The dart monkey, the most recognizable monkey of all. It’s a great starting tower, and has decent popping power. However, with the many new upgrades, I’ve been wondering which one is best?
BTD5 vs BTD6 Dart Monkeys
The BTD6 dart monkey is very interesting. It is both similar and different from the BTD5 dart monkeys. The BTD6 description reads:
Throws a single dart at nearby Bloons. Short range and low pierce but cheap.
The 0-0 dart monkey in BTD5 pops one bloon per shot. Pierce 1, damage 1.
Just so we’re clear,pierce refers to how many bloons a single projectile goes through before expiring.Damagerefers to how many layers of bloon that each projectile does. For example, 2 damage would pop one rainbow bloon into two white and two black bloons, skipping the zebra layer.
The 0-0-0 dart monkey in BTD6 pops two bloons per shot. Pierce 1, damage 1. Same as BTD5.
Here’s a table I made of the total cost/selling price of all Dart Monkey variants on all difficulties, as of v2.0.0.https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MmlrHkcqwYhlqWOWFIXbt_f8P8kcCJswmYEL9Di5T8U
In BTD5, the camo detection upgrade will always be obtained since the upgrade is the 2-0 upgrade. However, in BTD6, the upgrade is the 0-0-2 upgrade, meaning that if you decide to go for the 2-3-0 dart monkey, you’ll be avoiding the camo detection. In this article, I’ll go over all of the different dart monkey upgrades and what they do, including what the descriptions of the upgrades don’t tell you.
The BTD6 Dart Monkey
Note: All things are done on medium difficulty with no monkey knowledge, unless otherwise stated.
In BTD6, the 0-0-0 dart monkey costs $200 on medium difficulty, $170 on easy, $215 on hard, and $240 on impoppable. It fires approximately every 1.5 seconds.
Monkey Knowledge
There are a few important monkey knowledge upgrades that drastically affects the dart monkey.
This one will drastically change your dart monkeys forever. I recommend this upgrade to be the first upgrade you buy with your monkey knowledge points, since dart monkeys are nearly always used at the beginning of every game.
First Upgrade Path
The first path contains 5 upgrades.
Sharp Shots
The upgrade description reads: “Can pop 1 extra Bloon per shot.” and this upgrade costs $140.
This means that the dart monkey can now pop two bloons per shot.
Pierce: 3, Damage: 1.
Razor Sharp Shots
The upgrade description reads: “Can pop 2 more Bloons per shot.” and this upgrade costs $220.
This means that the dart monkey can now pop two more bloons on top of the additional one that it got in the previous upgrade.
Pierce: 5, Damage: 1.
Spike-o-pult
The upgrade description reads: “Converts the Dart Monkey into a Spike-o-pult that hurls a large spiked ball instead of darts. Good range, but slower attack speed. Each ball can pop lots of Bloons.” and costs $300.
The dart monkey now pops 18 more bloons per shot and changes its projectile from a dart into a spiked ball. It also fires slower, approximately every 2 seconds from 1.5 seconds. It does no extra damage to ceramics and cannot pop leads.
Compared to BTD5, this upgrade is $200 cheaper.
Pierce: 22, Damage: 1.
Juggernaut
The upgrade description reads: “Hurls a giant spiked ball that excels at crushing Ceramic Bloons.” and costs $1,800.
Compared to BTD5, this upgrade is $300 more expensive.
The dart monkey now pops 100 bloons per shot and has a slightly increased firing speed from the 3-0-0 upgrade. It fires once approximately every 1.75 seconds down from 2 seconds. It also does 3x damage to ceramic bloons.
There is monkey knowledge to increase the damage from 1 to 3 to moabs.
Pierce: 100, Damage: 1 to non-ceramics. Does 3 damage to ceramics.
Ultra-Juggernaut
The upgrade description reads: “Gigantic spiked ball splits twice into 6 Juggernaut balls for even more destructive power.” and it costs $15,000.
This is one of the cheaper fifth tier upgrades.
How it works:
This monkey shoots one gigantic ball, but for simplicity’s sake, let’s pretend that it fires two stacked on top of each other. This dart monkey shoots two giant spiked balls that splits into 6 smaller spiked balls when it hits its pop limit (100 bloons) or hits the edge of the screen (whichever comes first). The two balls are stacked on top of one another, but one of them is ever so slightly ahead of the other.
If there are 101 bloons on the track, the first ball will explode into 6, and the second one will have 99 remaining bloons that it can go through before exploding. If there are 99 bloons on the track and the monkey fires, then both balls will explode near the edge of the screen, the first ball will explode when it touches one more bloon, and the second one still can go through 100 bloons.
Damage:
Additionally, the main projectile does 3 damage to all bloons, while still doing 3x damage to ceramics, meaning that it does 9 damage to ceramics, and 3 damage to all other bloons.
The smaller projectiles all have 100 pierce each and act similarly to the Juggernaut projectiles. The smaller projectiles do 1 damage to each bloon but still 3x to ceramics.
It fires the same speed as the Juggernaut upgrade, approximately every 1.75 seconds.
Second Upgrade Path
Quick Shots
The upgrade description reads: “Shoots 15% faster.” and costs $100.
This upgrade is self-explanatory. The tower shoots 15% faster.
Very Quick Shots
The upgrade description reads: “Shoots 33% faster!” and costs $190.
This upgrade is self-explanatory up to a point. It shoots 33% faster than the 0-1-0 monkey, meaning that it shoots approximately 1.53 times faster than its base.
Triple Shot
The upgrade description reads: “Throws 3 darts at a time instead of 1.” and costs $400.
This upgrade is also very self-explanatory. It throws 3 darts at a time instead of 1. Basically it’s 3 dart monkeys in 1. There is a monkey knowledge upgrade that makes every 4th shot fire 4 darts.
It’s more efficient to get this upgrade rather than to get 3 different dart monkeys, since this costs $400, which is the equivalent of two 0-0-0 dart monkeys.
Super Monkey Fan Club
The upgrade description reads: “Super Monkey Fan Club ability: Converts up to 10 nearby Dart Monkeys including himself into Super Monkeys for 10 seconds.” and costs $8,000.
This upgrade is similar to the one in BTD5, however, it’s slightly different.
It converts the 9closest dart monkeys into super monkeys. The dart monkey that you upgrade into the 0-4-0 will be the 10th. This one fires much faster than the other dart monkeys that it converts. Once the ability runs out, monkeys will go back to normal. It will not convert Juggurnaut monkeys or Crossbow monkeys into super monkeys, but will convert triple shot monkeys.
The dart monkeys that get turned keep their range and pierce. This means that if you get sharp shots on all of your dart monkeys that get converted, those supermonkeys will also have increased pierce. The quick shots, very quick shots, and range increasing upgrades affect the super monkeys.
This ability lasts for about 30 seconds and comes back roughly in 1 minute and 40 seconds.
Additionally, this upgrade also slightly increases its attack speed.
Plasma Monkey Fan Club
The upgrade description reads: “Elite membership of this club grants the Dart Monkeys even more power!” and costs $50,000.
This ability upgrades all of the dart supermonkeys into plasma supermonkeys. The ability lasts about the same time of 30 seconds, and comes back every 1 minute and 40 seconds. It converts the 39 closest dart monkeys into plasma supermonkeys. This dart monkey will be the 40th.
Third Upgrade Path
Long Range Darts
The upgrade description reads: “Makes the Dart Monkey shoot further than normal.” and costs $90.
This upgrade is self-explanatory.
Here is a range comparison that I created using photoshop. The 0-0-0 is on the left, the 0-0-1 is in the middle, and the 0-0-2 is on the right.
Enhanced Eyesight
The upgrade description reads: “Shoots even further and can detect Camo Bloons.” and costs $200.
This upgrade is self-explanatory. Now the Dart Monkey can see camo bloons.
Crossbow
The upgrade description reads: “Uses a long range Crossbow that can pop 3 layers of Bloon for every hit.” and costs $625.
The crossbow monkey does 3 damage per hit. It’s like a sniper, but 3 layers instead of 2. It also keeps its pierce, so a 0-0-3 can pop 2 bloons for 3 damage each. The range also increases slightly.
The 1-0-3 does 3 layers of damage to 4 bloons.
The 2-0-3 does 3 layers of damage to 6 bloons.
Pierce: 3, Damage: 3.
2-0-3 or 0-2-3?
Well, the 2-0-3 (sharper shots upgrade) changes the pierce from 3 to 6, effectively doubling its popping power.
The 0-2-3 (faster shots) changes the attack speed from 1.5 seconds to about every 0.86 seconds, which is just above half of the attack time, which is only increasing its popping power by 43%, which is just under doubling its popping power. It’s close, but not doubling.
Therefore, get the 2-0-3 rather than the 0-2-3…
That is, if you’re not going for the crossbow master (5th tier upgrade). It pops 23 bloons per shot, meaning that the faster attack speed is better than having 3 extra pierce. Therefore, go with the 0-2-3 rather than the 2-0-3 if you’re planning on going for the 5th tier.
Sharp Shooter
The upgrade description reads: “Sharp Shooter does powerful Crit Shots every few seconds that do a lot more damage.” and costs $1,700.
The sharp shooter upgrade increases damage by 1, meaning that it goes through 4 layers of bloon, but still can’t pop leads. The crit shot does 50 damage, which is quite a bit.
Pierce: 3, Damage: 4.
Crossbow Master
The upgrade description reads: “Crossbow Master shoots really fast and devastates most Bloon types with ease.” and costs $27,000.
This crossbow master does 5 damage to 23 bloons. This upgrade also grants a range and massive atk speed increase, and lets it pop lead and frozen bloons.
I personally don’t recommend this upgrade. Although it can see camo and pop all of the other bloons, I think that there are better towers (for example, the permaspike spike factory or the ground zero monkey ace) that have similar costs to this. It’s good, but there are other better towers.
Conclusions
Dart Monkeys are a great early game tower. However, once you get to the mid-game and late-game areas, dart monkeys start to lose their edge, since other better towers exist. For example, the 5-x-x upgrade is good, but there are better options, for example, the ground zero upgrade on the monkey ace costs about the same amount, but that is so much better than the dart monkey.
Overall, there are better towers to go for once late game arrives. Use dart monkeys early game, especially the 0-3-2 and the 2-0-3. Camo detection is almost always necessary, so the bottom path is always gotten. 4th tiers are rarely used, with the exception to the daily challenges. Overall, the 0-3-2 and the 2-0-3/0-2-3 dart monkeys are the most common dart monkeys to use, while the 4th and 5th tiers are okay, but there are better towers to better spend your money on.
Having third tier upgrades as the max, we have 6 options: 3-2-0, 3-0-2, 2-3-0, 0-3-2, 2-0-3, and the 0-2-3.
The 3rd path, second upgrade poses the large problem of whether you want camo detection.
Check out this dart monkey physics post on reddit made by u/Sounak9434:https://www.reddit.com/r/btd6/comments/90hks0/dart_monkey_physics/
Questions? Suggestions? Did I make a mistake? Leave them in the comments section down below. Happy popping!
