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Gains a super cold aura that slows Bloons and freezes water nearby.
~ In-game description

Arctic Wind is the third upgrade of Path 2 for the Ice Monkey in Bloons TD 6. It slows all nearby frozen-vulnerable bloons by 40%, allows nearby land towers to be placed on water within range of the Arctic Wind. Within the range of the Arctic Wind without external buffs, it produces frozen water, an amphibious terrain for any nearby tower. As a Tier 3+ Ice Monkey, it inflicts a full freeze duration versus Ceramics.

Arctic Wind and higher-tier middle path Ice Monkey upgrades have a unique capability of allowing any tower, including land towers, to be placed on top of nearby water. This also includes Sun Temples and the True Sun God which do not collapse into the water on which they are created. If a Support Chinook or Special Poperations Heli Pilot is placed on the frozen water and the Ice Monkey is moved by that helicopter, it will either be moved and the helipad will be sold after, or both towers will be sold, even if there is no selling allowed in the current game. Any land towers standing on frozen water, except the Sun Temple, True Sun God, and any Paragon excluding the Goliath Doomship, will be sold if the Arctic Wind freezing the water is sold, sacrificed, or moved elsewhere.

This upgrade costs $2,380 on Easy, $2,800 on Medium, $3,025 on Hard, and $3,360 on Impoppable.

Description[]

Overview[]

Placeholder other

Arctic Wind

This upgrade gives the Ice Monkey an orange jacket with a fur-lined hood, blue mittens and a red scarf. The monkey loses its red earmuffs and red beanie from Deep Freeze. In addition, a radial aura of snow revolves clockwise around the monkey, its aura always matching the size of its range.

When idle, Arctic Wind will juggle snowballs and occasionally scratch its butt, similar to the lower-tier Ice Monkeys.

This upgrade now produces a cold aura that can significantly slow down frozen-vulnerable bloons and freeze nearby water to create more land.

Targeting Priorities[]

Arctic Wind produces freezing blasts in a zone-like style. Technically, the Ice Monkey is locked on the Close targeting priority. However, for simplicity reasons, this monkey has no targeting priorities.

Full Popology[]

Statistics[]

Updated as of Version 38.0
Base stats
  • Freeze:
    • Zone, cold type, detects centerpoint hitbox, 20 range, 1.8s attack cooldown, 1 damage, 45 pierce, freezes for 2.2s and penetrates two layers. Blast radius matches current range.
  • Aura:
    • Zone, cold type, detects partial hitbox, 20 range, 0 damage, infinite pierce, slows affected bloons by 40%.
  • Frozen water:
    • Zone, passive type, converts water into frozen water within 20 range excluding external buffs, allowing land towers to be placed on it.
Crosspathing interactions
  • 1-3-0: Adds Permafrost that affects up to two layers.
  • 2-3-0: Can pop Lead and Camo Bloons, Aura slows Lead and Camo Bloons by 40%.
  • 0-3-1: Range increased from 20 to 27, also increases Frozen water radius from 20 to 27.
  • 0-3-2: Damage type changed from cold to glacier.
Monkey Knowledge interactions

Attack Interactions[]

See also: Attack Interactions/Bloons TD 6/Primary
Updated as of Version 36.0
Base attack(s)
  • Freezing:
    • Cold Type (pops Black, Purple) Cold
    • Area of Effect Area of Effect
    • Target Bloon(s) (unless upgraded to tier 5) Target Bloon
    • Freeze (standard bloons, 2 Freeze (2.2s)
  • Aura:
    • Cold Type (pops Black, Purple) Cold
    • Area of Effect Area of Effect
    • Target Bloon(s) (unspecified types of bloons targeting, and quantity) Target Bloon
    • Slowdown (-40% speed for bloons within range of Ice Monkey) Slowdown (-40%)
    • True Infinite Pierce Infinite Pierce

Costs[]

Updated as of Version 41.0. Listed prices exclude external buffs, any sacrifices, and Monkey Knowledge.
[Module | Data] Purchase Sell
Costs Easy Medium Hard Impoppable Easy Medium Hard Impoppable
Upgrade (X-3-X) $2,380 $2,800 $3,025 $3,360 -
Total (0-3-0) $3,375 $3,975 $4,295 $4,770 $2,363 $2,783 $3,007 $3,339
Crosspath (1-3-0) $3,500 $4,125 $4,455 $4,950 $2,450 $2,888 $3,119 $3,465
Crosspath (2-3-0) $3,795 $4,475 $4,835 $5,370 $2,657 $3,133 $3,385 $3,759
Crosspath (0-3-1) $3,525 $4,150 $4,485 $4,980 $2,468 $2,905 $3,140 $3,486
Crosspath (0-3-2) $3,715 $4,375 $4,730 $5,250 $2,601 $3,063 $3,311 $3,675

This upgrade's prices (or included crosspath's prices) are affected by the following MK: BetterSellDealsIcon Better Sell Deals

Strategy[]

Summary[]

Arctic Wind excels at slowing down hordes of bloons in addition to empowering its stalling potential in the late-game. Although it has low range and freezes slowly, its true power comes from the capability to slow down an infinite number of bloons within its range, making it excellent at greatly reducing the speed of ordinary bloons. It also has additional utility by providing land space in water.

One of Arctic Wind's unique benefits is allowing placement of land towers on water, particularly for water-dominant maps such as Peninsula and Spice Islands. Its range can be further increased by adding the Larger Radius crosspath and further upgrading to the Snowstorm upgrade. Not only will land towers be able to be placed in the radius of an Arctic Wind, water towers may also be placed in the radius of an Arctic Wind too.

The slowdown aura from Arctic Wind is less effective in BTD6 compared to BTD5; it now only inflicts a 40% slowdown, has low range, and it cannot slow White or Zebra Bloons without MIB support. However, Arctic Wind still remains a viable option for slowing down large hordes of other incoming bloons without relying on projectile attacks or abilities.

Tips[]

  • Crosspaths for the Arctic Wind depend on its additional benefits to the freezing attacks, alongside an appreciable benefit to the Arctic aura. The Arctic aura is affected by both crosspaths.
    • 0-3-2 Arctic Wind utilizes the extra coverage of the slowdown aura and the ice platforms in addition to permafreezing frozen targets. In fact, adding Larger Radius provides roughly +25% range for the Ice Monkey, a considerably large amount in many situations, especially without the "Icy Chill" MK.
    • The 1-3-0 crosspath, despite its low range, can be useful for greatly slowing bloons down, especially Ceramics. Similarly, 2-3-0 can be used to affect Leads and Camo too, in addition to being a good stepping stone to 2-4-0 Snowstorm.
  • Because Arctic Wind's slowdown aura cannot slow down Whites or Zebras, additional support such as a Glue Gunner with Glue Splatter or Glue Hose may be required to provide the necessary extra slowdown.
  • Arctic Wind can also be used as support for a Rubber to Gold Alchemist to group bloons, especially Ceramics. On rounds such as 63, 76, and 78, this can allow the Alchemist to make a large increase in profit.
  • Like the 0-2-2 Ice Monkey, Arctic Wind can be paired with Downdraft to control stall Super Ceramics.
  • Arctic Wind is helpful in the late-game to reduce speeds of massive Super Ceramic swarms, particularly on high-RBE rounds such as Round 96 and Round 98.
  • The forced slowdown from Arctic Wind's range allows high-pierce towers such as Recursive Cluster to have more time to destroy the slowed bloons.
  • Arctic Winds placed at the back of the track are helpful in the late-game to greatly reduce progress of Super Ceramics.

Version History[]

Balance Changes[]

When Arctic Wind was first released, it had significantly less pierce, no range bonus, and a much weaker slowdown compared to its BTD5 counterpart. Later updates gave this upgrade more pierce and slowly decreased the overall price by a large amount, plus improvements to its own slowdown effect and range increases for its successor upgrades.

Version 33.0 buffed Arctic Wind's slowdown effect, and combined with various nerfs to Cryo Cannon it has lead to Arctic Wind rising to popularity for the late-game, particularly for its T3 status. However, Ninja Kiwi reverted that buff in order to put it more on par with other T3 Ices.

2.0
  • BUFF Arctic Wind pierce increased (30 → 100)
7.0
  • BUFF Arctic Wind cost decreased ($6,500 → $5,000)
12.0
  • BUFF Arctic Wind cost decreased ($5,000 → $3,200)
23.0
  • BUFF Arctic Wind cost decreased ($3,200 → $2,900)
25.0
  • NERF [Undocumented] Arctic Wind no longer slows down Leads without lead-popping power.
26.0
27.0
  • NERF [Undocumented] Arctic Wind no longer allows Support Chinook or any other placement mobility sources (e.g. Darkshift, Global Darkshift) to move towers from platform to platform.
33.0
Arctic Wind hardly gets used for its actual basic intended purpose, which would be cool to see used for more than just causing ice platform bug reports
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • BUFF Arctic Wind aura slow amount increased from (50% → 60%)
    • Note: Ninja Kiwi incorrectly listed the aura slow amount to 40%, it is aura slow amount before update actually is 50%.
34.0
Ice Monkey base pierce is too high, very easily countering large numbers of strong Bloons early, mid or late in the game for small investment, leading to very low tiers of ice monkey (below t3) being highly effective spam options over upgrading your ice. We are reworking some of this base pierce to require crosspath investment [...]
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • BUFF Arctic Wind price reduced $2900 → $2800
    • Total price decrease is $0, due to the Deep Freeze price increase by $100.
36.0
Arctic wind felt extremely overbuffed with the slowing field going from 40 to 50%, but we like seeing the use on it go up so we want to meet halfway on that & keep the higher slow at T5. [...]
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • NERF Arctic Wind aura slowdown reverted back (60% → 50%)
37.0
  • Change Indirect buff, as all Tier 3+ Ice Monkeys, including Arctic Wind, to freeze Ceramics for the full duration.
38.0
Plenty of attention has been drawn to the high power of Ice, so we’re continuing to work on slowly dialing this back in fair ways.
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • NERF Arctic Wind pierce decreased 100 → 40. Does not affect Absolute Zero.
  • Change Arctic Wind description changed from "Greatly increased pierce and gains a super cold aura that slows Bloons and freezes water nearby." to "Gains a super cold aura that slows Bloons and freezes water nearby."
39.0
We’re happier with more recent freeze changes succeeding in some of the intentions of older nerfs, given the base tower value in races being hit far more than intended we’re going back over the pierce for Ice Monkey base & middle crosspath. [...]
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • BUFF Arctic Wind pierce increased (40 → 45)
40.0
[...] Arctic Wind it feels was heavily underrated before it’s [sic] large slow aura increase, with so many players now working out how good it is and how much better an upgrade it leads into than any similar options we feel this aura needs to be reduced again although it will remain the same at T5.
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • NERF Arctic Wind slow zone reduced (50% → 40%). Absolute Zero slow zone unchanged at 60%.

Bug Fixes and General Changes[]

8.0
  • Ice Monkey's Arctic Wind should now freeze water on Logs.
12.0
  • x5x Redeploy crash issue with arctic wind has been resolved
  • NERF It is no longer possible to stack towers on top of the Carrier Flagship via the sell-rebuy Flagship exploit.
  • NERF It is no longer possible to place "floating" land towers on water via selling Arctic Wind while Chinook picks up the land tower that would land towards the Arctic Wind platform.
17.0
  • Arctic Wind resolved numerous specific crashes
  • Arctic Wind resolved numerous inconsistencies with redeploy and selling
    • NERF Arctic Wind no longer sells towers on top of the ice water twice, if on a map where the middle pixel of the map is non-placeable land.
17.1
  • Resolved an issue where Dark Knight's placed on Arctic Wind platforms could teleport onto water, instantly causing them to sell themselves
18.0
  • x4x Support Chinook will no longer crash the game attempting to redeploy an Arctic Wind monkey onto its own frozen platform
21.0
  • x3x Placing an Arctic Wind on top of a flagship will no longer create an ice platform on top of the buccaneer
  • NERF x3x Arctic Wind no longer inconsistently slows one of two Zebra children after popping a rainbow
24.0
  • Change Description changed from "Super cold aura that slows Bloons that come near it." to "Greatly increases pierce & gains a super cold aura that slows Bloons and freezes water nearby."
26.0
  • NERF Arctic Wind will no longer retain its frozen platforms after being transformed by an Alchemist as this could cause a crash upon ability expiration
  • Change Lv10 Ball of Light no longer breaks when she is placed above an Arctic Wind on water
30.0
x3x Arctic Wind :|
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • Arctic Wind bug fixes continue to be made.
33.0
  • Paragon towers should be correctly sold when their supporting arctic wind platform is removed

Bugs[]

Due to the nature of the water-freezing portion of the Arctic Wind's radial arctic wind, it has caused numerous bugs, often a number of them game-breaking. The following bugs have been so far discovered:

  • On Version 16.1 (?), there was a critical game-breaking bug where selling a tower placed on top of an Arctic Wind on certain maps with an unplaceable land spot on the very centre of the map would sell more than once.

Gallery[]

Official artwork[]

In-game assets[]

Videos[]

Trivia[]

  • In BTD6, it will create a ice platform to put land towers in water. It can be really useful in maps with lots of water. If the Arctic Wind is sold, everything on top of its ice platform will be sold as well.
    • This is functionally similar to Pontoons.
    • Carrier Flagship also provides space for land towers, though it only gives two medium-sized platforms.
  • Ninja Kiwi regretted the inclusion of Arctic Wind platforms.[1]
  • Arctic Wind is the only Tier 3 Ice Monkey to perform idle animations of lower-tier Ice Monkeys.
  • In BTD6, this upgrade is substantially different from the BTD4-BTD5 counterpart. Unlike earlier games, Arctic Wind does not come with extra range (although its succeeding upgrade Snowstorm does), it slows nearby frozen-vulnerable bloons by 40% (instead of everything Ceramic and below by 66% in earlier games), allows nearby land towers to be placed on water within range of the Arctic Wind, and has increased but limited pierce.

References[]


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