General Knowledge
Some possibly useful game knowledge
Important Rounds
Here I listed some important rounds to keep track of when playing the game. Important ones to note are the first instances of camos, leads, and purples, as they require special attacks to pop. The general list of hard rounds in a standard game are rounds 55, 63, 75, 78, 89, 95, 96, 98, and 99.
Normal Mode
Round 24: First camo bloon
Round 25: First purple bloon
Round 28: First lead bloon
Round 36: 3 waves of cluster pinks
Round 40: First MOAB (next MOAB at round 50)
Round 45: First camo purple bloon and first fortified bloon (fortified lead)
Round 46: 6 fortified ceramics
Round 55: 4 waves of cluster cerams
Round 59: First camo lead bloon
Round 60: First BFB (next BFB at round 65)
Round 63: 3 waves of tightly clustered cerams (first 2 waves have 40 cerams, last one has 42)
Round 75: 2 waves of 3 clustered BFBs
Round 76: 60 tightly clustered cerams
Round 78: 2 waves of tightly clustered cerams (second wave is full camo)
Round 80: First ZOMG (next ZOMG at round 85)
Ronud 90: First DDT (next DDT at round 93)
Round 95: 30 DDTs (and fMOABs layered on top)
Round 98: 30 fortified BFBs and 6 ZOMGs
Round 99: 9 fortified DDTs
Round 100: First BAD
ABR (Alternate Bloon Rounds)
Round 5: First camo bloon (13 reds)
Round 10: First lead bloon (2 leads)
Round 15: First purple bloon (3 purples)
Round 24: First camo lead bloon
Round 40: 1 fortified MOAB (next MOAB at round 43)
Round 45: First camo purple bloon and first fortified bloon (fortified lead)
Round 46: 8 fortified ceramics
Round 54: First BFB (next BFB at round 57)
Round 60: 1 fortified BFB
Round 63: 2 waves of 40 tightly clustered cerams (first wave regular, second wave camo), and 5 tightly clustered MOABs
Round 78: 2 waves of tightly clustered cerams (first wave has 60 fortified, second wave has 72 camo)
Round 79: First ZOMG (next ZOMG at round 80)
Gameplay
XP
Contrary to popular belief, XP for towers and heroes is independent of their pop count. Tower XP is split amongst towers based on the price spent on them. Thus, the fastest way to level up towers is by using only a couple tower types, with more money spent on the tower that needs more XP. Hero XP works according to the same formula, but hero XP is separate from tower XP. Thus, placing down a hero will not disrupt XP for other towers and vice versa. However, playing in multiplayer and placing down multiple heroes will cause the XP to split.
XP Formula
Rounds 1-20: 40 XP to start, +20 XP each round after
Rounds 21-50: +40 each round
Rounds 51-80: +90 each round
Map Difficulty Scaling:
Easy - no bonus
Intermediate - 10% bonus
Advanced - 20% bonus
Expert - 30% bonus
Once you hit freeplay, XP gain reduces to 30% of the value, wherever freeplay starts in the gamemode you’re playing.
After freeplay round 100, XP gain reduces to 10%.
Cash
Because popping tons of blimps would give way too much cash, cash is also scaled.
Cash Formula
Rounds 1-50: normal
Rounds 51-60: 50% cash gain
Rounds 61-85: 20% cash gain
Rounds 86-100: 10% cash gain
Rounds 101+: 2% cash gain
Bloons
HP
Here I’ve listed the HP of some of the common bloon types:
Ceramic - 10 HP
Super Ceramic - 60 HP (see spawning)
MOAB - 200 HP
BFB - 700 HP
ZOMG - 4000 HP
DDT - 400 HP
BAD - 20000 HP (28000 at first occurrence on round 100, see health ramping)
Note that these HP values apply to the outer layer only. Once the outer layer is popped, the bloon will spawn its children. For example, after 700 hits, a BFB (which has 700 HP) will spawn 4 MOABs. Fortified bloons have slightly different altered HP values:
f-lead - 4 HP
f-ceram - 20 HP
f-super ceram - 120 HP
f-MOAB - 400 HP
f-BFB - 1400 HP
f-ZOMG - 8000 HP
f-DDT - 800 HP
f-BAD - 40000 HP
Every fortified bloon layer has double the health (with the exception of leads, which have 4 times the health) and spawns relevant fortified children.
After round 80, bloons start ramping up in speed and health and have minor changes. This is known as freeplay ramping, and is broken down into pretty much 3 parts: spawning, health ramping, and speed ramping.
Spawning
All ceramics become super ceramics, which have 6 times the outer layer health (60 HP instead of 10), meaning it will take 60 hits to pop the ceramic layer instead of 10. Also, all non-MOAB class bloons will only spawn 1 child. For example, a ceramic (which is now a super ceramic) will spawn 1 rainbow, which will spawn 1 zebra, etc.
Note that the money given from popping a super ceram is the same as popping a ceramic, since super cerams give extra cash.
Health Ramping
All MOAB-class bloons’ outer layer will scale based on the round.
Rounds 81-100: +2% HP per round
Rounds 101-124: +5% HP per round
Rounds 125-150: +15% HP per round
Rounds 151-250: +35% HP per round
Rounds 251-300: +15% HP per round
Rounds 301-400: +150% HP per round
Rounds 401-500: +250% HP per round
Rounds 501+: +500% HP per round
This means that a round 1000 BAD will take 59.8 million hits to pop, not even counting the insides. Yeah, good luck doing that without a boat paragon.
Note that the first occurrence of a BAD happens after health ramping starts. Thus, a BAD normally has 20k HP. But since it first appears on round 100, it will have 140% HP, which makes it actually has 28k HP.
Speed Ramping
All bloons will become 2% faster every round, except for some rounds where the speed increase just skips. Note that the one time skip does not include the per round 2% increase.
Rounds 81-100: +2% speed per round
Round 101: one time +18% speed
Round 151: one time +40% speed
Round 201: one time +50% speed
Round 252: one time +48% speed
Basically, here’s an example. At round 200, bloons will move at 398% their normal speed. Since round 201 gives a one time 50% speed boost along with the normal +2% per round, a bloon on round 201 will move at 450% the normal speed.
On the longest map, Logs, it takes the first DDT on round 90 about 19 seconds to make it from the entrance to the exit. However, a round 1000 DDT will make it through the entire map in approximately 0.91 seconds. Blink and you’ll miss it.