Melon

Melon
Tier	6
Ability	Give one pet the Melon perk. Take 20 less damage, once.

The Melon is a Tier 6 Food, available in the Turtle Pack and the Puppy Pack. Feeding a Pet a Melon gives that pet the Melon perk. The first time a pet with Melon perk takes damage, the damage is reduced by 20, to a minimum of 0.

Strategy

Melon is a very strong and efficient defensive perk that's used to keep your pets alive longer. If you're not looking for synergy perks like Mushroom, it's always good to give your pets Melon.

It shouldn't be treated as simply 20 extra health, since the longer a pet survives, the higher is its total damage output and the more chances it have to trigger its ability. A 35/31 pet with Melon perk can go toe-to-toe against a max stat enemy at 50/50 with common defensive food perks. Melon can also protect your pets against high damaging snipers like Leopard, or against instant knockouts by Scorpion.

On the other hand, it also shouldn't be treated as a stronger version of Garlic or Lemon, as they all have their unique strengths and weaknesses. Melon only blocks damage once so has way too many counters such as: putting a disposable pet front-most to act as a meatshield that breaks the Melon, snipes or piercing abilities like Chili or Rhino that break it before the pet gets to attack, summon teams that can afford to waste a token on the Melon then swarm the exposed pet, and so on. Reducing the damage to 0 might not always be ideal, since you can lose out on Hurt triggers from pets like Peacock or Camel.

Trivia

• In the early days of Super Auto Pets Melon was instead called a shield and, ignoring visual differences, functioned almost identically to the Melon we have today.

Gallery

• 

  The standard sprite of the Melon

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  The classic sprite of the Melon

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  The Beta version of the melon/shield.