Crossbow

"Uses a long range Crossbow that can pop 3 layers of Bloon for every hit."

- In-game description

 is the third upgrade of Path 3 for the Dart Monkey in Bloons TD 6. It turns the Dart Monkey into a crossbow operator, exchanging darts for crossbow bolts. Each crossbow bolt pops 3 layers instead of 1, has 3 pierce instead of 2, and has increased projectile speed. Crossbow's range also increases from 48 to 56, equivalent to 75% more range than a 0-0-0 Dart Monkey.

It costs $530 on Easy, $625 on Medium, $675 on Hard, and $750 on Impoppable.

Appearance
A Crossbow Dart Monkey gains a purple eyeband and its wristbands change from red to purple. It gains a crossbow to fire from, and carries a small bandolier of darts.

Adding Path 2 crosspaths gives it a colored headband, while the Path 1 crosspaths gives it a colored tailband.

Costs

 * Updated as of Version 29.4

Summary
Crossbow excels at reducing the strength of stronger early-game bloons into groups of weaker bloons for a remarkably low price. It also has decent pierce and projectile speed. Optimize its high damage potential by setting on Strong and letting it attack along straightaways.

Tips

 * A 0-2-3 Crossbow is generally better than a 2-0-3. While the pierce bonuses from the top path allow the crossbow to pierce through 6 Bloons in a single shot (opposed to 3 without crosspathing), the 33% faster attack speed provided by the middle path far outweighs it in most situations. This is due to it not being able to make the most of its pierce in the majority of situations.
 * One Crossbow can be used to give other towers an easier time to pop Yellows, Pinks, Blacks, Whites, Purples, and Zebras on earlier rounds. Set it on Strong to let it chip away at the layers of those bloon types.
 * Crossbows have a tendency to miss bloons at the edge of their range, or when firing perpendicular to the bloons' movement. In order to maximize accuracy, try to set crossbows close to their most important targets when possible, and facing the bloons' movement head-on.

Trivia

 * During Version 6.0, multiple people have managed to spend less than $2000 to win Logs Deflation Mode using just Gwendolin and one 0-0-3 Crossbow.
 * The record is held by ISAB, at $1,465 on 10th December 2018, during Version 6.0. This did not change until Version 21.1 on 27th October 2020, where Gwen + 0-0-0 Dart + 1-1-0 Sniper was achieved.