Druid of the Jungle

"Calls a vine from the ground to entangle and crush Bloons one at a time, leaving behind a deadly thorn pile."

- BTD6 Description

The Druid of the Jungle is the third upgrade of Path 2 of the Druid in BTD6. It gives the Druid a new vine attack, which appears from the ground and will grab one non-MOAB Bloon anywhere on the map, immobilizing it and draining its layers until it fully popped. Once fully popped, an "after-vine" is placed at the location where the bloon was popped. This spiky vine pops any type of bloon, has 2 projectile size and deals 1 per 0.3s contact damage, similar to Wall of Fire, onto up to 30 bloons per contact tick, and lasts up to 4.5 seconds on the bloon track. Spiky vines also degrow bloons thanks to the previous Heart of Oak upgrade.

The vine attack will only be able to attack another Bloon once the original is fully popped. The stronger the bloons are, the longer it takes to get rid of them. It attacks every 1.4s at minimum, longer if the bloon hasn't yet fully destroyed. Vines are able to target any type of bloon including Lead and Purple Bloons, but not Camo without support.

Level 5+ Obyn Greenfoot also gives +20% range for all Druids of the Jungle and their subsequent upgrades.

It costs $805 on Easy, $950 on Medium, $1,025 on Hard, and $1,140 on Impoppable.

Appearance
Druid of the Jungle wears a green long-sleeve cloak with golden yellow rims at the sleeves. The Druid receives an olive-colored wreath with leaves. Wrapped around the Druid are multiple spiky vines, crossing over the monkey's body diagonally across from each waist and towards each opposing shoulder.

On the upgrade portrait, the Druid of the Jungle appears to be magically interacting with nature using spiritual force. Vines appear to grow upward as a result.

Costs

 * Updated as of Version 30.2

Summary
The main virtue of Druid of the Jungle comes from its instakills versus Ceramics via its vines. It is quite slow however, so they are not able to handle too many Ceramics at once. The secondary vines spawned from popped bloons can chip out more damage, similarly to Wall of Fire, but can be unreliable. Overall, it performs strongly on earlier rounds, but falls back greatly once Super Ceramics rise. Their main selling point is their incredible early-game and mid-game popping power, particularly on single-lane maps such as Geared and alternating lane maps such as Bazaar and Bloody Puddles.

Tips

 * The Druid does not need line-of-sight to target bloons with its vine attack.
 * The vine attack always uses Strong targeting; as such, the Druid can be assigned other targeting options for its other attacks without "wasting" the vine.
 * It can be used against Ceramic Bloons from MOABs as they will instantly nullify their threat.
 * In large groups, these Druids are extremely powerful and can even remove the threats of heavy Ceramic rushes such as Round 63 and Round 76.
 * The vine will only attack another target once the original has been popped.
 * Attack speed buffs have no effect on the attack speed of this upgrade, rather its attack speed is dependent on what Bloon the tower is attacking and how long it takes to destroy that bloon.
 * The tower spends (√rbe + 2 (if the bloon is lead) + 1)/4 seconds destroying a bloon, with the base cooldown being 1.4s.
 * Zebra Bloons trapped by the instakill vines take barely more time than the instakill vines' base cooldown of 1.4s, at 1.4489s.
 * 0-3-0 can be used to neutralize Round 76, as its degrow vine can hit a Regrow Ceramic and then cause a chain degrowth of Regrow Ceramics.

Trivia

 * If the last Bloon left is grabbed by a vine, the round will end automatically.
 * This is due to the fact that the grabbed bloon is treated by the game as popped, there is simply an animation to remove it from the screen, similar to that of Monkey Pirates.
 * This is one of the few upgrades that can instantly destroy a Test Bloon. The others being Obyn Greenfoot's Wall of Trees, Bomb Blitz, Legend of the Night, Engineer Monkey's all Bloon Traps (even rewards $0) and Bloon Master Alchemist.
 * A bug in update 8.0 allowed Druid of the Jungle nearby Striker Jones with Level 9+ to instakill MOAB-class bloons, including the BAD, to reveal the children bloons. It was fixed in update 8.1.
 * Psi's instakilling concept is similar to Druid of the Jungle, and Psi's instakilling of blimps may have been inspired by the Version 8.0 bug when interacting Striker Jones with Druid of the Jungle.
 * The Druid's vines are visible on its Insta-monkey Icon, despite not being a part of the tower's base model.
 * Popping a bloon with the Druid's instakill vines will still produce a normal pop sound and visual effects, regardless of what type of bloon pop effect from the Trophy Store is enabled.
 * If crosspathed with Path 1, the Druid of the Jungle will not perform its "plucking" animation when using the vine attack. This oddity carries over to the Jungle's Bounty upgrade, but not Spirit of the Forest.