The data push fixed a few minor bugs (like a missing description of the Thyme Wrap seeds in the Shop), changed the future Pinata Party rewards to adapt them for the Lawnbowl/Sportzballs event, and added new items for gems in the Shop, like Lawnbowl pinatas and larger quantities of Hypno-shroom and Starfruit seeds for gems. It also nerfed the planned August calendar updates but I had already accounted for these changes from the leaked data files for version 9.9.
A previous data push completely revamped the 8-hour Shop offers – the 20-seed offers for 5,000 coins are now gone; there are at best 10-seed offers and some of them have had their prices jacked up. I'll post detailed information when I get the time.
The data push fixed a typo in the description of one of the Shop offers and added many more offers for gems for the next plants-of-the-week. Also, the next power mint is now known for sure.
The data push fixed some errors involving missing texts, as I've reported here. It also introduced new offers for gems to the Shop. Lots of them, in fact, some at rather high prices. Given that PopCap has spent the past year gradually nerfing the gem rewards, clearly the idea is to entice the players into spending money for buying gems.
One particularly low blow is that the offer to buy 200 Pea Vine seeds (one of the most powerful plants in the game) for 400 gems will be available only to players who haven't spent any money on the game. (With a cap of 80 purchases maximum, I rather doubt that any free-to-play player can afford to spend 32,000 gems for 16,000 seeds of a plant, no matter how useful.)
Improvements of the Arena user interface that should be quite obvious. Better readable dialog displaying the next tournaments and the properties of the current one, etc.
Slight improvements of the user interface of the Shop. For instance, the pictures of the offers have shadows now.
Levitater cannot be planted on Lily Pads, just like the other mines.
The loading tips (displayed while the game is loading) have changed. Two of them have been replaced with shorter versions and a new one has been added:
Old tip
New tip
Back up barrier plants with short-range melee plants behind them.
Plant Bonk Choy right behind Wall-nut.
Use Plant Food on anything to make room for floating Plant Foods.
Use Plant Food on Sunflowers for a burst of extra sun.
Keep planting!
The game now contains additional, unnecessary copies of the levels Ancient Egypt Days 21 and 25, which unnecessarily waste space on the player's device.
Day 8 of the Circus/Carnival event has had its win condition changed from “produce a specified amount of sun” to “don't let the zombies trample the flowers”.
The Penny's Pursuit version of Lost City Day 8 has had the required amount of produced sun, in order to win the level, changed.
The way Penny's Pursuit world maps are constructed has changed. In particular, the way they point to the levels they consist of has changed. This will have no visible effect to the player but will annoy the data miners, since it is no longer immediately obvious which files contain the levels that a map consists of.
New stuff
The Sportzball/Lawnbowl event will have its own pinata with its own picture.
When you've used up your ads-for-rewards quota, you'll be told so, instead of being told that there are no more ads available.
The Tomb Tangler plant will apparently have its own Thymed event, but that's just an unfinished draft for now; maybe in version 9.9.1.
New Arenas: Boosterama versions of Joust118 and Joust146, as well as entirely new Arenas: Joust158, Joust159, Joust160, Joust161, Joust161Boost, Joust162.
The data push added new items for gems to the Shop (basically, seeds for the 10 gemium plants, as well as the plants themselves at a discount – 75 gems each, instead of the usual 100), and the Calendar rewards for August.
Note that the Calendar rewards are again nerfed, although not by much – 3 seeds for the seasonal plant instead of 5 on day 5, 5 gems instead of 8 on day 10, and 1 pinata instead of 2 on day 29.
I have updated the corresponding pages of the wiki:
Version 9.8.1 of the game seems to be ready for release and is already floating around – and the data in it makes much more sense than the preliminary build I got earlier. I have updated several pages in the wiki to reflect what I found there:
Pinata Party Rewards. Added the new programmed rewards up till August 17. Note that some of them will last unusually short time; Jun 28 – Jul 01 (5 days), Jul 06 – Jul 11 (5 days), Jul 11 – Jul 12 (2 days). Also, there is a “hole” during the period Jun 01 – Jun 06.
Upcoming Epic Quests. Corrected the availability dates for the Mage Gatling Pea and Levitater quests.
The Next Penny's Pursuit Events. Corrected the name of the Tiger Grass event and added new events till September 21. Note that the locked plant is wrong for the next 3 events.
Upcoming Arena Tournaments. Updated with information for the next 2 seasons after Mega Gatling Pea. This reveals the next two seedium plants – Levitater (Enchant-mint family) and Tomb Tangler (Contain-mint family). Not much is know about the latter; it's not in the game yet. Probably will be added in version 9.9.1.
The Next Power Mints. The availability dates of Appease-mint are now known. Also, the two power mints after that will most likely be Enchant-mint and Contain-mint, although their availability dates are just a guess at this point. Note that PopCap seems to have broken the tradition two have the adjacent mint's availability dates overlap by 2 days. Enforce-mint is set to expire 5 days before Appease-mint appears, Appease-mint is set to expire 5 days before its season ends.
A.K.E.E. (5), Iceberg Lettuce (5), Red Stinger (5)
Vasebreaker
July 10
lod_149
Lava Guava, Magnet-shroom, Peashooter
Conveyor
July 11
lod_vase_fire_011
Chili Bean (3), Snapdragon (5), Stunion (3)
Vasebreaker
The rewards from these Pinata Parties will be
July 01 – July 04:
Plant
Seeds
Probability
Chomper
5
14.00 %
Chomper
10
11.00 %
Enforce-mint
5
10.00 %
Phat Beet
5
10.00 %
Rhubarbarian
5
10.00 %
Strawburst
5
10.00 %
Tiger Grass
5
10.00 %
Enforce-mint
10
5.00 %
Phat Beet
10
5.00 %
Rhubarbarian
10
5.00 %
Strawburst
10
5.00 %
Tiger Grass
10
5.00 %
July 05 – July 11:
Plant
Seeds
Probability
Squash
5
14.00 %
Squash
10
11.00 %
Enforce-mint
5
10.00 %
Phat Beet
5
10.00 %
Rhubarbarian
5
10.00 %
Strawburst
5
10.00 %
Tiger Grass
5
10.00 %
Enforce-mint
10
5.00 %
Phat Beet
10
5.00 %
Rhubarbarian
10
5.00 %
Strawburst
10
5.00 %
Tiger Grass
10
5.00 %
It will also have a Calendar tab, available from July 01 till July 12, with the following rewards:
Day
Reward
1
5 Chomper seeds
2
5 Strawburst seeds
3
5 Phat Beet seeds
4
5 Tiger Grass seeds
5
5 Squash seeds
6
5 Rhubarbarian seeds
7
1 Summer Nights pinata
The Summer Nights pinata will contain seeds for 3 plants, 5 seeds each, picked from the following set with equal probability: Strawburst, Chomper, Squash, Rhubarbarian, Enforce-mint, Tiger Grass, Phat Beet.
The event will also include a Thymed event, lasting from July 01 till July 11, consisting of the following 15 leves:
The data push changed mostly the items scheduled to appear in the Shop for what seems to be a recap of the Champions Blowout season – with all the power mints appearing together and various mint pinatas for coins, gems, and mints.
In fact, specifically during the period June 20 – June 27, there will be 41 such offers on the Special tab of the Shop (and I'm not even counting the offers for money that might also be scheduled to appear there). The tab is designed to handle only up to 40 items. I hope that this doesn't cause the same problem like the one we had during Feastivus, with some of the offers not visible until a visible offer is removed by buying it. I am not 100% certain that this will happen, though – some of the offers might appear on other tabs
The definitions of some player segments related to their Adventure progress (which levels of which worlds they have completed) have been changed a bit. More exactly, the definitions were fixed, because before they were buggy and didn't really make sense. As a result, some players could see a different choice of plant seeds for ads offered in the Shop.
Updated The Next Power Mints page with information that Spear-mint will be coming back.
Updated the Upcoming Offers for Gems in the Shop page. The 1-gem offers for Pokra and Explode-O-Vine have been removed, Spear-mint and related pinatas will be back, the missing offers for gems and mints of the other power mints have been added.