Super Auto Pets is an auto-battler where you create a team of animals, and they duke it out with someone else's team. It's not lobbied, so you're paired with players at complete random (except in versus mode, where you play against the same player each time). The goal is to reach ten wins before you accrue four losses. You can play it on your phone, on Steam, or in your browser.
You get 10 coins to spend each round (leftover coins are lost). It costs 3 coins to buy an animal or a food item, and it costs 1 coin to reroll the contents of the shop. As with many games in the genre, you can combine three like units to level them up, increasing their stats and making their ability stronger. After every two battles, the next tier of animals and food unlocks, to a maximum of tier 6. Leveling up an animal also adds a single animal of the next tier to the shop, so if your shop is tier 3, you'd get a tier 4. (But there are no tier 7 animals, so you get a tier 6 at shop level 6.)
A full run takes 20-30 minutes, or possibly much less if you're unsuccessful. I'm on a hot streak of four 10-win runs right now, and I'll share some hot tips in this thread soon. But for now, go play some Super Auto Pets.
You get 10 coins to spend each round (leftover coins are lost). It costs 3 coins to buy an animal or a food item, and it costs 1 coin to reroll the contents of the shop. As with many games in the genre, you can combine three like units to level them up, increasing their stats and making their ability stronger. After every two battles, the next tier of animals and food unlocks, to a maximum of tier 6. Leveling up an animal also adds a single animal of the next tier to the shop, so if your shop is tier 3, you'd get a tier 4. (But there are no tier 7 animals, so you get a tier 6 at shop level 6.)
A full run takes 20-30 minutes, or possibly much less if you're unsuccessful. I'm on a hot streak of four 10-win runs right now, and I'll share some hot tips in this thread soon. But for now, go play some Super Auto Pets.
(2/1): Buffs a random friend by +2/+1 per ant level on death. You'd rather this be less random, so you'll usually want to stick your ant in the second-last position to guarantee the recipient. This is among the better tier 1s, even if you can't always make optimal use of it.
(2/2): On sale, gives 1 health per level to two random friends. Average stats for a tier 1 and an OK ability make the beaver a strictly average pick.
(1/2): On faint, summons a weaker cricket (1/1 per cricket level) with no ability. A single cricket is 2/3 spread across two units, which is decently competitive, and it's even better with a horse. The cricket scales worse than most tier 1s, but it's a great round 1 pick.
(1/2): On sale, gives all store animals +1/2/3 to attack and health.. The lack of immediate benefit paired with lackluster stats makes the duck easy to overlook, but one or two ducks early on can trade a loss for a string of wins. That's especially nice in versus mode!
(2/3): The gold standard for tier 1, with the best stat block and an ability that will let later units scale: on level up, gives all friends +1 then +2 to attack and health. Level 3 fish has no ability, so you can sell it without remorse once better things start rolling around.
(1/1): Increases the attack of summoned friends by 1 per horse level until the end of battle. Most stat boosts acquired outside battle are permanent. This is one of the few that is explicitly temporary. The horse is an early cornerstone of summon builds, but it goes out of style long before you'll acquire an adequate replacement, and it has the worst possible stats. The horse is good enough early on, but you shouldn't get attached to it.
(2/2): Damages a random enemy for 1 per level at the start of battle. Average stats plus a good ability equals a unit you're rarely unhappy to see.
(1/2): On purchase, gives a random friend +1/+1 per level. While its own stats are subpar, the ability makes the otter a very good tier 1 that you won't mind selling.
(2/2): Sells for twice the normal amount (2 per level instead of 1). Because your tier 1 animals are strictly expendable, this is an OK economy play, but it's not actually a good unit. I probably overvalue the pig.
: Gives an animal honey bee status. Animals can only have one status at a time. Honey bee causes an animal to summon a 1/1 bee on faint, which will notably turn a lot of ties into wins. It's also nice for summon builds.
: Gives an animal +1/+1. Barely ever worth a purchase. By the time you have a full squad, there are better foods.
(3/3): At the start of battle, the crab's health is replaced by the health of the friend in front of the crab. This might actually be my least favorite tier 2. You need something with at least 6 health for this to start looking attractive, and any buffs the crab receives are going to be half-ignored. The crab's ability doesn't change on level-up.
(1/3): At the start of battle, add the dodo's attack to the 1/2/3 friends in front. This requires heavy investment but can end up being actually incredible. That said, if you're not willing to make that investment, don't grab the dodo; it's not very good out of the box. And if you are, remember that a 50/1 unit is not usually as good as a 25/25 unit -- the dodo won't get you the win on its own.
(2/2): When a unit is summoned, the dog gets 1 attack or health (chosen at random) per level. This sounds underwhelming until you remember that stat increases outside of battle are permanent. A level 2 dog scales very quickly if you buy and sell a lot of units. (Combining into an existing slot doesn't count as a summon, though.) The dog is the earliest unit that can semi-reliably scale up to maximum stats, although you do have to commit to get it to work.
(3/5): Before attacking, deals 1 damage to the 1/2/3 friends behind it. The elephant has good base stats, and you can stick it in the rear position if you don't have a good way to take advantage of the ability. This is not usually a long-term or even necessarily medium-term squad member, but it fills a team slot nicely.
(3/1): On faint, gives the 2 friends behind it +1/+1 per level. Like the elephant, this is not an animal that you'll want to keep around, but you're usually not disappointed to keep it for a battle or two.
(3/2): On faint, deals 2/4/6 damage to every other animal. Animals that don't exist as of the hedgehog's death are unaffected, so a hedgehog with Honey won't kill its bee. It feels like there should be a decent hedgehog build out there somewhere, but for every melon armor you run into, there are two peacocks or camels. I will rarely take a hedgehog if I can help it.
(1/5): When hurt, gains 2/4/6 attack. It sounds incredible on paper, but it's much harder to get an animal to survive more than two attacks than it is to get it to one-shot most enemies.
(4/5): On faint, adds a 1/1 "dirty rat" to the back of the enemy team with "Friend ahead attacks: deal it 1/2/3 damage." The rat is the strongest tier 2 unit, but the dirty rat is a mixed bag: it won't add if the enemy team is full (usually not a problem), and it won't trigger if there's space between it and the next unit (this is probably a bug). So it's only really effective if the enemy team has exactly one slot open, which means that it will end up costing you more games than it wins you. But again, the rat's stats are strong enough to let it camp on your team until something better comes along.
(2/1): When you sell a friend, the shrimp gives a random friend +1 health per level. This sounds like it would pair really well with the dog, but that's two of your five spots taken up. It's not easy to get the maneuvering room you need for the buys and sells while still working on a powerful team. I've never been happy I bought the shrimp.
(3/4): At the start of the round, gives you 1/2/3 gold. I love me a swan. You have a flat 10 gold per round, augmented only by anything you sell, so . I'm usually happy to run two swans until I can get a third.
: Gives an animal +3/+3 until the end of the next battle. In another game, this would be a trap, indicative that your team is headed for a death spiral -- and while you generally prefer to purchase a more permanent upgrade, the cupcake is the strongest stat-boosting food in the game, and your run is limited by the number of losses you get. If this turns a loss into a tie or win, you've bought yourself an extra battle for 3 gold.
: Grants Bone Attack status (+5 damage on attacks). This is legally distinct from having +5 damage (such as for dodo-related purposes). Actually really good on a throwaway unit like a spider or shrimp that will never kill anything on its own. You'd think you'd rather have this on something that can take a hit, but there are better options for tankier units down the line.
: Unlike everything else in the shop, this only costs 1 gold. It causes an animal to faint, and when an animal faints outside of battle, it faints in real life: it's gone forever. But remember that out-of-battle buffs are permanent. When you're pivoting away from tier 1 and tier 2, the sleeping pill allows you to convert an ant or flamingo into a stat increase at the cost of a couple gold. There are more creative uses for this, too, mostly involving higher-tier animals. Special mention to the spider pill play for allowing you to get an early tier 3 animal without having to level. Not the best use of a sleeping pill or a spider, but I've done it before as an inexpensive dog trigger.
(5/4): On faint, deals its attack damage to surrounding animals. This is very powerful but also double-edged. Put Honey on your badger and stick it in the rear, and you've got a unit that will turn ties and many losses into wins. You likely won't keep the badger into the late game, but you'll be delighted to have it around early on.
(3/5): On taking nonlethal damage, deals 2 damage per level to a random enemy. If you find a way to buff a blowfish, it can easily stay on your squad for the entire game. Without any support, the blowfish is fine but unremarkable.
(2/5): On taking nonlethal damage, gives +1/+2 per level to the friend behind it. Sure, you can put a peacock behind your elephant, but wouldn't you rather have a camel? The problem with the on-damage trigger is that you can't reliably get more than a couple of triggers per battle, and by the time you're able to buff them to ridiculous levels, the blowfish is more impactful than the camel, but it's still a decent midgame unit.
(1/3): When you finish the buy phase, gives +1/+1 to one friend per level in front of it. This is the first source for permanently scaling the unit of your choice. It's pretty weak, but it has the advantage of easily targeting the unit of your choice. Just don't count on keeping the giraffe long-term.
(1/4): When the friend ahead of it faints, it gains Melon Armor status (-20 to the next source of damage) and +2 attack per level. To get the ox to work, you'll either need to pill a lot of units or get a lot of things to die right in front of it. Even so, the ox is unlikely to survive a second hit. Setting up your entire build around getting a two-for-one trade is underwhelming.
(3/2): When a friend eats shop food, gives it +1 health per level. This is sort of like scaling, and it's probably better than the shrimp, but it's unlikely to be incredibly impactful. Worth noting that the rabbit won't buff itself.
(2/2): On faint, summons two 2/2 rams. At level 2, the rams are 4/4; at level 3, they're 6/6. Bread and butter for summon builds. Anyone who kept a horse to tier 3 will be snatching this up instantly. Anyone lucky enough to get a sheep to pop out of a spider is loving life. For everyone else, the sheep is a very competitive tier 3 that you can sell later with no regrets.
(2/2): On buy, gives all friends +2/+1 per level if you lost the last battle. If you have the team space to pivot into this, then it's an auto-buy most of the time (and usually an auto-sell immediately after). You can only benefit from the snail three times in the game, and I've never seen the snail show up twice on the same round, but in theory, you could get some crazy stats out of a level 2 snail.
(2/4): On faint, gives the next 1/2/3 friends Melon Armor status. There are two ways to use a turtle: first, the obvious way; and second, you buy it then pill it for Melon Armor way earlier than the melon becomes available for purchase. The latter is usually a better use of team slots.
(2/6): At the start of battle, KOs the friend in front of it. On faint, summons the swallowed friend as a unit of the whale's level. What do you put in front of your whale? Anything with an on-faint effect -- in particular, spider, sheep, and deer. This has obvious applications for summon builds, but it's also good for anything that wants something in front of it. For example, an ox gets three triggers (one from the whale itself, one from the thing the whale swallowed, and one from the thing the swallowed thing summoned on faint). If your swallowed unit isn't a summoner (e.g. flamingo), then you can get a little extra mileage by feeding it Honey or Mushroom.
: Gives Garlic Armor status (-2 to all damage, to a minimum of 1). This is a defining item for the midgame. By endgame, Garlic Armor is too weak to be effective, but at this point, you're still running into plenty of units with 2-3 attack. Stick this on your camel or blowfish and go to town. It's strong enough to be an incredible value on anything with a decent health value at the point it becomes available.
: Gives +1/+1 to two random animals. If you're going to run a rabbit, this isn't bad, but be prepared for it to hit exactly the animals you want it to miss. I wouldn't bother with the salad otherwise unless you've got 3 gold burning a hole in your pocket.
(6/6): At the end of your buy phase, gains +2/+2 per level if you have a tier 3 friend. An early bison is a compelling argument for keeping a level 3 tier 1 around. Completely useless if you can't get a level 3, but usually incredible when you can. If you do keep a tier 1 unit around for the bison, keep an eye out for opportunities to replace it.
(1/1): On faint, summons a 5/5 bus 
, which is the best joke in the game. A level 2 deer summons a 10/10, and a level 3 deer summons a 15/15. The bus has Splash Attack status, which deals 5 damage to the second enemy unit. Deer in front of whale is incredible value: two buses for the price of one. Even on its own, this is usually good enough to sell off something that hasn't been pulling its weight. Of course, whale-deer won't win the game for you, even if both units get to level 3, but it's an excellent combo for the midgame.
(4/6): At the start of battle, deals 5 damage per level to the enemy with the lowest health. This is one of those animals that I like to slot in temporarily until I get something that fits my team comp better, since the ability and the stats are both decent with no investment. A dolphin will often target a key support unit, but it's only relevant against teams where there is a support unit to begin with.
(4/7): On KO, gains +2/+2 per level. On paper, this sounds like the perfect unit: once you get its stats high enough, it's self-sustatining. In practice, you'll rarely get it to happen, and the hippo will run up against the stat cap (50/50 before damage -- that means the hippo stops healing when it reaches 50 health). You can get a hippo to work early, but you'll need a backup plan.
(3/3): At the end of your buy phase, gives the rightmost friend +2/+2 per level. You need scaling, and the monkey is a good source of it. This might be one of my most-purchased units. It's not for every team, but it's for quite a lot of them. Any animal is good if you can get it to 30/30, and the monkey can make that happen for you.
(1/2): At the end of your buy phase, gives level 2 and 3 friends +1/+1 per level. When tier 4 first becomes available, you're likely pivoting and selling some of your leveled units, so it can be difficult to get mileage out of the penguin. With a team of leveled units, this might actually be the best animal in the game, although note that the penguin doesn't self-buff.
(3/3): On faint, summons one X/1 chick per level, where X is the rooster's attack (e.g. a level 2 12/12 rooster summons two 12/1 chicks). Obviously, some investment is required, but if you're willing to put in the work, the rooster is incredible, even at level 1. This can fit into summon teams and non-summon teams equally well.
(3/5): At the start of battle, reduces the health of the highest-health enemy by 33/66/100%. A level 1 skunk is not especially good, and a level 2 skunk is merely OK. Level 3 is "now we're talking," but you also have to ask yourself if it's worth the investment.
(1/1): On eating food, gains +1/+1 per level. That includes all foods, not just stat-boosting foods. The worm is not especially good, but it works OK as the poor man's bison as long as you can get it to level 2 in a reasonable timeframe.
: Give all current and future shop animals +2/+2. If you're confident in your team, this is a great investment. Note that it doesn't trigger any food abilities.
: Give an animal +2/+2. This is an OK use of 3 gold. Remember that animals get +1/+1 when they combine, so if you have the choice between a pear and another copy of an animal, you'll usually rather work toward a level up: half the stats, but it works toward a level up.
(4/6): On buy, removes any food in the shop and adds two Milk items, which cost 0 gold and give +2/+2 to a single unit. Dogs love the cow because you're just going to turn around and sell it; food builds love the cow for obvious reasons. Anyone with a disposable team slot should consider buying it for the milk: it's effectively +4/+4 for 2 gold after you sell the cow. The ability doesn't change as the cow levels up, but at least the cow has good base stats.
(6/3): At the start of battle, deals 7 damage per level to the rear enemy unit. This is better than the dolphin for several reasons: first, it's more damage, but more importantly, the rear unit must of necessity be the combo piece for a lot of teams. Horses, turkeys, and the like need to stay in back to maximize their utility.
(3/2): At the end of your buy phase, copies the ability of the unit in front of it, but at the parrot's level. This overrides the parrot's ability completely until the parrot levels up. Wouldn't you rather have a second copy of whatever that thing is? Usually, yes, but you're limited by availability. Even so, with the parrot's weak stats, it's hard to come up with a good use case.
(5/6): After KOing an enemy, deals 4 damage per level to the enemy in front. If that damage KOs, then the process repeats itself. A rhino can chew right through summon teams, but you'll want to level it up quickly because the turkey is now on the market. The rhino gives you the hilarious potential to defeat an entire team while only attacking once. (The expansion pack tops that, but that's a story for another day.)
(1/1): No ability. Comes with Peanut status (for some reason?), which kills anything that takes damage. This is a frankly incredible unit for any team struggling to find a good fifth member, but you'll need to watch out for enemy Melon Armor, and you'll need to make sure you don't do something stupid and get rid of Peanut status, which is unobtainable by any other means.
(3/6): After eating shop food, gives 2 random friends +1/+1 per level. This is one of the cornerstones of a food build, but you'll want the seal to level up quickly in order to get any serious mileage, and that can be difficult to accomplish in the timeframe in which you need it.
(4/4): When a friend faints, gains +2/+1 per level. This is amazing for summon teams: a level 3 shark can easily hit the stat cap. Even a team with no summons will have a 12/8 shark by the time everything else dies, which may not be jawdropping at this point in the game but is still probably better than your worst unit.
(3/4): When a friend is summoned, gives it +3/+3 per level. The horse doesn't get a proper replacement until tier 5, but the turkey blows it out of the water. Note that unlike the horse, the turkey's boost is permanent, so everything you buy after the turkey is that much stronger. If you get a turkey when your shop is still in tier 4, that's an invitation to rebuild your entire team. The turkey is just that good.
: Gives an animal +1 Experience. This is the same as buying a copy of that animal into the animal's slot for all purposes except for "buy an animal" triggers; on the other hand, it also counts as a food trigger. Given that most of your rerolls are spent looking for copies of animals already on your team, this is usually a no-brainer. Seal and worm fans will be happy to hear that the level up is processed before the food trigger.
: Gives 3 random animals +1/+1. If you are running a food build, this is a great value. On the other hand, food builds are not usually very good.
(4/5): Doubles health/attack gains from food. At level 2, triples instead. At level 3, quadruples instead. On paper, this sounds okay; in practice, it's actually incredible. I had a cat run where I bought enough canned food to get the shop animals to 40/40. (Of course, my team was pretty much maxed out.) Prioritize getting the cat to level 2. Level 3 is less important but also very nice.
(6/8): When you buy a tier 1 animal, gives all friends +1/+1 per level. I've mentioned that I highly esteem penguin for its ability to scale the entire team. Dragon can do the same thing, but it comes with a giant asterisk. So does the penguin, though. For me, the larger difference is that the penguin is available two tiers earlier, but if you didn't get the penguin to work for you, don't overlook the dragon: it can trigger three or four times per round, after all. The dragon also boasts the highest base stats in the game, for what that's worth.
(2/2): When a friend faints, summons a 2/2 fly (with no ability). At level 2, summons a 4/4. At level 3, summons a 6/6. Just on its own, a fly is giving you a lot of value. Throw in a shark or a turkey, and you're off to the races. Because you can tie, there's no hard cap on how long a run can go. Past a certain point, all you'll run into is fly/turkey teams. Summon builds vary in strength over the course of the game, but in the extended endgame, they reign supreme.
(6/6): When hurt, gains Coconut Shield status (take no damage from the next attack), to a maximum of once per battle per level. It stands to reason that a buffed gorilla is one of the better units in the game, but that's mostly theoretical, because tier 6 is mostly too late to start buffing a unit. Worth pointing out that taking 0 damage counts as taking damage, although I'm not certain whether you get to chain Coconut Shields back-to-back. The usual use case for a gorilla is to die in a single hit before it gets to use Coconut Shield. If you run a gorilla, give it Melon Armor.
(6/4): At the start of battle, deals half its attack damage to 1 enemy per level. It stands to reason that a buffed leopard is one of the better units in the game...
(2/6): On faint, gives all friends +2/+2 per level. If you're still running a whale when tier 6 comes around, this is probably what you'll have the whale swallow. It's a decent pill candidate, too. The trick is finding a disposable slot on your team this late.
(6/6): When the friend ahead attacks, deals 5 damage per level to a random enemy. This might sound underwhelming -- 5 damage isn't that much, after all -- but the snake is actually incredible because of its ability to continually put out damage. If you throw 5 damage around enough, you'll hit the enemy fly or turkey. Even if the enemy team is just "big numbers," the snake is still taking out enemy Melon Armor.
(4/3): Doubles the ability of the friend ahead of the tiger. The description says it only works in battle, but that doesn't seem to be true. The tiger doesn't improve on level up, but frankly, it doesn't need to. Stick this behind a turkey, and everything you summon gets +18/+18. Stick this behind a snake, and you're hitting two extra enemies per attack. Whatever your team is doing, if it's relying on abilities instead of big numbers, the tiger instantly makes it much better with no investment required.
: Gives Melon Armor status to an animal (-20 damage on the next attack, to a minimum of 0). Melon Armor has been available since tier 3, but this is more convenient. The turtle still has some value in that it's able to apply Melon Armor mid-battle, but you're probably not running a turtle, and you do want Melon Armor.
: Gives Extra Life status to an animal (on faint, come back as a 1/1). If you're using a Mushroom on a unit, it's because you value that unit's ability. Obvious candidates include the mammoth and anything else with a faint trigger (especially when there's a whale in the equation!), but you should also strongly consider a Mushroom on your fly and turkey -- those weak backline units that are essential to your team but very likely to get sniped by a crocodile or snake.
: Gives two random animals +2/+2. I mentioned back in tier 2 that the cupcake is the strongest food in the game aside from being temporary, but the pizza actually gives more raw stats. Any food build will love this, but it's not a terrible use of 3 gold on most teams if all you need is bigger numbers.
: Gives Steak Attack status to an animal (+20 to the next attack). Are you running a penguin? Give it steak. That goes for basically anything with poor stats that you're keeping around to help other units scale. Your strong units want Melon Armor; your weak units greatly desire Steak Attack.