Hey Conifer Crew! 🌲

An angry tree, icy shards, cheese armor, zombie cowboys, and flying octopuses! All that and more is in Content Update 3 (CU3), which brings a new Plant Pass, new plants, new zombies to thwart, new levels, and bug fixes.

What’s Sprouting in CU3?

Snow Conifer Plant Pass! 🌲

Snow Conifer might not be the coldest plant temperature-wise, but one mean look from it, and even Zombies might find themselves frozen in fear. Besides looking mean, Snow Conifer attacks with ice-cold shards up to 5 tiles forward, and they can pierce up to 4 zombies/obstacles. Snow Conifer has shed a few extra leaves since its Seedling Build appearance, including its overhead counterattack. Turns out covering every angle was a little too effective, so it's now focused on freezing foes ahead while continuing to block aerial projectiles. 

This (zombie) spine-chilling conifer can be created by merging a Jumbrella Leaf and Iceweed, who will also be available in this Plant Pass! Iceweed can be made by merging an Iceberg Lettuce and Spikeweed giving you the best of both worlds: slow em’ and spike em’! The Snow Conifer Plant Pass goes live on July 22nd!

New Threats Are Approaching… 🫟

This new Plant Pass introduces the Magma Zombie as the featured Zombie. If these chunky and cheesy zombies are good at one thing, it's that they never forget to weight train. Because when you’re wearing half a ton of hot curds, you don’t really have a choice. If you have the misfortune of a Magma Zombie stumbling onto your lawn, keep your cool and your freezing plants handy. 

This Zombie might look cute, but he’s ready to throw hands! Riding in on Boppy is the Counter Punch Zombie, who is always looking for a reason to start swinging! Boppy wonders if giving Counter Punch Zombie a ride was a mistake. Be careful and keep your melee plants away from him lest you incur his fists of fury.

If something smells fishy, you’d better run for cover because you’re about to meet the Shocktopus! This aerial aquanaut Zombomination will not only leave trails of ink behind to hinder your plants, but also chuck ink at your house! At least we won’t go broke buying printer ink now. If you see this odorous octopus in the air, be sure to lob everything you have at it.

Hot Off The Press… 📖

This update also brings Issue #5, continuing the story and adding a bunch of new levels across multiple modes:

• +25 Adventure levels (Available July 22nd)
• +5 Volcano Expedition levels (Available July 29 @ 10AM PT)
• 20 Lawn Patrol levels
• New Limited Time Event: Forest Fired-Up!

Fixes 🛠️

To close out this update’s patch notes, here’s a list of all the fixes in this update:

• Fix: Ropeswinger Conehead’s cone now displays correctly and no longer appears to float above his head.
• Fix: Almanac descriptions for Batter and Volleyball Zombies now clearly indicate where their counterattacks will target on the gameboard.
• Fix: Gravestones now spawn correctly on affected board layout types.
• Fix: Plant merge audio now plays correctly during Chapter 2 Adventure cutscenes.
• Fix: Zombie units now display at consistent and correct sizes in the Almanac.
• Fix: Deadlift Zombie now plays the correct special animation sound effects.
• Fix: Plants no longer appear too early before the merge visual effects begin.
• Fix: Imp Zombie’s mouth no longer shows background elements during the Gargantuar Almanac animation.
• Fix: Iceberg Lettuce visuals no longer clip when Parting Gift perk is triggered
• Fix: Portrait rewards on the post-combat screen no longer display graphical corruption.
• Fix: Zombie Pigeons defeated by Chuck Nut will no longer land on empty tiles and cause visual issues.
• Fix: The small visual line on the Beat Choy loading screen has been removed.
• Fix: Mangle Kelp now correctly deals damage when performing its backward attack against Z-Scout Camper and no longer loses charges incorrectly.
• Fix: Melee plants now correctly ignore the Screen Door obstacle when attacking zombies from behind them.
• Fix: Prick-erel Weed’s Almanac now correctly displays its 3x3 attack area and includes an Attack Range stat.
• Fix: Prick-erel Weed’s description has been updated to more clearly explain its functionality.
• Fix: Zapture now correctly displays its projectile count as 3 in the Almanac.
• Fix: Electric Peashooter now performs its split-hit attack correctly when the perk is unlocked.
• Fix: Jumbrella Leaf’s flower now displays correctly in the Almanac details view.
• Fix: Winter Green’s secondary damage now matches the value listed in the Almanac.
• Fix: Artist’s Easel decoration no longer has an oversized hitbox that blocks nearby interactions.
• Fix: Es-Garg-OT now correctly increases speed while on Slime tiles.
• Fix: Chuck Nut no longer spawns a Chestnut on the same tile where it is planted.
• Fix: Sun Tower can no longer auto-collect Sun while stunned.
• Fix: Removed Gnomes
• Fix: Bomber perk now deals the correct amount of damage during gameplay, increased from 88 to 264.
• Fix: Shocker perk now deals the correct amount of damage when chaining to another zombie, increased from 88 to 100.
• Fix: Chiller perk no longer ignores the Parasol obstacle and will apply freeze effects correctly.
• Fix: The “New” badge on the Goals button no longer persists when there is no new content available.

Neighborville keeps getting bigger, and we'll continue welcoming new regions to Early Access over the coming months. If you encounter any unexpected lawn-related incidents, check our Known Issues list first. If your particular bug hasn't made the list yet, let us know on the forums and we'll send the gardening crew after it.  And stay tuned to our channels for more on upcoming content updates and gameplay updates.

See you on the lawn! 🌱

PSA: Given the recent issues with people losing their profiles (often associated with updates), please, get a screen shot of your Player ID. You can find it by tapping the “Settings” (wrench icon) button and then selecting “Build Version” (on Android) or "Download Preferences" (on iOS). Using it the EA help desk can usually restore your profile if you ever lose it.

Note: This is a 3 day tournament, after that will be a 4 day Boosterama tournament – an identical board, but all plants are boosted. Short tournaments have proportionally smaller tournament rewards.

Special streak rewards: #5 Pepper-mint family piñata.

Pepper-mint family (12+2 plants): Snap Dragon, Jalapeño, Ghost Pepper, Hot Potato, Pepper-pult, Fire Peashooter, Lava Guava, Jack O'Lantern, Hot Date, Pyre-vine, Inferno, Meteor Flower, Blaze Leaf, Blazing Knight

Note: Pepper-mint “seeds” are also included in the piñata. Pepper-mint still needs to be unlocked for 100 mints no matter how many seeds you collect for it.

Note: Blaze Leaf and Blazing Knight are not included in the piñata.

Locked plant: Sweetheart Snare – Wiki.GG, Fandom Wiki

Sun: 1000 at the start. Note: Sun drops will be a little faster than adventure mode normal, but a sun producer may still be necessary.

Plant Food: 0 at the start. Note: Up to 21 plant foods will be available from zombies.

Time: 3:00.

Buffz: Spear-mint (+100%)

Bruisez: Winter-mint (-50%)

Ineffective: Bombard-mint (-100%)

Banned: Grave Buster, Blover, Hot Potato, Electric Blueberry, Bramble Bush

Zombies: Ancient Egypt (Ra, Pharaoh), Pirate Seas (Swashbuckler, Cannon), Wild West (Cowboy, Conehead, Buckethead, Prospector, Bull Rider), Frostbite Caves (Hunter), Lost City (Adventurer, Conehead, Buckethead, Bug [w Basic & Buckethead], Imp Porter), Far Future (Bug Bot)

Starting Lawn:

One rail cart (initially at C5 R3) on a rail filling C5

One pre-planted Sweetheart Snare on the rail cart at C5 R3

Spider Rain: At ~2:32 four Bug Bot Imps will drop anywhere from columns 6 and 9. This Spider Rain event will be repeated approximately every 25 seconds.

Raiding Party: At ~2:44 five Swashbucklers will swing in to column 5. This will be followed at ~2:12 by five more Swashbucklers swinging in to column 5. This second Raiding Party event will be repeated approximately every 25 seconds.

Dinosaurs: At ~2:20 on Raptor will appear in row 5. This will be followed 8-10 seconds later by a Raptor appearing in Row 2.  These two Raptors will appear (always in row 5 then row 2) approximately every 25 seconds.

Note: All times quoted and plant food estimates are based on my practice rounds and game experience are entirely dependent on how quickly you’re killing the zombie waves.

Possible BOT Layouts:

[Sweetheart Snare, Pea-vine, Tiger Grass, Blaze Leaf, Peashooter, Solar Sage],

[Sweetheart Snare, Mega Gatling Pea, Gloom-vine, Olive Pit, Spikerock, Toadstool],

[Sweetheart Snare, Heath Seeker, Repeater, Electric Peel, Laser Bean, Sundew Tangler]

Minimum info about your strategy: league, plant levels/mastery and score. Or you can post screenshot with the score. Otherwise it's hard to understand whether your strategy will work for other players with different plant levels/mastery and in different leagues.

Useful links: Battlez/Arena FAQ, Mastery and Buffz&Bruisez explained, u/Hier_Xu’s Updated & Pared Down Mastery FAQ, PvZ2 Discord, Info on possible future rewards by u/Euphoric-Seaweed: piñata party, special/premium piñata, Arena/Penny, etc. - link.

While not exactly the same, this tournament will be very similar to the Fire Peashooter tournament from March, 2026, changing only the Buffz/Negations and adding a Raptor.  These tourneys are also very similar to the Corn-fetti Popper tournament from May, 2025 and the MayBee tournament from February, 2025. In all these tourneys you can find strategies that worked at those times. They could still be valid, but the keep in mind the changes in Buffz/Bruises/Negations.

Here are the differences between the tourneys:

Good luck with your attempts!