▼ Sun Produced (all sources): 50 -> 25
	+ Developer note: Toadstool's been a rather unhoppy camper recently after seeing that she's gotten less love than her carnivorous siblings Chomper and Snap Pea. But why? Her sun returns were no joke - it even matched Sunflower. Turns out, many players did not pay much attention to that fact as the sheer slugishness of Toad was too much to reliably invest into. To fill the middleground, Toadstool's cost and chew time have been changed to go between Chomper and Snap Pea, at 225 sun and a 23 second chew time (inspired by the dynamic between Bonk Choy, Parsnip and Wasabi Whip). In exchange, her sun output was reduced to 25, keeping her from becoming too powerful in the production department due to the aforementioned changes.

### Version 1.1.4

* ▼ Can’t eat Rodeo Legend Zombie anymore (bugfix)
	+ Developer note: How did she do that?

## See also

### Chomper-like plants

* Chomper
* Snap Pea
* Olive Pit