General Tips and Tricks

BTD5 is a great tower defense game that will give you hours and hours of fun. Here are some general tips to help you get started and familiarized with the game.

1. Rank up and unlock

In most tower defense games, you'll unlock stuff as you progress through the stages. BTD5 uses a Rank system instead where you'll gain experience as you destroy bloons and complete missions. Ranking up unlocks more tower, upgrades, missions, modes, and many more.

2. Permanent Upgrades

Unlike most tower defense games, BTD5 allows the players to spend cash or tokens to purchase permanent upgrades for their gameplay. Tokens are used in the Monkey Lab to purchase permanent upgrades that will apply to all towers. Cash can be spent on Specialty Buildings which provide permanent boost to their corresponding towers once activated. This should be your first priority in spending hard-earned rewards for completing missions since it will help you a lot in the long run.

3. Interim Save

This trick is very useful especially in the later rounds of a track, mission, or if you're in a middle of an Odyssey. In the game over screen, don't hit restart or exit. Just exit the whole game by closing it as you would normally close an application in your mobile device. This will create an interim save which will allow you to resume the last round you're playing. Take note that this is a temporary save only. If you start another mission, this interim save will be deleted and replaced with a new one with your new game.

4. Get the Monkey Village!

The Monkey Village is a support tower in the game that provides a myriad of bonuses such as increased attack speed, range, camo detection, popping power, etc to all towers placed within its range. Not only that, it also lowers the cost of towers placed within its range as well as their upgrades. The only catch is that the Monkey Village's effects doesn't stack with one another so don't bother placing them close together.

5. Get some extra income

Banana Farms are the cheapest and effective way of earning extra cash outside popping bloons and the extra income provided to you at the end of every round. Banana Farms generate bundles of bananas that you must tap in order to collect it; failing to do so will spoil the bananas and make them disappear. You can make as many banana farms as you want as long you have enough space and of course, if your towers are capable of handling the defense anyway. The game has other income-generating upgrades, such as the Monkey Village's 3-0 upgrade that doubles the income generated from popping bloons or the engineer's Bloon Trap skill. Extra income means more towers and more upgrades, and sure win!

6. Delay those bloons!

Having strong towers isn't the only way to win. Even if you have a lot of high-damaging towers, you can still be overwhelmed by extreme numbers and spawns. To deal with this, consider placing "delaying towers". These towers lack firepower but they excel in slowing down and delaying bloons. Ice Towers, Glue Gunners, and Bloonchippers belong to this category. Further upgrading them improves their capability in slowing down bloons and they can damage them as well. Place them near the spawn points, corners, and intersections for maximum effect!

7. Beware of special bloons!

Special bloons have special properties that makes them immune to some towers, forcing you to have a great diversity in your tower deployment. You need to learn how to deal with them and what particular round they usually appear, especially during special missions. The game offers a lot of options to deal with them. You can refer to SC's guide about special bloons and how to deal with them.

8. Camo, camo, camo

Speaking of special bloons, camo bloons are annoying since they can get past your defenses if you're not prepared for them. What's worse is that any bloon (outside MOAB-class bloons) can become camo, including the dreaded lead and ceramic ones. Only units with camo detection can take care of these sneaky bloons. The Ninja Monkey and Dartling Guns are the only towers in the game capable of attacking camo bloons without any upgrades. A 2-3 Dart Monkey is also a cheap and effective camo detecting unit, while a 1-2 Sniper Monkey is also a potent anti-camo unit with unlimited range but with slow rate of fire. Furthermore, a Monkey Village with 0-2 upgrade can provide camo detection to ALL towers within its range. A submerged Monkey Sub can remove the camo layer permanently as well as the blast from the Mortar Tower.

9. Combos

Consider which towers complement with each other and use them accordingly. Also, know what towers you should have together. One example is placing Dartling Guns and Banana Farms together. Dartling Guns follow the direction where you last tapped. Monkey Village works well with anything. Bloonchippers and Boomerang Throwers work well together. There are a lot of other good combos for you to try.

10. Special Agents

Use these guys wisely since they cost valuable Monkey Cash. They're great for keeping you out in a bind but they are only active in a single battle, meaning you'll lose them if you restart a map. (Consider using the interim save trick mentioned in #3). On the brighter side, using agents a certain number of times permanently unlocks their Pro version, which is basically the powered up version of the special agent.

11. Log in Daily even if you're not playing.

Daily rewards come in the form of cash. Even if you're not playing, getting free cash daily will help you a lot in the long run. And since no internet connection is required to claim your daily reward, you can just launch the game, collect the reward and go on with your daily routine.

12. Super Monkeys

This is the strongest tower in the game (Available at $3,500) is capable of handling almost every type of bloon. Make sure that you place it within the vicinity of an upgraded Monkey Village. It can also upgrade its range, allowing it to extend its reach almost anywhere in the map.