Half Cash

"Half starting cash, end of round cash, and all income generation. ALERT: also half from Cash Drop and Continue!"

- BTD6's Half Cash messagebox

Half Cash (Half Starting Cash before the 2.0 update) is a mode in Bloons TD 6. It is an unlockable add-on challenge for Hard mode, after completing Magic Monkeys Only and then Double HP MOABs.

In this mode all forms of income are halved, with no exceptions. Even Continues, Cash Drops and Thrives give only half their extra cash.

The reward for beating Half Cash on a particular map is equal to most other Hard Mode sub-modes, excluding Impoppable and CHIMPS which both have roughly 50% more Monkey Money reward.

Summary
Penny-pinch every dollar. Sacrifice early-game lives for a much more aggressive early-game and larger greed. Use the most effective defensive setups, and prepare to sell whenever necessary. It helps to utilize income generation sources despite the drastically reduced income, as this helps cushion the frequent selling that may be required. As for hero choice, use one that would work the best for both early-game and mid-game, preferably Benjamin for his cash and life regeneration as well as his trojan.

Tips

 * Bonus Monkey!, Mana Shield, Military Conscription, More Cash, Hero Favors, and Pre-Game Prep are among the important MK to possess for Half Cash. The early rounds can be dangerous without proper Monkey Knowledge, as the player is given very little money to pop the bloons, especially the grouped blue rush on round 4. Once these MK are available to use, most maps on Half Cash can be completed without Powers by starting the game with a combination of the free Dart Monkey and half-discount Sub.
 * Towers that generate Income and offensively attack bloons are recommended for this mode such as Lead/Rubber to Gold Alchemist, Bloon Trap Engineer or Merchantman.
 * Players should avoid Banana Farms due to being too expensive and having very slow repay rate before they pay themselves.
 * The only instance where Banana Farms are acceptable is when Monkey Banks are desired, since their interest rates are not affected by Half Cash. That being said, the player still needs to exercise caution as getting enough money to afford a Bank will be slow and the Bank will take time for the interest to ramp up. Should the player opt for this this strategy, they must always do so with the 03x crosspaths and in conjunction with Benjamin.
 * The player should try to utilize cheaper alternatives to viable towers. Some examples includes using Blade Maelstrom over M.O.A.R. Glaives or Recursive Cluster, MOAB Maulers over Fighter Planes, and using Artillery Battery with Bloon Buster over The Big One.
 * If necessary, using Insta-Monkeys can make beating the mode more trivial due to not costing any money. If using Insta-Monkeys to make the game easier, it is recommended to place them down at the start of the game on Round 3 and to only place one Insta-Monkey per game so as to minimize used Insta-Monkeys. Assuming that placing an Insta is necessary, choose an Insta that would help the most in a given situation, usually one that can counter many different types of bloons effectively. The best Insta to pick for Half Cash is generally a DPS-heavy tower such as a Tier 3 Super Monkey Insta.

Useful Heroes

 * Cheap, easily affordable heroes such as Quincy, Ezili & Sauda are very good heroes when needing reliable support.
 * Benjamin is among the best Heroes for Half Cash, due to his income, his life-healing, and his useful Trojan attacks (especially for beating the Round 40 MOAB). His Skimming passive ability at Level 4+ is particularly useful in preventing a potentially-deadly cash starve.
 * Obyn Greenfoot is also a viable option on harder maps due to his useful abilities for early-mid game.
 * Sauda can be an excellent choice on most Beginner and Intermediate maps (or easier Advanced maps like Cornfield) as you may be able to afford her on Round 5 already if you are willing to lose lives on R4 and have enough Monkey Knowledge, as she has high DPS (especially when buffed with Berserker Brew and Stronger Stimulant) and can deal with camo bloons up until Round 42 or even Round 51.
 * Pat Fusty and his Rallying Roar when combined with X-X-3 Sub can substitute a AP Darts one, this is useful when dealing with Round 40 MOAB.

Useful towers and upgrades

 * Monkey Sub with the Naval Upgrades MK is extremely helpful for the first few rounds, as it will have 3-pierce homing darts.
 * If paired with Benjamin, use 0-3-2 Triple Shot for Camos. Otherwise, 0-2-3 Crossbow is better, although 0-2-3 Crossbow has better range and pierce and works better along straight lines.
 * Use 0-3-0 MOAB Mauler as a cheap early MOAB popper, although the Round 40 MOAB should be easy to beat with Ben Level 7+ because the Ceramics would not spawn out. It is still handy to keep for future MOAB rounds, especially Round 54, Round 57, and Round 58. Have some backup defense for handling the Ceramics underneath, because MOAB Maulers aren't very effective versus Ceramics.
 * Use 3-0-2 Glaive Ricochet and 4-0-2 M.O.A.R. Glaives for beating grouped bloons, particularly for the middle mid-game (Rounds 50-59) to late mid-game (Rounds 60-80). A 2-0-2 Boomerang Monkey can also be valuable early game to clean up grouped bloons before Glaive Ricochet.
 * Use 0-2-0 Wall of Fire for cheap cleanup and 0-2-2 Wall of Fire for beating Camo Leads. It helps especially during the middle early-game and general mid-game.
 * Use 0-2-0 Counter-Espionage for stripping camo on Rounds 42 and 51, as well as a number of other rounds with spaced Camos. Utilize Camo Prioritization target priority.
 * If there is available water (or just use a Portable Lake if significant enough), use 2-0-2 Airburst Darts as cheap but effective early grouped popping power, 2-0-3 Triple Guns for cheap main popping power for mid-game, and 2-0-4 Armor Piercing Darts for effective MOAB-class popping power on late mid-game.
 * Berserker Brew and other Alchemist buffs may not likely be practically affordable until somewhere in mid-game, so don't rely on those too much, since most of the time of Half Cash you will most likely use multiple towers over one single powerful tower.
 * On easier maps, one single 0-0-0 Spike Factory may be very useful for tanking up a small number of potentially leaking bloons per round, especially around the early mid-game (Rounds 40-49) and middle mid-game (Rounds 50-59). In conjunction with Ben, Spike Factory can tank MOABs affected by his trojan.
 * A 0-4-2 buccaneer can be afforded by round 40 if nothing else is bought and with the right monkey knowledge. This is very tight so if too many bloons leak you will have to change your strategy.
 * A pair of 2-0-3 Neva-Miss Targeting Monkey Aces with Berserker Brew may prove to be useful as well between R41-70.
 * 2-0-4 Recursive Cluster is extremely effective at bloon cleanup, especially if bloons are clumped. Even a 2-0-3 Cluster Bombs has respectable popping power against grouped bloons.

Trivia

 * This gamemode previously used to be Half Starting Cash before update 2.0, where it was considered too trivial for Hard game setting and thus changed later.
 * Many have argued that Half Cash mode is harder than C.H.I.M.P.S., mostly because of the lack of income to build defenses that would be much easier to build in C.H.I.M.P.S.
 * Monkey Bank capacity has not been halved, even though its production rate is halved (specifically the additional money added per round but not the interest rate)