Magnifying Grass

*Magnifying Grass turns sun into a bolt of colorful damage.*

**Magnifying Grass understands the inherent power of a rainbow. Beneath her stoic features she takes great joy in delivering radiant multicolored destruction to the zombie horde.**

**Magnifying Grass** is the second plant available in Far Future Extra in *Alternate UniverZ*. She uses 25 sun when tapped and fires a bolt of energy.

Magnifying Grass is unlocked after beating FFX-III.

## Almanac entry

**Magnifying Grass**

SUN COST: 50

RECHARGE: 60

TOUGHNESS: 300

DAMAGE: 280

Magnifying Grass turns sun into a bolt of colorful damage.
Special: tap to spend sun for an attack

Magnifying Grass understands the inherent power of a rainbow. Beneath her stoic features she takes great joy in delivering radiant multicolored destruction to the zombie horde.

## Plant Food effect

When given Plant Food, Magnifying Grass shoots a rainbow beam at the closest zombies, dealing 200 damage per second. Each sun-producing plant on the lawn increase the Plant Food duration by 0.15 seconds. If no sun-producing plants are available, it will last for 3 seconds.

## Costumes

* Current
* Pre 1.5

## Strategies

Magnifying Grass allows the player to weaponize their sun production to deal damage to the zombies. Her high damage and quick-firing capability allow the player to allocate firepower to swiftly eliminate high-threat targets, provided that they have enough economy to do so.

Her greatest weakness, however, is her inefficiency: 25 sun is a very steep price for an attack that can only barely kill a Conehead Zombie in two shots, and Magnifying Grass will drain sun very quickly if used to attack large amounts of weak zombies, such as Zombie Chickens and Imps. Tomb Raiser Zombies are also very dangerous as their created tombstones will block her attack and shield stronger zombies such as Explorer Zombies, causing you to waste extra sun.

Because of this, it is not recommended to use Magnifying Grass as the main offensive plant, but rather to use her as a supporting offensive option for others. Several plants can be used to help remedy Magnifying Grass' weaknesses, should the player intend to use it as the main offensive plant:

* A Potato Mine costs only 25 sun and can help Magnifying Grass in these cases:
	+ It can instantly kill Buckethead Zombies and their variants, Poncho Zombies, Knight Zombies, and Blockhead Zombies.
	+ It deals 1800 damage, meaning it will save you a ton of sun for machined zombies.
	+ Its area attack can destroy many weaker zombies at once if grouped up by defensive plants like Wall-nut and Infi-nut, and allow Magnifying Grass to have a clear shot.
* Area of effect plants such as Laser Bean, Snapdragon, Lightning Reed, and Fume-shroom can quickly deal with swarmers and effectively reduces the shots required to kill other zombies by one. Puff-shroom can also be helpful with this task, as it saves valuable sun for Magnifying Grass.
* Use a Cherry Bomb when there are at least four or more zombies in a 3x3 square or a Jalapeño when there are three or more zombies in a lane. The more zombies there are, the higher amount of sun you can save.
* Sun Bean can be used to aid in sun production when used on high health enemies.
* Tile Turnip allows the player to acquire sun more quickly when used with sun producing plants.
* As it takes a while to get Magnifying Grass on every lane, Escape Root can be used to move some of them to other lanes to work around her long recharge time.

Alternatively, it is possible to use Magnifying Grass as the main offensive plant, provided that there is space to plant a large number of sun-producing plants (e.g. 3 columns of Twin Sunflowers). If attempting this strategy, it is generally best to delay attacking each group of zombies for as long as possible, which will delay the arrival of further groups and allow more time to produce sun.

In Endless Zones, Magnifying Grass can be used to neutralize Imps thrown by Gargantuars if placed near the house, as sun production is generally less of a problem in Endless Zone due to the stockpiled Plant Food between levels.

Do not use Magnifying Grass against Excavator Zombies as he can block her powerful projectiles with his shovel. If you spam shots at these him, he will drain your sun counter very quickly while doing nothing, wasting countless sun; this is a major weakness of the Magnifying Grass. Note that Jetpack Zombie can be hit despite flying high.

Avoid using Magnifying Grass in Frostbite Caves as there are many threats that can render her useless. Hunter Zombies can freeze plants in the front, requiring some shots from her to get rid of a single frozen block. If they come in groups, they can block the front lines very quickly, which can easily overwhelm her without support from lobbed-shot, area of effect plants or fire plants.

Also, the freezing wind effect poses a major threat against her as it can freeze multiple plants, which can require tons of sun for Magnifying Grass to free every frozen plant. Troglobite can shield other zombies with frozen blocks, requiring up to 450 sun to destroy all the frozen blocks and every Yeti Imp inside. Weasel Hoarder can summon a pack of Ice Weasels, which can easily overwhelm Magnifying Grass as she can only kill one weasel at a time.

It is inadvisable to use her in "Spend no more than (amount of sun given) sun" levels as a careless player can unnecessarily spend a lot of sun quickly and lose the level easily, so it is recommended to use her wisely or use a different plant instead, like Puff-shroom.

Magnifying Grass is an extremely useful plant in levels with the objective "Don't lose more than x plants" as her high damage output makes her an alternative to instant-kill plants. Such kinds of levels can be beaten with ease by just using Magnifying Grass as the main offensive plant. Although she isn't unlocked back in Wild West, the player can use her to beat all levels of that world with this same objective, and support can be provided with Spikerock against very weak enemies such as Zombie Chickens. Overall, it can make extremely hard levels with these objectives very easy, needing a lot less support in some cases.

## Balance Changes

### Version 1.3

* Plant Food damage: 100 > 200
* Max targeting range increased.