Ice Monkey (BTD6)

"Pops and freezes nearby Bloons for a short time. Frozen Bloons are immune to sharp damage. Can't freeze White, Zebra, or Lead Bloons."

- In-game Description

Ice Monkey is a Primary-class tower in Bloons TD 6. The tower retains its role from the Bloons TD 4, 5, and Classic game generations, but has changed its name from "Ice Tower" along with other significant changes (though the tower was actually called Ice Tower in Bloons Monkey City). Like most Primary Monkeys, the Ice Monkey was featured in a teaser prior to the game's release.

It has short range (20 units, putting it behind the tack shooter's 23), and its attack can freeze and pop bloons. The tower is weak against White Bloons and Zebra Bloons. It is the slowest of the base towers, clapping out a wave of coldness every 2.4s, but possesses among the highest pierce of them all, freezing up to 40 bloons per freeze. Cold power improves with various upgrades.

It costs $425 on Easy, $500 on Medium, $540 on Hard, and $600 on Impoppable.

Description
The Ice Monkey was formerly known as the Ice Tower in its prequel. The differences is that it now can pop bloons as a base tower, as if it always had Snap Freeze. However, alongside already not being able to pop White and Zebra Bloons by default, it cannot freeze or pop Lead Bloons without the Cold Snap upgrade. Also, it no longer has infinite pierce, having only 40 pierce as a base tower. But because it can now pops bloons as a base tower, it costs $425 on Easy, $500 on Medium, $540 on Hard, and $600 on Impoppable.

Path 1 is focused mostly upon brittling the bloons, making them as vulnerable by cold as possible. Permafrost slows down bloons by 50%, thereby making them more vulnerable to other towers due to the slower speeds of affected bloons. Cold Snap allows Leads to become affected by all attacks by the Ice Monkey. Ice Shards causes affected bloons to spawn deadly ice shards that create a chain reaction of ice shards if popped by another tower. Further Path 1 upgrades expand to increasing vulnerability of affected bloons; Embrittlement brittles affected bloons to take extra damage while frozen, while Super Brittle causes affected bloons to take even more extra damage while affected and even affects non-BAD MOAB-class Bloons.

Path 2 is focused more upon increasing the area effectiveness of the cold. Enhanced Freeze becomes an upgrade that both increases freeze time for affected bloons and increases attack speed of the Ice Monkey. Deep Freeze allows two layers to be soaked in cold instead of one. Arctic Wind will slow all bloons up to Ceramic down by 50%, increasing pierce while simultaneously allowing non-water towers to become placed nearby the Ice Monkey. Snowstorm increases the radial Arctic Wind effect and freeze coverage, along with an ability that freezes all bloons on screen briefly. Absolute Zero further increases the freeze range, increasing Arctic Wind effect to a 60% slow down, increasing pierce again, along with enhancing the main ability's freeze effects. When placed near water, an Ice Monkey with level 4 or above in this path allows other land-based monkeys to be placed offshore. A small ice sheet will appear underneath the monkey once placed.

Path 3 is focused more upon increasing the blast effects of the Ice Monkey. The first two upgrades, Larger Radius and Re-Freeze, focus on increasing range and allowing re-freezing of already frozen bloons, respectively. The further upgrades, Cryo Cannon, Icicles and Icicle Impale, are focused upon modifying the Ice Monkey into a projectile-based attack tower. Cryo Cannon changes the Ice Monkey to shoot iceballs instead of creating radial ice attacks. Icicles adds sharp icicles on affected bloons that act as Road Spikes. Icicle Impale allows the Ice Monkey to attack and slow MOAB-class bloons.

Target Priorities
The base Ice Monkey lacks the option to change targeting due to its zone-type main attack style, and is locked onto Close. Cryo Cannon, however, gains basic target priorities, losing its zone-type attack style in exchange for a straight movement projectile-shooting attack style, and defaults to First upon upgrading. For Cryo and above, the target priorities are as follows:

Snowstorm and Absolute Zero abilities have no set targeting due to their true infinite pierce and whole screen effects.

Monkey Knowledge
This section displays Monkey Knowledge that has effects on Ice Monkey and its changes when compared to one by default:
 * IcyChillIcon.png Icy Chill: Freeze radius slightly increased.
 * Base radius increased from x → x+3.
 * SoColdIcon.png So... Cold...: Ice Monkey's Permafrost upgrade slows by 60%.
 * Increases effect from 50% to 60%.
 * BigCryoBlastIcon.png Big Cryo Blast: Cryo Cannon gets increase blast radius.
 * Increases blast radius by approximately +5.
 * HypothermiaIcon.png Hypothermia: Snowstorm freezes Bloons for longer.
 * Snowstorm ability freezes bloons for 1 second longer. Also affects Absolute Zero and its global Ice Monkey buff.
 * ComeOnEverybodyIcon.png Come On Everybody!: Primary towers attack 5% faster if all are below tier 3, and cost 5% less if all are tier 3 or 4.
 * 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%.

Sounds
When attacking:
 * [Freezing]
 * [Freezing]
 * [Freezing]
 * [Freezing]
 * [Freezing]

Trivia

 * In BTD6, the unupgraded Ice Monkey has less range than an unupgraded Tack Shooter, meaning it has the smallest range out of all of the towers in the game, other than towers whose radius is purely for the sake of displaying a particular tower such as the Sniper Monkey, Monkey Ace landing bases, and Heli Pilot helipads.
 * One of the Ice Monkey freeze blast sound effects is similar to one of the fruit quench sounds when slicing fruit in the game Fruit Ninja.
 * When idle, Ice Monkeys will either scratch their butt or juggle snowballs. Ice Monkeys with at least Ice Shards, Snowstorm, or Cryo Cannon have different idle animations.
 * According to Ninja Kiwi's 3rd September 2021 blog, they do not wish to express lore about how Ice Monkeys originate.