(Guide) Preparing For Multiplayer Boss Hunts (PvZ: GW2)

Hi everyone,

I am going to start creating guides again like I used to, and I will start by creating a guide on how you as a player could prepare for a Boss Hunt in Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2. 

Important Note: At the time of writing this guide, there are no current plans for Boss Hunts to return, however I do hope to see them return in future. For now, they could be played through certain mods on PC.

If you are a new player, you might be unaware of what a Boss Hunt is. It is a very difficult game mode in which you and your team challenge a really difficult boss and complete a set of objectives in order to defeat it and become victorious. The objectives and challenges for each Boss Hunt are different, so some strategies could change depending on the Boss Hunt you do. They are extremely tough, so being able to prepare for a Boss Hunt will improve the chances of you and your team being able to win. This guide will provide tips for new players and more advanced tips for experienced players and I will assume that you are playing the Boss Hunt on Crazy Difficulty in most cases. I will use some of my knowledge in creating these tips and also use ideas that I have gathered from other players or sources.

Beginner Tips

These tips will be useful for new players to the game and players who have never tried Boss Hunts before. The tips could still apply to experienced players, however they would likely already be somewhat aware of these tips.

Practice The Story Mode Boss Hunts

At the end of the story missions on both factions, you will have to do a Boss Hunt, which will involve fighting Captain Smasher if you are on Plants or Royal Hypno Flower if you are on Zombies. These are nowhere near as challenging as the Multiplayer Boss Hunts in the Mystery Portal, however it allows you to get a feel for the dynamic of Boss Hunts before doing the more challenging Multiplayer Portal hunts. You can do the story mode Boss Hunts on any difficulty between Easy to Crazy, so you could increase the difficulty to give yourself more of a challenge or reduce it if you are having trouble completing them. The mechanics of the story mode Boss Hunts are similar to the Multiplayer, requiring you to challenge a strong Boss and complete an objective every time you reduce a portion of its health. 

Select Your Characters Carefully

This is not particularly relevant until you can actually start doing these Multiplayer Boss Hunts, however it may be worth considering this in advance. You could practice using certain characters in the story mode Boss Hunts to see how they perform. You are likely to perform better during the Boss Hunt if you play characters that you are skilled at or that synergise well togther with your team. In addition to selecting your character, the variant you choose is important as they each have different attacks and sometimes additional altered stats. Certain characters are not as well suited to Boss Hunts, unfortunately, such as Cactus, Captain Deadbeard, Rose and Engineer and they are unlikely to be that useful into Boss Hunts. Although, if you are a skilled player and you know how to use these characters, you may be able to use them well alongside with your team.

Level Up Your Characters

Levelling up your characters is useful as you unlock upgrades for your characters, and the upgrades will give you an advantage into Boss Hunts. The upgrades increase your survivability, your damage output or give you another useful benefit. Start levelling up characters that you wish to use in Boss Hunts, and start gathering some of the better upgrades. For many characters, you will unlock progressively more useful upgrades as you continue to level up. You should carefully consider your choice of character upgrades when you go to use a character in a Boss Hunt as you are only limited to a few equipped at one time. Your upgrade choices would likely depend on your character choice, your playstyle with that character and the characters that your allies chose.

If you are completely unsure of what upgrades to run on your character, check out this guide: https://answers.ea.com/t5/Other-Plants-vs-Zombies-Games/Character-Upgrades-Guide-Garden-Warfare-2/m-p/11642019#M99431.

Play With Communication If Possible

Communication would be extremely useful if you are able to play with friends or other players. This may not be as important if you are playing on a lower difficulty level, although in higher difficulties, I can not recommend this enough. If you are unable to play with friends at this time, you could gather a group of players that might be interested in playing the Boss Hunts when they (most) likely return. If you do end up playing with randoms and you do not have communication, you and your team will likely be at a disadvantage if you cannot coordinate as a team so your best bet would be to do an easier difficulty or to stick close to your allies when you are able to. It would be really useful if you as a player has had practice regarding Boss Hunts and it is very possible to complete Boss Hunts even without direct communication from your team.

Advanced Tips

These tips will likely be useful even for experienced players that have played the game for a long time or for returning players. The tips could still apply to newer players, however they might want to refer to the basic tips first.

Map Knowledge

Each Boss Hunt is played on a specific map, which is always fixed and never changes. Furthermore, the objectives are generally located in the same area of the map every time. Having good knowledge of the terrain itself on each of the maps that Boss Hunts are held, as well as where most of the required objectives are on each map, would be really useful. The latter cannot really be done unless you are actually doing the Boss Hunt or if you played these hunts in the past and remember the locations of such objectives. However, you could set up a Private Play game on each map and take your time to thoroughly explore the map if you were so inclined, and this map knowledge would be useful for identifying escape points, saving time getting to objectives, positioning yourself well, efficient travel and knowing where enemies are likely to be. 

Use Pots and Bots

There are multiple placeable Pot and Bot locations on every map, which are fixed and do not change. They will become unusable for a short time whenever a Pot or Bot in that location is vanquished, but they should be utilised often for additional firepower and to distract enemies as well. They will likely be vanquished quickly however they absolutely should serve you and your team well. Attempt to remember where Pot and Bot locations are so you can go to it if you need to place one in a pinch. You want to place any Pots or Bots quickly as there is generally a lot of chaos going on and you do not want to leave yourself vulnerable to attacks for long, so have a good idea of what you want to place beforehand. It would be worth buying a lot of summonables beforehand so you have an ample supply when you play Boss Hunts. 

Use Self Revives and Team Retries Wisely

You are able to use up to 3 Self Revives and a Team Retry per Boss Hunt attempt, or up to a maximum of 6 Self Revives if you use 3 before using the Team Retry and 3 more after the Team Retry. When you are vanquished, you will have to wait 30 seconds before you automatically respawn, and you will have the option to use a self revive during this time or you may get revived by an ally. Deciding to use or to not use a Self Revive is important when you go down as you can only effectively use up to an absolute maximum of 6 per game and once you run out, your team will be at a massive disadvantage if you go down again. Your team do have an opportunity to revive you during this time and in some cases, it might be better to wait the 30 seconds to respawn depending on the current situation. However, if your team is struggling at the time or you are running out of time to complete an objective, it is probably worth a self revive there.

Warning: If everyone on your team gets vanquished at the same time, you will lose unless you have a Team Retry and your team uses it. If your entire team is about to go down, saving Self Revives for these situations are great.

Conclusion

Boss Hunts are one of the toughest modes in Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, or possibly even the entire franchise! These Boss Hunts in the Multiplayer Portal are ridiculously difficult, so now would be a great time to start preparing for them. The rewards you get for winning these modes are quite awesome! You get exclusive hats for your characters that you cannot obtain anywhere else, plenty of Rainbow Stars, Coins and XP that you earn for your characters. Teamwork is rather essential and knowing how each Boss Hunt functions is as well! If the Boss Hunts do return, I will create a guide for each one, which will greatly help if you are unsure of how it works completely or for additional tips which are specific to each hunt. In the event that the Boss Hunts do not return, you are still able to play them on the PC version through certain mods, and all the tips from this guide will still apply for these mods.

Please comment below if you have any further questions or if you have any feedback which I will add to this guide. Thank you for reading and I hope that this guide will help you to prepare for Boss Hunts in the future!