Alchemist

"Harnessing powers of science and magic, splashes Bloons with acid, also brews various potions with different effects."

- In-game description

The  is a Magic Class tower that first appeared in Bloons TD 6. It throws potions that slowly deal damage to Bloons over time, similar to Corrosive Glue, just without the slow effect. It cannot detect Camo Bloons without aid from other towers. The Alchemist can be upgraded to generate additional income from Bloons or to support nearby monkeys, allowing them to pop Lead Bloons and do extra damage to M.O.A.B. Class Bloons. The Alchemist by itself is relatively weak and generally relies on other monkeys to truly utilize its power. Note that he can reapply his acid, refreshing the damage amount. Due to the fact that the potions can be lobbed over obstacles, the tower is able to ignore Line of Sight, and it is currently one of five non-moving towers to do so, the others being Spike Factory, Mortar Monkey, Super Monkey (Sun Temple and above), and Wizard Monkey (Guided Magic and above).

It costs $465 on Easy, $550 on Medium, $595 on Hard, and $660 on Impoppable.

Description
The Alchemist, like most other towers, has the appearance of a monkey, despite not having "Monkey" in the name. It wears a purple buttonless overcoat with a yellow rim and with its sleeves rolled up. It also has a pair of goggles with pink-tinted lenses and gold frames, attached by a brown strap. Strangely, the goggles are never worn directly over the Alchemist's eyes except for the Bloon Master Alchemist (x/x/5) and Unstable Concoction (x/3/x). It carries a round-bottom flask filled with red acid. In the artwork, the flask does not appear to be capped.

Alchemist Buffs

 * See also: Alchemist Brewing Strategy

Starting from the Alchemist's Acidic Mixture Dip upgrade, the Alchemist can support other towers with its own special support potions, referred to as "Alch buffs". Alch buffs are a unique aspect of the Alchemist that makes it so unique in Bloons TD 6, as many of the upgrades that add Alch buffs are cheap but provide effective buffs for towers it applies its potions to.

Most Alch buffs are operated on a per-shot basis, meaning that the buffs will wear out after a certain number of shots are made by the tower. "Shots" are determined by the number of separate attacks a tower makes, regardless of how many projectiles are produced from each attack. As a result, a slow but multi-projectile tower such as Tack Sprayer will retain Alch buffs much better than a fast-attacking multi-attack tower such as Robo Monkey.

Acidic Mixture Dip allows all towers to deal +1 damage to Ceramics and MOAB-class and deal damage to Lead Bloons. While cheap, the Acidic Mixture Dip buff can greatly improve the potential for towers to handle Ceramics and MOAB-class bloons more reliably and deal with Leads effectively. Acidic Mixture Dip can stack as many times as possible to increase the numbers of shots required for a tower to wear off the Acidic Mixture Dip effect. Even if Acidic Mixture Dip wears off, it will come back again at any time provided that any Alchemist capable of this type of buff can re-apply again to that tower.

Berserker Brew and Stronger Stimulant are two separate brews that work independently from Acidic Mixture Dip. The brew from Berserker Brew is a type of buff that increases the affected tower's damage, attack speed, range, and pierce for a limited time. The brew will last for up to 5 seconds (6 with Perishing Potions) or 25 shots (35 with Perishing Potions), whichever comes first. If the tower completely wears off the buff before the buff timer expires, the tower cannot get any brew buff again for a maximum of 5 seconds from the start of gaining the brew buff. Stronger Stimulant is simply a stronger version of Berserker Brew that lasts longer, lasts more shots, and adds even more attack speed, range, and pierce.

Permanent Brew is the ultimate Alch buff, which improves the Stronger Stimulant's brew and acid buffs to become permanent for as long as the Permanent Brew Alchemist is on screen. While it does not sound powerful on first glance, it is very strong but quite expensive. In fact, the most powerful aspect of this Alchemist is that its buffs essentially act as a permanent +1 damage and +1 Ceramic and MOAB-class damage, on top of other bonus basic stats, and the Permanent Brew Alchemist can affect as many towers as possible within range, given enough time.

Upgrades
Path 1 focuses on buffing towers, increasing their stats. Starting at increasing potion size, then Acidic Mixture Dip to give towers lead popping and bonus damage to Ceramics and M.O.A.B Class Bloons. Then Berserker Brew which increases multiple stats, Stronger Stimulant, and finally a permanent version of stronger stimulant.

Path 2 focuses on dealing more damage. Starting at increasing acid quality, then Perishing Potions to increase the potion damage to MOAB-class bloons and strip off Fortified properties, then Unstable Concoction, which coats MOAB-class Bloons with an explosive substance, followed by Transforming Tonic, which transforms the Alchemist into a laser shooting attack monster, and finally a version of transforming tonic which turns 5 other monkeys into laser shooting attack monsters.

Path 3 is quite mixed. The first two upgrades support the tower in damage efficiency and attack speed. However, starting from the third upgrade, Lead to Gold gives extra damage to Lead-property bloons and turns Lead Bloons into a considerable amount of extra money when popped. Rubber to Gold, further increases money by turning any non-MOAB Class Bloons into gold. However, the final upgrade, Bloon Master Alchemist's mega-shrink potions eventually convert any non-BAD Bloons to measly Red Bloons and leaving a major loss of money.

Monkey Knowledge
This section displays Monkey Knowledge that has effects on Alchemist and its changes when compared to one by default:
 * HotMagicIcon.png Hot Magic: All Magic type towers can pop Frozen Bloons.
 * SpeedyBrewingIcon.png Speedy Brewing: Increases attack speed of Alchemist by 5%.
 * StrongTonicIcon.png Strong Tonic: Transforming Tonic lasts longer.
 * Increases duration from 20 seconds to 24 seconds. Also applies to Total Transformation.
 * AcidStabilityIcon.png Acid Stability: Alchemists' acid pools last 5 second longer.
 * Acid pools now lasts 12 seconds each instead of 7.
 * MonkeyEducationIcon.png Monkey Education: All Monkeys XP earn rate increased by 8%.
 * BetterSellDealsIcon.png Better Sell Deals: All Monkeys sell for 5% more.
 * Increases sell potency from 70% to 75%.
 * VeteranMonkeyTrainingIcon.png Veteran Monkey Training: All Monkeys reload time reduced by 3%.
 * GlobalAbilityCooldownsIcon.png Global Ability Cooldowns: All Ability cooldowns for all Monkeys reduced by 3%.

Version History

 * 1.0
 * Release

Trivia

 * The Lead to Gold upgrade may be a reference to an old medieval myth where court alchemists were trying to find a way to turn base metals into gold.
 * The Alchemist CANNOT affect other alchemists with its buffing effects, such as Acidic Mixture Dip or Berserker Brew.
 * The Rubber to Gold upgrade can turn Ceramic Bloons into Gold, which should technically be impossible since they are made of clay, not rubber.
 * However, the description says all "bloons", and the Ceramic is a bloon.
 * The Alchemist is one of four towers whose name consists of only one word, the others being Druid, Bloonchipper, and COBRA.
 * In BTD2, the Boomerang Monkey was called Boomerang.
 * Although ice and glue can be removed by tornadoes, the potions from Alchemist cannot.
 * The concept of the Alchemist is likely inspired by the Alchemist in the popularized fan-made game Bloons TD X, although the functionalities of Alchemist in BTD6 are less offense-based and more support-based.