Spiked Mines (BTD6)

"Spiked mines explode violently when they lose all their spikes."

- In-game description

Spiked Mines is the 4th upgrade of Path 1 for the Spike Factory in Bloons TD 6. It allows its depleted spike ball piles to create powerful explosions, dealing 10 damage each onto up to 40 bloons, alongside a powerful napalm that deals one damage per 2.0s for 6 seconds. The blast radius of the explosion is 19, around the size of the explosions from Bigger Bombs. Explosions deal double damage if the spiked mines automatically expire rather than if the spiked mines are fully depleted. Each spike also deals +6 damage versus Ceramics instead of +3, for 8 damage versus Ceramics.

It costs $8,075 on Easy, $9,500 on Medium, $10,260 on Hard, and $11,400 on Impoppable.

Tower Prices

 * Updated as of Version 29.4

Summary
The main power comes from the heavy explosives that spawn from emptied spiked mines. These deal 10 damage each, enough to shred through stronger bloons and deal a chunk of damage to blimps. The main use for the Spiked Mines in most games is to beat difficult pre-Round 81 bloon rush rounds with ease. Compared to other Spike Factory upgrades, it is surprisingly good at beating Regrow Bloons (with the exception of Regrow Blacks and Regrow Zebras), and it cleans up densely grouped bloons very effectively, unlike its previous upgrade Spiked Balls. In fact, Spiked Mines can be used as a pure offensive stockpiling tower with the 4-2-0 crosspath, although still better suited for tanking bloons as most Spike Factories are designed to do.

Tips

 * Use this if grouped bloons are a serious issue. Spiked Mines is effective at wiping out dense bloon rounds such as Rounds 63 and 78, and it can also be used to counter Regrow Bloons if the Regrows do not overmultiply.
 * Similarly to Ground Zero base bomb attacks, Spiked Mines explosions are highly potent at large-scale damage, but they heavily struggle against dense groups of Blacks or Zebras due to the explosion immunities of those bloon types.
 * It is usually better off using a 4-2-0 Spiked Mines over a 4-0-2 Spiked Mines in most situations. 4-2-0 offers a greater offensive potential, but 4-0-2 Spiked Mines can be used on certain maps where Spiked Balls armies would be unfavorable or to act as a cheaper substitute to Perma-Spike.
 * The only time where a 4-0-2 Spiked Mines truly matters is on maps with multi-lane intersections such as Rake and Sanctuary. It has seen some use on successful Ravine CHIMPS runs as a substitute for The Big One.
 * Compared to Spiked Balls armies, Spiked Mines is more cost-efficient at overall DPS on single-lane maps, although Spiked Mines has the disadvantage of no full discounts from Monkey Commerce.
 * Because the mine explosions can't damage DDTs without MIB or similar, Spiked Mines may struggle versus DDTs. Having Striker Jones Level 5+ helps counter this, but then again Spiked Mines isn't a reliable anti-DDT option whether its explosions can damage them or not.

Trivia

 * Spikes of Spiked Mines are slightly lighter than those of the previous upgrade, Spiked Balls.
 * Before Version 24.0, the Spiked Mines cost was the same as the first price buff in BTDB Mobile while the BTD6 Spiked Mines received its first price buff.
 * The napalm damage-over-time for Spiked Mines is the same as BTD5's Burny Stuff effect, which deals 1 damage per 2.0s for 6.0 seconds.
 * Spiked Mines received a buff to its spike damage versus Ceramics in Version 22.0 in order to give it more potential versus greater numbers of Spiked Balls, according to Ninja Kiwi's Version 22.0 patch notes.