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BTD6

Calls a vine from the ground to entangle and crush Bloons one at a time, leaving behind a deadly thorn pile.
~ In-game description

Druid of the Jungle is the third upgrade of Path 2 of the Druid in Bloons TD 6. It gives the Druid an additional vine attack, which has infinite range, instantly killing a specific non-MOAB bloon on screen based on target priority (regardless of Line of Sight), strangling onto the same bloon until it withers into nothing, taking longer the more powerful the bloon is. This instakilling vine has a minimum 1.4s cooldown, which can not receive any attack speed buff, plus extra time from actually digesting the bloon. Immediately after strangulation, the vine leaves behind a bramble ("after-vine") that constantly damages passing bloons, rehitting every 0.3s up to 20 bloons, and lasts up to 4.5s. Without Hard Thorns, the instakill vine cannot target Lead Bloons or Frozen Bloons.

The aftervine has a few interesting quirks attached. As a Sharp attack, an aftervine is destroyed if contacted by Frozen and Leads, except with Hard Thorns crosspath, which changes damage type to Normal. Aftervines also degrow passing bloons. Also note that the Heart of Oak benefit also scales pierce of the aftervines up to 40 with 100 net bonus lives from this upgrade.

If Level 5+ Obyn Greenfoot is on screen, Druid of the Jungle receives +20% range.

This upgrade costs $890 on Easy, $1,050 on Medium, $1,135 on Hard, and $1,260 on Impoppable.

Description[]

Overview[]

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Druid of the Jungle

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.

Whenever Druid of the Jungle activates its vine attack, it performs a "plucking" animation plus a green pulse, accompanying its act of instantly grabbing a bloon. This "plucking" animation involves quickly lowering arms and raising them, with a particularly larger swing on the right arm. However, the Druid of the Jungle does no special animation when crosspathed with Hard Thorns or Heart of Thunder, only letting out a green pulse every time it activates its vine attack.

On the upgrade portrait, the Druid of the Jungle holds its palms upwards while being surrounded by floating yellow lights.

Druid of the Jungle adds a global range vine attack that ignores line-of-sight to the Druid's arsenal. Every 1.4 seconds minimum, the targeted visible bloon on screen up to Ceramic is ensnared and effectively instakilled. A bramble is then left on the track for 4.5 seconds, which damages bloons on contact, damaging bloons every 0.3s with 20 pierce per contact tick.

Vines are able to target any type of bloon including Lead and Purple Bloons, but not Camo without support. The brambles on the track, however, requires Hard Thorns to pop Frozen and Lead. Brambles also degrow bloons thanks to the previous Heart of Oak upgrade. Druid of the Jungle's instakilling vine is set on targeting priority based on the monkey’s targeting.

The Druid cannot cast another vine until the initial target is fully popped; bloons with more layers take longer to breakdown. The stronger the target bloon is, the longer it takes to get rid of them. The vine attack is unaffected by attack speed buffs. Once a vine instakills a bloon, it takes time to digest the bloon based on its RBE (√rbe + 2 (if the bloon is lead) + 1)/4 seconds), alongside a base cooldown of 1.4s.

Also, it can receive Level 5+ Obyn's exclusive +20% range buff to all Druids with this upgrade or above.

Targeting Priorities[]

Druid of the Jungle targets bloons using the standard targeting priorities. It shoots straight movement projectiles.

  • First: Targets the first bloon visible within its range.
  • Last: Targets the last bloon visible within its range.
  • Close: Targets the closest bloon visible within its range.
  • Strong: Targets the strongest bloon visible within its range.

Druid of the Jungle’s aftervine also follows targeting of itself.

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) $890 $1,050 $1,135 $1,260 -
Total (0-3-0) $1,735 $2,050 $2,215 $2,460 $1,215 $1,435 $1,551 $1,722
Crosspath (1-3-0) $2,030 $2,400 $2,595 $2,880 $1,421 $1,680 $1,817 $2,016
Crosspath (2-3-0) $2,750 $3,250 $3,515 $3,900 $1,925 $2,275 $2,461 $2,730
Crosspath (0-3-1) $1,820 $2,150 $2,325 $2,580 $1,274 $1,505 $1,628 $1,806
Crosspath (0-3-2) $2,075 $2,450 $2,650 $2,940 $1,453 $1,715 $1,855 $2,058

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

Strategy[]

Summary[]

Druid of the Jungle's vines are cost-efficient for both instakilling high-tier regular bloons, including Ceramics, and for cleaning up weaker bloons, all with the benefit of an infinite-ranged vine attack. The vine attack is quite slow however, so it is not able to handle too many Ceramics at once, and being locked on Strong may alter how it cleans up stray bloons. 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 one-lane-per-round alternating lane maps such as Bazaar, High Finance, and Erosion.

Tips[]

  • The most common upgrades for a Druid of the Jungle is 1-3-0, as Hard Thorns allows the brambles to pop leads, and is essentially the only upgrade which meaningfully improves the vine attack. Jungle's Bounty is usually skipped in favor of buying a second 1-3-0 Druid of the Jungle, except if desiring money generation and stronger aftervines.
  • The Druid does not need Line of Sight to target bloons with its vine attack.
  • It can be used against Ceramic Bloons from MOABs as they will instantly nullify their threat.
  • Druid of the Jungle has a low cost for how much benefit they have in the rounds leading to Round 40. Because of this, it can be used in Boss Bloon Events to solo most Intermediate and Advanced Maps when combined with camo detection (such as Geraldo's See Invisibility Potion).
    • However, the vine attack cannot damage MOAB's, so buying too many Druid of the Jungles may result in a Moab slipping through. Once the outer shell is popped, however, the Druids can easily kill the remaining ceramics.
  • In large groups, these Druids are extremely powerful and can even remove the threats of heavy Ceramic rushes such as on Rounds 63 and 76.
  • 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.
  • In terms of targeting priorities, Strong is best used if specifically hurting the strongest bloons with the instakill attack. First is best for general cleanup on single-lane maps, and Close is best for consistently placed brambles on multilane maps such as Quiet Street.

Limitations[]

  • It will only attack another target once the original has been fully popped.
  • Attack speed buffs have very little effect on the attack speed of this upgrade, as the time to digest an instakilled bloon cannot be buffed, only the base attack cooldown. Rather, its attack speed is dependent on what Bloon the Druid 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, in addition to the base cooldown of 1.4s.
    • For instance, a Zebra Bloons trapped by the instakill vines will take 1.4489s plus 1.4s, which would be approximately 2.85s.

Version History[]

Balance Changes[]

Excluding broken bugs such as the Version 8.0 interaction with Striker Jones' Level 9+ (at the time was present-day Level 5+), Druid of the Jungle did not receive any buffs until 28.0. It technically got buffed because of Heart of Oak, but since the main point of Druid of the Jungle comes from the instakill vines, these points are not listed here.

Version 28.0 now adds a spiky thorn for popped targets, similar to Wall of Fire (not Spike Factory spikes). Since then, it has become a popular option for antistalling and excelling in the early-game. As it has since evolved around its aftervines in combination with the instakill vine itself, the effectiveness of the aftervines were reduced alongside a slight price nerf to the upgrade.

28.0
[...] Jungle Druids have been reworked to have more offensive power at both T3 and the T4 while not being quite so good at farming
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • BUFF Druid of the Jungle Vine grab now drops spiky thorns to the track upon popping a target
    • Damage: 1
    • Pierce: 30
    • Pierce Refresh: 0.3
    • [undocumented] These track thorns also pop Lead and Frozen Bloons.
29.0
As a 'druid buffing' hero, Obyn has in actuality been a bottom path druid buffing hero, so we've tweaked a couple extra levels to give more path specific bonuses to other druid paths that weren't benefiting as much from his wizened presence, regardless of whether your Obyn says "Fries" or "Clive". [...]
~ Ninja Kiwi, referring to Obyn
  • BUFF Druids of the Jungle gain +20% range if Obyn Level 5+ is on screen.
31.2
  • BUFF [undocumented] Druid of the Jungle aftervines no longer deal single-layer damage
32.0
More needed crosspath reworking for the new 1xx Hard Thorns upgrade, as it now upgrades the druid from sharp to normal damage it doesn't make sense for the track brambles on 030 to not require this crosspath for lead popping. [...]
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • NERF 0-3-x Druid of the Jungle bramble piles damage type changed (Normal → Sharp). Requires 1-3-0 to retain Normal damage type.
34.0
Druid’s vine brambles are very bottom-heavy in power, with high performance leading into a comparably small T4 increase, so some of the pierce is being moved up into the T4.
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • NERF Druid of the Jungle brambles pierce reduced 30 → 20
36.0
Slightly shifting price down from T4 into T3 midpath, and increasing the base cash amount gained from the ability as it currently needs quite a lot of initial investment to really get going at all compared to other farming options.
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • NERF Druid of the Jungle price increased $950 → $1050
37.0
[...] Housekeeping - even deep in the forest, it does actually make life better.
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • Note: The instakill vine can still target Frozen and Leads by fully instakilling them, but via testing it shows only the aftervine is affected by this nerf by becoming destroyed similarly to Wall of Fire versus Purples. This was already implemented beforehand, since about Version 32.0.
  • BUFF Druid of the Jungle Vine attack now follows target priority of tower instead of strong
  • Change Druid of the Jungle now defaults set to Strong priority when is purchased instead of First
    • [bug] This only applied for non-crosspathed Druids of the Jungle.
37.3
  • NERF Druid of the Jungle's instakill vine no longer targets Leads and no longer damages Frozen, unless it has Hard Thorns
38.0
  • Change [bug fix] Druid of the Jungle will now (correctly) set to Strong upon upgrading, regardless of crosspaths
  • Change Druid of the Jungle's instakill vine no longer targets Frozen Bloons without Hard Thorns, since it cannot damage them without 1-3-0 crosspath
39.0
Experimenting more with druid ‘life play’ functionality, similar to Heart of vengeance, we’re adding new functionality to Heart of Oak along with improved means of building into this with the Jungle’s Bounty upgrade, [...]
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • BUFF Druid of the Jungle now gains 1% pierce for every life gained from the starting value after the upgrade. Maxes at 100% and diminishes if lives are lost. Pierce-adjusting benefit applies for crosspath attacks except lightning (which cannot benefit from pierce).
40.0
We enjoyed this change a lot, but it unfortunately seems that to a lot of players this added more frustration than intended. We will look for a better way of accomplishing what we wanted to do here, but until then it doesn't really feel worth keeping the automatic targeting swap when players who do want it could also just change targeting themselves before or after buying the upgrade, and those who don’t want it have no workaround.
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • Change Druid of the Jungle no longer automatically swaps to Strong target priority

Bug Fixes and General Changes[]

29.0
  • Change Changed description from "Calls a vine from the ground to entangle and crush Bloons one at a time." to "Calls a vine from the ground to entangle and crush Bloons one at a time, leaving behind a deadly thorn pile.".

Bugs[]

Current
  • [35.1, possibly since 32.0] Druid of the Jungle without Hard Thorns can still degrow the first Leads nearby the instakilled bloon via the aftervine.
Patched

None (so far...)

Gallery[]

Official artwork[]

Promotional artwork[]

Videos[]

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.
  • Ninja Kiwi refers to aftervines as "vine brambles", according to the Version 34.0 patch notes.
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