Fortified Bloon

"What's this? The Bloons have extra armor making them even tougher to pop!"

- Round 45 in Bloons TD 6

"Bloons with metal bands round them have been fortified. They'll take twice as much damage to pop"

- Cuber's loading screen tips, BATTD

Fortified Bloons (also called Armored Bloons, Banded Bloons, or Reinforced Bloons by players) are a type of bloon that wields armor, allowing them to take more damage from attacks before their current layer is popped; this makes them considerably harder to pop. This status was first introduced in Bloons TD 6, and can be also seen in Bloons Adventure Time TD and Bloons Pop!. In BTD6, Fortified Bloons first appear on Round 45, starting with Fortified Leads. Fortified Ceramics first appear on the succeeding round, Round 46.

The Fortified ability can be simultaneously combined with both the Camo and Regrowth properties on a given bloon. In BTD6 and BATTD, the Fortified ability can be applied only to Lead Bloons, Golden Bloons, Ceramic Bloons, and MOAB-Class Bloons. However, in Bloons Pop!, the Fortified property can exist on any type of Bloon. The fact that MOAB-Class Bloons can have the Fortified property can cause them to be notoriously dangerous, especially when they appear in large rushes, such as on Round 98 in BTD6. For MOAB-Class Bloons, the Fortified status also applies to its children until its Fortified Ceramic Bloons are popped. Fortunately, for standard bloons, the Fortified status only applies to a bloon's outermost layer (e.g. if players pop a Fortified Lead Bloon, then the children Black Bloons that it spawns will not be Fortified).

Health gained with Fortified Bloons differs depending on version of the game.

Bloons TD 6
Fortified Bloons were first introduced in Bloons TD 6. In this game, only Leads, Ceramics, and MOAB-class can have this property. These bloons will have double (or quadruple for Leads) health compared to normal.

Bloons Adventure Time TD
Previously applying for all bloon layers including MOAB-class, it was later limited to Leads, Ceramics, and MOAB-class. In this game, Leads have dectuple (10x) health instead of quadruple (4x) in BTD6.

Bloons Pop!
"Fortified Bloons coming! Looks like any Bloon can be Fortified, so you'll have do [sic] even more damage to pop them."

- Patch's warning about Fortified Bloons

"Reinforced bands around any Bloon color"

- Short description

In Bloons Pop!, Fortified Bloons appear on the outer layer of any bloon except MOAB-class bloons. When given Fortified properties, these bloons will have +3 health (including Ceramics). Simply hitting a bloon with Fortified will not register as a pop unless fully broken, but damaging the layer will count towards point combos. This means the fortification layer must be completely damaged in any number of hits before the bloon pops into a weaker bloon. Attacks that deal multiple damage such as Sniper Monkeys will use up part of its damage on breaking the fortified layer (e.g. Sniper Monkey's bullet dealing 6 damage will pop a full-health Fortified Black into a normal Yellow, as the 4 health of a full Fortified Black layer will be fully destroyed in one shot, leaving 2 spare damage which will then damage the bloon as normal). Fortification is only ever part of the bloon's outer layer in this game, and therefore will never appear underneath descendants of other bloons.

Bloons TD Battles 2
In Bloons TD Battles 2, Fortified Bloons can be sent starting from Round 18. Adding fortified variants to Leads, Ceramics, and MOAB-class costs twice as much but does not adjust eco gain/loss.

Fortified Health (BTD6 and BATTD)
 * excludes freeplay health ramping.

If the Fortified Lead/Ceramic Bloon also has the Regrowth property, the children will not be Fortified when they regrow back into the parent bloon (e.g. Regrowth Rainbows from a Fortified Regrowth Ceramic will never regrow their parent's Fortified property.)

Leaking Fortified Bloons (except Golden Bloons, which costs no lives) also causes extra lives to be lost (e.g. leaking a normal Lead costs 23 lives, while leaking a Fortified Lead costs 26 lives.)

Fortified Health (BP)
In Bloons Pop!, all Fortified Bloons have +3 health. Only the direct outer layer receives fortification. Bloons with the Fortified property require damage of the appropriate damage type (i.e. a Fortified Purple cannot be damaged by a Wizard Monkey, a Fortified Black cannot be damaged by a Bomb Shooter, etc.)

BTD6
To combat the Fortified property players can use some of the following tower options:

Note: ZOMGs and BADs are immune to being stripped of fortified property; for DDTs, only Blooncineration (x-x-5 Mortar Monkey) can remove their fortification.


 * x-2-x Alchemist to take down the armor from Leads and Ceramics (doesn't work on MOAB Class bloons). They can also deal big damage to Fortified MOAB-class bloons.
 * Ezili is capable of removing all special effects, including Fortified, from non-MOAB Class bloons with her regular attack from level 9 onwards.
 * x-x-4 Mortar Monkey to remove fortified properties from bloons up to BFBs.
 * x-x-5 Mortar Monkey to remove fortified properties from bloons up to BFBs and DDTs.
 * Specific upgrades that deal extra damage towards Fortified Bloons, such as Spiked Balls or Heavy Shells.
 * Glue Gunners to slow them down, allowing other towers to pop them easier.
 * x-x-1 Super Monkeys slow down Fortified Ceramics by a large amount while dealing good damage to them. Dark Knight can almost permastall Fortified Ceramics as long as the blades keep touching them, while Dark Champion allows a full permastall.
 * 3-x-x Spike Factory (Spiked Balls) to do extra damage to Fortified Bloons, especially Fortified Ceramic Bloons
 * x-3-x Mortar Monkey (Heavy Shells) to deal extra explosive damage to Fortified Bloons, especially Fortified Ceramic Bloons. Same applies for Pop and Awe, which deals even more damage to Fortified.
 * Special tactical or Monkey Knowledge upgrades that can damage Fortified Bloons, such as Weak Point.
 * Ninja Monkeys with Distraction upgrade, allowing Fortified Ceramics to be pushed back easily.
 * Maim MOAB and Cripple MOAB can stall dangerous fortified MOAB-class bloons, giving time for other towers to damage them.
 * Bloon Master Alchemist is capable of one-shotting non-BAD bloons regardless of their health, which can serve as a way to counteract strong Fortified blimps, although its attack speed is slow. Druid of the Jungle and subsequent upgrades can also be used to destroy Fortified Ceramics immediately.

Note that effects which remove the fortified property also cause the bloon not to count towards the Sapper achievement. Defortifying Golden Bloons will also reduce the reward they will provide by half.

BATTD
Use of trinkets designed to do more damage to Fortified will be very useful. Vorpal Hand is very useful in particular, especially when given to Finn. There aren't any defortification methods, however.

Bloons Pop!
TBA

Bloon Varaints
TBA

Trivia

 * The Fortified property is the only property that can apply to MOAB-Class Bloons, besides the fact that the D.D.T. has also Camo, Lead and Black.
 * It's also the only ability that doesn't apply for all normal bloons, as only Lead, Ceramic, and MOAB-Class Bloons can have the Fortified property.
 * BAD is unsurprisingly the rarest bloon to have this property, appearing in very few rounds: Round 100 (ABR), 140 & 200. and 201+ onwards.
 * They are also spawned from Tier 4 & 5 Elite Bloonarius when its health drops below the thresholds.
 * The description that appears when the player encounters a Fortified Bloon for the first time shows a Red Bloon with the Fortified property. Fortified Red Bloons are not possible in the game.
 * Although the Fortified property can't be applied on most bloons, all of them have their own fortified sprite in the game files, which may indicate that, at some point, all bloons were planned to have such an ability.
 * In BATTD players were able to see all bloons being Fortified, including the children inside the bloon previously popped. Now, after the 1.0.2 update, Fortified bloons act the same as they do in BTD6.
 * Before the 2.0 update of BTD6, Fortified Purple Bloons used to spawn in Freeplay rounds, in stacks consisting large amounts of Purple Bloons.
 * The Fortified ability only gave the Purple Bloon one health.
 * DDTs with Fortified Property have most properties out of all bloons (Black, Lead, Pink, Camo, Regrow, MOAB-Class, Fortified).
 * Fortified Regrow leads and ceramics only have 1 metal band while Fortified Camo bloons have 2.
 * Fortified Bloons normally start appearing on Round 45. Coincidentally, "45" ("forty-five") sounds a bit like "fortified".

Specific to Bloons Pop!

 * Ceramic Bloons only gain +3 health from the Fortified property, possibly to reduce the overall difficulty of popping a Fortified Ceramic in Bloons Pop!.