Income Farming (BTD6)

Income farming, often shortened to farming, refers to active methods used to generate income in Bloons TD. As opposed to passive income which is generated by popping naturally spawning bloons, income farming usually involves using Banana Farms (where the term comes from), Merchantmen Boats, or other income generation options to build up a large amount of income. This allows the player to purchase otherwise unaffordable upgrades (such as Paragons or a Vengeful Temple).

This page serves as an index of different farming related strategies. In any case, the player can maximize income by using spare cash to reinvest in money-generating towers, thus creating a compounding effect. As a result, most farming strategies should begin early in the game to allow this exponential growth more time to take place. While doing this, the player needs to make sure to spend enough money on an adequate defense.

The following show a list of links to different income farming related pages. In general, Banana Farms are the most cost efficient and effective form of income farming. However, Supply Drop Snipers and especially Merchantmen can defend bloons and create income, which can massively help in allowing the player's defense to keep up with farming as Merchantmen are both the defense and the farm.

Banana Farms and all of it's upgrades.

Merchantmen and it's subsequent upgrades.

Regen Farming (BTD6)

Ability Farming (Druid, Sniper, Middle Path Farm, Chinook)

(Usually) Max Support Sacrifices (Temple, TSG/VTSG)

Lead/Rubber to Gold

Monkeyopolis

Farming Strategies
As previously stated, Banana Farms are the most cost efficient and effective form of Farming. However, none of it's upgrades help directly in the defense and can cause the player to lose since they spent most of their money on farms and not upgrading their defense. They also take up a lot of space and can only be placed on the ground (which isn't a big a issue but for Boss events that are on maps that don't have a lot of land, like Spice islands, this can be a game-changer). They also are an expensive investment, putting the player down a whole lot of cash in the beginning, making the player unable to purchase upgrades for the defense and potentially losing the game before the investments had time to pay itself. Because of this, Banana Farms are not the only type of farming strategy available to the player. This section will describe some farming strategies that do not involve Banana Farm:

Merchantmen spam with Trade Empire - One of the biggest downsides to Banana Farms is that it doesn't directly help in the players defense, Merchantmen solves this by allowing this tower to create $200 at the end of each round while camo detection and massive range. It can also get Hot Shot to pop camo leads AND make money. Spamming 20 merchantmen and getting a Trade Empire can rival 4-2-0 Banana Farm Spam. Of course, Merchantmen's biggest downside is that it can only be placed on water.

Regen/Regrow Farming - As the name would suggest, this type of farming allows the player to earn ludicrous amounts of money in a single round using regrow bloons. This type of farm takes advantage of the fact that Ceramic bloons creates 2 regrow bloons, and by allowing them to grow back into ceramic bloons and repeating the process. To prevent them from being destroyed by the players defense or leaking, the player would use blowback towers (typically a 0-3-0 Heli pilot) to push back the towers out of range, allowing the bloons time to regrow back. However, there are downsides to this. Compared to previous games, regrow farming is significantly worse and harder due to nerfs to abilities that create cash, limiting them to a specific amount of uses before the game requires the round to be fully beaten before they be use again (though this can be bypassed by selling the tower and buying it back). Also, any bloons that are regrowed no longer give cash on pop. And there is always the risk of accidently letting too many bloons regrow back into ceramic bloons, causing the player's defense to get overwhelmed due to the sheer amount of bloons eating up the pierce of the defense.

Ability farming - Despite huge nerfs to regrow farming, it's still possible to regrow farm. However, this specific method relies not on the regrow farm to make cash, but the buying and selling of that tower's abilities to reset the amount of times that ability to make cash. The regrow farm is only useful to stall for time for this method. After it's no long possible to use that ability, sell the tower and buy it back, using that ability for the amount of times that it can be used, and repeat. This method require a lot of micromanaging due the player needing to focus on buying and selling the tower that makes money and the need to keep the regrow situation under control by moving the Heli Pilot to where it needs to go.

Lead/Rubber to Gold - This is a much cheaper form of farming that relies on the (mainly) Rubber to Gold affecting a ton of bloons with it's potions, allowing more cash per pop. Because of lower invest required to be optimized, Rubber to Gold can just as efficient or more efficient then banana farms in some cases. However, it isn't as effective as Banana Farm but requires a lot less space. There is also a Synergy with Rubber to Gold and Pirate Lord, doubling the cash Pirate Lord gives to every blimp it pulls it.

Monkeyopolis - Another problem with traditional Banana Farms is the amount of space it requires to be viable for Late-game be packing all Banana Farms consumed into a single Village, allowing the village to produce so much money with so little space. It also buffs all Banana Farms to produce more cash, which even helps more with making a ton a cash.

Trivia

 * "Greeding" is another commonly used term for aggressive income farming. It is frequently used in contexts where the player invests so much money in farming, that defenses lack sufficient upgrades and become vulnerable. (i.e. "The player was greeding too hard, and died to a Regrow Rainbow rush.")