Hot Shot


 * Not to be confused with Hot Shots, an upgrade for the Tack Shooter.

"Burning hot grape shot can pop Lead Bloons and set Bloons on fire."

- In-game description

 is the Tier 2 upgrade of Path 2 for the Monkey Buccaneer in Bloons TD 6. It allows the Buccaneer to shoot flaming grapes that can pop Frozen and Lead Bloons, but not Purples. The grapes also cause a damage-over-time effect similar to the Mortar Monkey's Burny Stuff upgrade; this does 1 damage per 1.5 seconds for 3 seconds.

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

Appearance
After buying this upgrade, the grapes shot will be on fire. Crosspaths do not affect the appearance of the grapes, though Destroyer and Aircraft Carrier will have their purple trims recolored to orange.

Summary
Hot Shot can be a useful upgrade to Grape Shot for popping Lead Bloons early on, and the extra damage is also helpful. A 0-2-2 Buccaneer is also useful for popping Camo Lead. As for 2-2-0, it has similar benefits to 2-1-0 except can handle rounds with Leads and deal slightly more damage overall.

Tips

 * A 2-2-0 Buccaneer has very good popping power, especially early on, for a decently low price. The Double Shot upgrade not only doubles the dart volleys, but the grape shots too.
 * Purchasing Hot Shots is very handy as a crosspath for Merchantmen, as it makes them useful at popping Camo Leads and most bloons between Rounds 20-30 on their own, given slight support from other towers.
 * The burn effect from grapes cannot stack (i.e. If a Hot Shot grape hits a bloon already on fire, it will not gain any extra damage from the burn effect). Therefore, often just one Hot Shot upgrade is enough if desiring the burn effect.

Trivia

 * This upgrade is most likely based on the BTD4 and BTD5 premium upgrade Dreadnought.
 * This is one of a handful of upgrades that enables towers to burn bloons in BTD6.
 * The others are Burny Stuff, Spiked Mines, Gwendolin's level 6 upgrade, Dragon's Breath and by extension Archmage, Inferno Ring's meteor explosion, and MOAB Domination.
 * The grapes from Hot Shot cannot pop Purples even though the grapes visually appear to be literally purple grapes with flames. This is contrary to other upgrades such as White Hot Spikes or the Tack Shooter's Hot Shots upgrade.
 * They can still ignite the Purple Bloon.
 * A hot shot is an actual military weapon.
 * According to Ninja Kiwi's 18th March 2022 blog, Monkey Buccaneers don't eat Hot Shot grapes but they do eat Grape Shot grapes.