Bloonarius the Inflator (BTD6)

"Sludge-dwelling Bloonarius spews Bloons as it takes damage then disgorges massive Bloon clusters when each skull on the health bar is reached. Bloonarius' sludge infused husk makes it slow but extremely tough."

- BTD6 Description

Bloonarius the Inflator is a Boss Bloon introduced to Bloons TD 6 since the 27.0 update. It retains its name and role from Bloons Monkey City, with significant gameplay additions. Bloonarius is a swamp-dwelling MOAB-class bloon with massive health, slow speed, and the ability to spawn clusters of sludgy Bloonarius Minions.

Bloonarius has a Normal and Elite version which are playable in their respective modes during the same Boss Bloon Event. The Normal and Elite versions each have five tiers which appear on rounds 40, 60, 80, 100 and 120, with increasing health, and more difficult minion spawns. Bloonarius' health bar is divided by equidistant "skulls." When each skull on the health bar is reached, a swarm of minions is released.

Destroying Bloonarius will award a number of trophies, insta-monkeys, and powers, and medals based on the version and tier defeated.

Visual Description
Bloonarius is a large MOAB-class bloon with green and orange bands encircling its hull. The most prominent feature of Bloonarius is its large propeller and vortex nosecone placed over a cavity in the body. Later tiers include barnacles on top, and gooey algae at bottom.

Elite
Bloonarius now has darker appearance with darker green and red bands, has more punk-like appearance, has large jagged sides resembling a predatory mouth. Later tiers include side purple fins, 4-bladed propeller and Tier 5 showing a menacing orange and red eyes with target pattern.

Playing Bloonarius
Bloonarius can be found in Boss Bloon Events, which requires a minimum of Rank 20 to access events including Boss Events. If Bloonarius is the boss selected for that week, then from Saturday 8:00 PM NZT to the next Thursday 4:00 PM NZT, the Boss Bloon icon will appear on the main menu screen. Click the button to access the Boss Event page. At first the Normal Bloonarius will be unlocked. Defeating all five tiers of Normal Bloonarius will unlock the Elite Version.

Bloonarius spawns in a swampy region of the map marked by green mushroom growth. Likewise, the Bloonarius minions are covered in a slimy substance. There is a HUD for how many rounds left Bloonarius is yet to come. Once ready, Bloonarius will flop down to the screen and start its tedious journey to the end of the map. Upon death, the Boss Bloon gives off a large green explosion.

Properties
Bloonarius has extremely high HP, very slow speed, and the ability to spawn Bloons. Bloonarius moves at 5% the speed of a Red Bloon (or ~28% of a BAD) at Tiers 1-3, and 6% of a Red Bloon for Tiers 4 and 5. These speeds are not affected by Freeplay Speed Ramping. For every 1% Health of damage that is incurred, Bloonarius will spawn out various Bloonarius Minions onto the track. Upon its health reaching a skull threshold, a rush of much stronger bloons will be sent. Bloonarius Minions function identical to regular bloons, with the exception of not giving any money when popped or collected.

Bloonarius always spawns at the location marked by a clump of glowing green mushrooms, around 1/50 of the track length into the track. Where there are multiple lanes on a map (e.g. Encrypted, Bazaar), Bloonarius chooses the first available path. If there is a blimp-only lane available (e.g. Quiet Street, Cargo, Workshop), Bloonarius will guarantee to spawn from that lane. On maps that have special lanes, such as Bloonarius Prime, Bloonarius will take a special path that integrates both lanes.

The normal bloon spawns on each Bloonarius spawn round are modified. Round 40 has 6 Ceramics (as opposed to 1 MOAB), round 60 has 6 MOABs, 80 has 6 BFBs and 100 has 18 DDTs and 12 ZOMGs.

Immunities

 * Bloonarius (& its siblings) have the same immunities as BADs (Stuns, Slowness, Knockback & Instapops).
 * Immune to all forms of percentage damage and instant health reduction (i.e. MOAB Hex, Big Bloon Sabotage, and the Grand Saboteur ability).
 * Immune to Legend of the Night black hole passive ability, meaning that leaking to Bloonarius will always result in a game over.
 * Immune to Navarch of the Seas' hook ability.

Health
This applies for normal Bloonarius. For information about Elite Bloonarius, see below.

The formula for finding the RBE is as follows: Blimp Health + (RBE of Bloons sent on skull x3) + (RBE of Scattered bloons x100) = Total Theoretical RBE Boss Health in co-op scales with number of players. Each additional player increases the Boss health by 20%, up to 60%.

Bloon Swarms
This applies for normal Bloonarius. For information about Elite Bloonarius, see.

Elite Bloonarius
Elite Bloonarius is a much stronger version of Normal Bloonarius. Most properties remain identical, save for the higher HP, stronger bloons spawns at both its normal sends and skull sends, and 7 skull divisions instead of 3.

Refer to the below tables for its health and summoned swarms.

Elite Health
Boss Health in co-op scales with number of players. Each additional player increases the Boss health by 20%, up to 60%.

Rewards
Bloonarius and its Elite variant have 5 tiers each. Beating the boss at each tier rewards Monkey Money, plus higher rewards upon beating higher tiers. Starting from Tier 3, Trophies can be earned. Beating the final tier automatically wins the game, provided the player finishes the current round, and rewards the highest tier prize plus a special badge. Beating normal Tier 5 Bloonarius during the current event rewards the standard Bloonarius badge, while beating Tier 5 Elite Bloonarius after beating the current standard Bloonarius will additionally reward an Elite Bloonarius badge.

Refer to Boss Bloon Event/BTD6 for further details.

Strategy
Beating Bloonarius will require a combination of intense farming and avaricious buffing of high-damage towers. This generally entails dedicating resources to early game farming, while also balancing the high damage needs of Tier 1 Bloonarius. In the later tiers, towers like the Vengeful True Sun God, M.A.D and Paragons are necessary to meet the high damage per second needs. Though the slow speed of Boss Bloons work in favor of the player, the Bloon sends can quickly overwhelm a defense, especially when spawned close to the exit. For a more thorough discussion of how to defeat Bloonarius, click here.

Video Guides
Ranked Bloonarius Normal



Ranked Bloonarius Elite



Bugs
None so far
 * Current


 * Patched
 * [28.3.4683] Leaving the game after some time of gameplay and then clicking on "Start Boss Event" will crash the game, so it's recommended to leave and re-enter an entire Boss Menu before re-entering the game. Possibly patched later on.

Sounds

 * This section is incomplete due to the lack of a sound. You can help by expanding it.

When Bloonarius summons:


 * [deep whispery gasp]

When Bloonarius spews out its Skull Health:
 * [deep exhalation]

When Bloonarius is defeated:
 * [exploding and deep moaning]

Quotes
"New Boss Bloon Event! Face off against the mighty hulk known as Bloonarius the Inflator!"

- Ninja Kiwi, Version 27.0 patch notes

Trivia

 * Bloonarius returned after a 4 week absence (replaced by Lych) on Week 17 of the Boss Bloon Event.
 * Due to Freeplay XP reduction not taking effect on rounds past 100, beating Tier 5 each time will award around 380k XP (Round 121), with 438k XP being easily achieved by taking more time to defeat the boss (Round 129).
 * By the use of modding, it is possible to see Bloonarius interacting with Dark Castle and X Factor. It shrinks when entering the castle like other MOAB-class Bloons, or turns incredibly small on the other map.
 * Bloonarius in BTD6 can simultaneously be the slowest and toughest bloon in the entire BTD series. It moves about 5-6% of the speed of a Red Bloon, and can have up to 64 million HP. Bloonarius at this HP is over 6 times as tough as the Test Bloon (which has 10 million HP).
 * Elite Bloonarius tier 5 is about as tough as round 200: the boss has over 30 times as much HP (40M vs 1.2M in singleplayer) while moving ~17 times slower than a round 200 fortified BAD (~1x red bloon speed).
 * Each tier / version of Bloonarius have different appearances, with the next tier adding or changing parts of the boss, check Bloonarius the Inflator (BTD6)/Gallery to see all of them.
 * The glow effect from Tier 5 Normal and all Elite Tiers is purely cosmetic, not affecting its resistances.
 * Regardless of Trophy Store skins for any bloon type, all bloons sent by Bloonarius will guarantee to use a "slimy" visual skin on top of a normal visual appearance for both bloons and blimps.
 * The Ascended Shadow is theoretically very good against this boss. The Card Bomb attack at Degree 1 deals 96,000 damage, which is enough to one-shot Tier 2 Normal and Tier 1 Elite Bloonarius. The Degree 100 bomb attack deals ~384,000 damage, which is enough to one-shot those tiers and one higher. The biggest downside is that it is impossible to get this Paragon to the substantial level mentioned without mods or hacks.
 * Tier 5 Normal Bloonarius' death explosion animation appears to be a very large green explosion with a large shockwave and green splats of green liquid across many sides. Most of the explosion is fully green except for parts of the explosion cloud. This also applies to Elite Bloonarius.
 * Beating Tier 1-4 on either Bloonarius event lead to a much smaller explosion, as if the game is suggesting the boss isn't actually defeated.
 * The HP ratio between Elite and Normal increases for each tier, being 2.5x, 4x, ~5.71x, ~10.66x and ~13.33x, for tiers 1 to 5 respectively.

Cultural references

 * The design of Bloonarius takes inspiration from that of a Stipa-Caproni, an early Italian experimental aircraft. In particular, the aircraft's wide "mouth", front propeller, and thick body are similar to the physical features of Bloonarius.

Ninja Kiwi Blogs

 * According to Ninja Kiwi's 30th July 2021 blog, Bloonarius can increase the population of the Bloons, although not substantially.
 * According to Ninja Kiwi's September 2nd 2021 blog, Bloonarius has the power to create local rainstorm systems, hence the rainstorms in Boss Events with him in it. It is believed by Ninja Kiwi that Bloonarius uses this particular weather superpower for dramatic effect.
 * As featured on Ninja Kiwi's October 1st 2021 blog, some stats for Bloonarius were publicly released. While the win rate for Tier 1 Bloonarius vs Elite Bloonarius were fairly similar, Tier 3 had the biggest difference, and Tier 5 Elite Bloonarius had the worst win rate. As for total attempts, Elite Bloonarius went just over 4M attempts, while normal Bloonarius had over 11.3M attempts.