Melon-pult

*Melon-pults do heavy damage to groups of zombies.*

**"Everyone says my head looks like a melon," said the middle child of the Pult family. "and they would be right." Don't ask him if he's seedless or not though, it offends him and frankly it's none of your business.**

**Melon-pult** is a plant in *Plants vs. Zombies 2: Reflourished* and the fifth plant obtained in Wild West. He is unlocked at Wild West - Day 12.

Melon-pult lobs melons at zombies every 4-4.05 seconds, which do heavy damage to the target zombie and deal additional splash damage in a 3x3 area.

## Almanac entry

**Melon-pult**

Melon-pults do heavy damage to groups of zombies.

Firing Speed: 1/2x

"Everyone says my head looks like a melon," said the middle child of the Pult family. "and they would be right." Don't ask him if he's seedless or not though, it offends him and frankly it's none of your business.

## Plant Food effect

When Melon-pult is fed Plant Food, he will turn into a mortar and launch giant melons at all zombies and obstacles on the lawn, with each dealing 200 direct damage, and 20 splash damage in a 3x3 area.

## Strategies

While Melon-pult's power is heavily reduced from his Vanilla counterpart, he remains notably effective in the realm of zombie crowd control. With splash damage being large enough to hit three lanes at once, the melons work best when used in numbers, stacking the splash damage to defeat any number of low-to-medium health zombies, doing so in a way that can even challenge the lane-based area damage of Laser Bean and his contemporaries.

Against tougher targets, Melon-pult's single target damage allows him to keep up fairly well for an area-of-effect plant. However, dedicated single target and high DPS plants may be able to deal with such zombies, as Melon-pult's is fairly rudimentary for the plant's cost. Through plants like Citron, Celery Stalker and Witch Hazel, tougher zombies can be better defeated as melons are used to clear away weaker parts of the horde.

Melon-pult also possesses a Plant Food effect that exemplifies his crowd control specialisation. By shooting a melon at every zombie on-screen, the more the zombies there are, the greater the damage becomes. When used at the right time, a single Plant Food can completely clear the board of most threats, except for high health targets that are naturally resistant to such high levels of splash damage.

While Melon-pult works great for area damage, Winter Melon takes it a step further with the addition of chilling effects. Not only does this near-double the effective firepower of melons, but the chilling effects can be used to directly support the capabilities of other plants in the main defense. Additional options for large splash damage come in the form of Stickybomb Rice and Dusk Lobber, who are cheaper, can attack multiple lanes and hold greater damage potential: Stickybomb Rice can chain explosions together for extra damage, especially via Plant Food; meanwhile, Dusk Lobber can achieve incredible splash damage through attacking several lanes when powered. That said, the former's ignorance of flying zombies, the latter's reliance on spread out targets and the slow recharge of both, allow Melon-pult to remain useful as the standardised option.

## Balance changes

### Initial launch

#### Listed changes

* ▲ +10 damage
* ▲ +10 splash damage
* ▼ Slower attack speed: Once per 2.85-3s -> Once per 4.5-4.55s

#### Actual changes

* Damage is unchanged
* ▼ -10 splash damage
* ▼ Slower attack speed: Once per 2.85-3s -> Once per 4.5-4.55s

### Version 1.1

* ▲ Damage: 80 -> 90
* ▲ Splash Damage: 30 -> 50
	+ Developer note: Melon-pult and Winter Melon were not correctly using their intended stats as described in Penny's Classroom. We have adjusted their damage values to go along with our intended changes to the plants.

### Version 1.2

* ▲ Fire Rate: 4.5/4.55 -> 4/4.05
* ▼ Splash Damage: 50 -> 45
	+ Developer note: For a long time now, Reflourished's Melon brothers have been a controversial topic, you either like 'em or you don't. We've liked them for a while but ultimately, they \*could\* be more fun. We've retuned their fire rate to be more reliable and decreased the splash damage, so that the direct DPS is higher but the splash DPS remains relatively the same. Now they're a lot more fun to mess around with and more efficient to bring as primaries!