Jar of Pickles

Not to be confused with Prismo's Homemade Artisanal Pickles.

“	Try these pickles on one of your Monkey Towers and it will hit harder, but shoot slower for a while.	”
	^{~ Shop description}

“	Try these pickles on one of your Monkey Towers and it will hit harder, but shoot slower for a while. Now with increased damage to fortified Bloons!	”
	^{~ Shop description after Geraldo reaches Level 19}

Jar of Pickles is a buff purchasable in Geraldo's Shop. It applies a temporary buff to a single monkey, giving them +1 damage, but 25% slower attack speed (+33% attack cooldown, 1.33x attack cooldown multiplier) for 5 rounds. It can be applied to multiple Monkeys, one at a time. A Jar of Pickles recharges once every 5 rounds, and he initially stocks one. Geraldo reaching Level 16+ further upgrades the Jar of Pickles, providing any newly pickled monkeys with +1 damage to Fortified bloons.

If it buffs a tower with any buffable sub-towers, such as Geraldo himself with his Shooty Turrets, the sub-towers also receive the buff. However subtowers of subtowers will not receive the buff (e.g. a Hot Sauce Spirit on a Shooty Turret will not receive the buff when Geraldo is buffed), and has no effect on any Damage-over-time damage from status effects.

Jar of Pickles costs $85 on Easy, $100 on Medium, and $110 on Hard, and $120 on Impoppable. The maximum amount of Jars of Pickles Geraldo can have in his shop is 4.

Behavior and Interactions[]

Towers that spawn attacks that do contact damage, such as Wall of Fire or Druid of the Jungle's aftervine, produce the attacks at a slower rate but carries over damage from the attack while not affecting rate of the contact damage. To reword this another way, any attack with contact damage will damage bloons at the same rate, whether or not there is the pickle buff, while the damage bonus still remains.
Jar of Pickles does not run out after a certain amount of shots, unlike Alch buffs before Permanent Brew, making it noticeably stronger on fast-attacking towers with low-damage projectiles, such as Super Monkeys up to Sun Avatar.

Strategy[]

Summary[]

Jar of Pickles is a viable trade-off that increases damage in exchange for some lost attack speed. In general, it is best used on towers that already attack quickly and shoot a lot of projectiles but have low damage per projectile, since the damage bonus is a flat increase. The extra Fortified damage also brings opportunity for focusing on anti-Fortified specialisation, which brings forward its relevancy for late-game usage against heavy Fortified rounds such as Round 98.

Tips[]

Pair Jar of Pickles with low damage yet high projectile towers in order to maximize the upsides of the buff while minimizing the downside; solid choices include bottom path Tack Shooter, top path Super Monkey, middle path Sniper Monkeys, among others.
- Note that monkeys which fire multiple projectiles at once receive the damage buff on all of their attacks, yet receive only -33% fire rate, which is what makes the Jar of Pickles so powerful on the above towers.
Avoid using Jar of Pickles on towers with either already high damage or low base speed; speed decreases tend to magnify the slower a tower becomes, and of course given Jar of Pickles is a flat damage bonus, any tower with high base damage will not see much benefit.
As a general rule of thumb, avoid using Jar of Pickles on towers which deal 3 or more damage with each projectile. Do not forget to take into account buffs like Berserker Brew and debuffs like Embrittlement when calculating damage. However, this damage limit may differ if you are specifically targeting Fortified Bloons and have upgraded Jars.
Avoid using Jar of Pickles on towers benefitting from Cripple MOAB or Super Brittle, as the damage bonus puts all towers over the threshold that causes Jar of Pickles to become a damage loss. A similar pattern can be said for Berserker Brew targets with more than 2 damage when specifically handling Ceramics and MOAB-class.
The attack speed decrease means that buffs from Acidic Mixture Dip and Berserker Brew may last longer on towers that fire quickly. How it works is that the attack cooldown of the pickled tower decreases, lowering the rate of consumption of these buffs and thus higher buffing uptime.
When using Jar of Pickles specifically against Fortified Bloons, using them on Round 95 allows for the buff to last until Round 99 inclusive, leaving Round 100 with no significant penalty.

Candidates[]

Best Candidates[]

Jar of Pickles can be used optimally for the right purposes. Best candidates for Jar of Pickles include:

Sun Avatar - The most expensive option that possesses high quantities of 1-damage projectiles per second. Because of the extremely rapid rate of creating many projectile, Sun Avatar is the prime candidate for Jar of Pickles when going for maximum DPS. Note that against Bosses, this may not be the best strategy if blimp debuffs are already used.
Overdrive and The Tack Zone - The vast amount of low-damage tacks produced at such rapid rates makes these upgrades prime candidates for Pickle buffs. Despite the speed penalty, the DPS of these towers increases greatly. Note that against Bosses, this may not be the best strategy if blimp debuffs are already used.
Blade Maelstrom & Super Maelstrom - Provides a significant damage increase for its high projectile ability that overshadows the slower attack speed. Despite the extra damage, this damage boost helps penetrate more layers and also improves single-target damage.
Destroyer + Grape Shot - Destroyers with Grape Shot shoot 1 damage darts and grapes rapidly, making them a prime candidate for Jar of Pickles.
Aircraft Carrier - Similar reasoning to Destroyer + Grape Shot, except mini-planes, which already attack quickly with their frontal guns, are affected. While not as strong as Grape Destroyers due to the lost speed for the anti-MOAB missiles, it greatly improves damage for its excessive swarms of one-damage darts, making it stronger at consistent damage to all bloon types.
Bouncing Bullet - Combining the bullets with the many shrapnel produced with each bounce, the damage bonuses are amplified a lot. Bottom path crosspath is recommended to maximize the damage bonus while also minimizing the speed penalty.
Elite Sniper - Similar reasoning to Bouncing Bullet, except much faster attack speed and shrapnel already pops a lot of bloons at base. Like Bouncing Bullet, bottom path crosspath is recommended to optimize the Pickle buff.
Bloontonium Reactor - The radiation attack deals 1 layer of damage, so if it is used as a DPS option and not just support, the Jar of Pickles may provide the ability to skip layers at the cost of slightly decreased decamo accuracy.
Druid of the Jungle & Jungle's Bounty - While it will take longer to target new bloons with its main vine attack, the bramble track item will deal much more damage, making it much more effective at clearing bloons. Even if Jungle's Bounty does more base damage, its double brambles and much greater pierce are still very efficient with Jar of Pickles.
Airburst Darts and subsequent upgrades - The individual darts and bursted darts make great use of the improved damage. Useful with Triple Guns, although it is less useful with Armor Piercing Darts and above until Jar of Pickles gains bonus fortified damage, because they already have bonus damage against MOABs.
Apache Dartship - Because all of its attacks deal less than 5 damage (1 for darts, 2 for rockets, and 4 for rotors) and the attack rate is high, Apache Dartship is a really good candidate for the Jar of Pickles. This doesn't work well for Apache Prime though as the T5 upgrade has much higher damage from each projectile.
Gerry's Fire - Gerry's Fire spirit flames deal low damage, even with the improved Level 16+ Gerry's Fire (as the only upgraded stat besides increased round lifespan is improved burn DoT, which Jar of Pickles has zero effect towards). Assuming the target affected by Jar of Pickles does low damage itself without supporting utilities attached, that tower and the attached Gerry's Fire benefit greatly from the Jar of Pickles buff. For example, a Shinobi Tactics with Gerry's Fire is an excellent candidate with Pickles against MOAB-class bloons, but only when Grand Saboteur's ability buff is not active.
Comanche Defense and Comanche Commander - Because the Jar of Pickles benefit works with mini-Comanches from Comanche Defense and Comanche Commander, the rapid fire darts and missiles from all helicopters synergize well with Jar of Pickles. The rapid-fire darts deal low base damage individually, even if Comanche Commander's missiles deal quite high base damage. Quad Darts also improves the mini-Comanches themselves, and hence the generally preferred crosspath for Jar of Pickles interactions. Note that adding Glue Storm, which adds +2 damage and is popularly combined with these Comanches, is an overall DPS reduction when given the Pickle buff.
Grandmaster Ninja and Bloonjitsu - As both options attack pretty quickly and shoot many projectiles per shot, these upgrades are solid candidates for the Pickle buff for the extra damage. Note that if they’re already affected by Alch buff, the Pickle buff may not be as effective, though Alch buffs last longer with interactions with these tower choices. Additionally, adding other Geraldo damage buffs such as Level 19+ See Invisibility Potion may make Jar of Pickles worse versus non-Fortified Bloons, yet still very effective versus Fortified Bloons.

Situational Candidates[]

Some candidates of Jar of Pickles may be worthy of use in some situations but not others. A common example of this is a tower that has multiple variants of dealing extra damage (e.g. Spiked Balls dealing +3 Ceramic damage, +1 Fortified damage, and 2 base damage).

Dragon's Breath - The breath attack has a fast fire rate with relatively low damage, as do the blazes gained from Wall of Fire. In general, Jar of Pickles positively affects Dragon's Breath's attacks, but the decreased attack speed reduces the reliability of both the high-damage fireballs and the blaze attack. While the slower firerate of fireballs is typically not a concern, the consistency of immediately exploding clumps of stronger bloons becomes reduced, making it slightly weaker at burst cleanup.
Recursive Cluster - The benefits are relevant for both crosspaths, but the Jar of Pickles is mostly good with the Missile Launcher crosspath, if pierce is not a concern. The issue with the buff is that the frequency of tertiary explosions is decreased, thus it lowers the accuracy of the tower.
Spiked Balls - The spiked balls from this Spike Factory each deal 2 damage, +1 Fortified damage, and +3 Ceramic damage. When given the Pickles buff, it is noticeably stronger against ordinary non-freeplay bloons due to skipping layers, as well as MOAB-class bloons due to the bigger base damage, but slightly weaker against Super Ceramics. However, a slower speed for 3-2-0 in particular can sustain Acidic Mixture Dip a little better. The improved pickle buff can be used to up its damage against Fortified, although not the best candidate for this purpose.
0-2-5 Elite Defender - While the Pickle buff is super effective on the rapidly firing low-damage shrapnel, the Elite Defender's bullets deal quite high MOAB-class damage, so the speed penalty will be much more noticeable against single-target bloons. However, the increased Fortified damage from the upgraded Pickles could help the shrapnel become super effective against rounds containing significant amount of Fortified Bloons.
Robo Monkey - One notable aspect of Robo Monkey's DPS comes from its random critical hits, which cause shots to deal 10 damage every 15-20 shots. Critical hits do not multiply damage buffs, so while Jar of Pickles is great for the normal attack, it is not beneficial for critical hits. Even then, it is still an overall damage increase on Robo Monkey. This isn't the case for The Anti-Bloon, which deals much more damage.
Sentry Gun and its subsequent upgrades - While the nails only deal 1 layer of damage, both the production of the sentry guns and their attack speed are decreased upon the usage of the Jar of Pickles, which means the 33% decrease in speed is more of a 77% decrease in speed. The damage output is still better, but the accuracy is much worse due to attack speed changes being effectively squared. In the case of Sentry Champion, the Jar of Pickles increases the single-target damage of each sentry, but the grouped popping power is worsened due to the decreased frequency of explosions. For bosses, if any damage debuff is applied to the boss, this is a net loss in DPS no matter what.
Geraldo - Pickling Geraldo himself buffs himself and all of his sub-towers descended from him. It does allow him and his Shooty Turrets to penetrate more layers due to the damage increase, in addition to an overall DPS increase due to lower-tier turrets and himself having low damage in general, but the speed penalty also makes both options less capable of catching up against faster bloons; the only worthy reasons to use Jar of Pickles on Geraldo himself is to buff him when he has the Gerry's Fire attached or when focusing on single-target damage with an army of many individual turrets. Placing Gerry's Fire on an existing Shooty Turret or other Geraldo sub-item will not make Jar of Pickles inherit further, however. Genie Bottle is extremely dissynergetic with Jar of Pickles, making self usage of Jar of Pickles unlikely positive in the late-game. A positive use case of Pickles on himself is mainly during the early-game or early mid-game.
Wall of Fire - Adding the pickle buff to Wall of Fire does provide a net DPS gain, but the slower attack rate does decrease uptime of the blazes, especially without the Guided Magic crosspath, making the potential downtime very noticeable. However, the pickle buff is still helpful if needing to skip layers.
Spectre - The Spectre attacks very quickly but its projectiles have relatively moderate base damage, plus a damage bonus to Ceramics. Since all its attacks deal 3 or more base damage, it isn't very effective at single-target or grouped damage when given the pickle buff unless specifically targeting Fortified Bloons with the upgraded Jar of Pickles. The primary usage of the Jar of Pickles on the Spectre is to increase its damage against fortified bloons, thus making it fare better past R80 than usual, where fortified superceramics appear. Overall the effect is neutral against unfortified ceramics.

Poor Candidates[]

The point of Jar of Pickles is to let the tower deal more damage at the cost of less attack speed. In general, a "good" tower with Jar of Pickles should have low-damage attacks and projectiles (but not zero damage) that are shot very quickly. Conversely, a "poor" tower with Jar of Pickles is one that already has high damage per attack and/or has very few projectiles (e.g. Perma-Spike deals 10 damage despite having 50 pierce per spike). Essentially, if a tower does more than 3 damage per shot, or more than 6 damage against Fortified with the upgraded Jar of Pickles, the Jar of Pickles is useless at best, and actively harmful at worst.

Besides obvious examples such as True Sun God (which already deals huge damage per attack) and Banana Farm (no useful effect), the following are examples of "poor" candidates for the Jar of Pickles buff:

Sky Shredder - The darts only receive a marginal damage bonus, but the attack speed penalty to the missiles is the greatest blow to Sky Shredder's power. In addition, the darts provide much of the cleanup potential, especially to Super Ceramics, making the Pickle buff very harmful to it.
Carrier Flagship - Unlike Aircraft Carrier, and Destroyer, Carrier Flagship is a much weaker candidate for Jar of Pickles. The speed penalty greatly affects the darts, which deal increased Ceramic damage, and the anti-MOAB missiles, which deal much greater damage to MOAB-class. The minor additive damage buffs are insufficient to make up for the lost speed.
Buckshot - While Buckshot possesses many projectiles, it already possesses high damage on each projectile, and the potential benefit compared to the attack speed decrease is not enough. Buckshot already shoots slowly, and the decrease in consistency is worse than the mild damage benefit. Jar of Pickles is situationally useful on Bloon Area Denial System after Geraldo reaches level 16 if fortified bloons are a problem, as it is a net increase in DPS against fortified bloons, and attack speed is greatly increased on BADS.

Version History[]

Balance Changes[]

31.0

Released

31.1

[bug fix] Geraldo's Lv11 and Lv16 Jar of Pickles now function as described. Level 11-15 additionally gives +1 Fortified damage, while Level 16+ increases bonus Fortified damage from +1 to +2
[bug fix] Jar of Pickles now correctly use Impoppable prices on Impoppable.

32.0

“	Many of Geraldo's items are too strong for the required maintenance, Geraldo SHOULD be a top level hero, he is literally designed to be so as the most rewarding for your player knowledge and reaction to moment to moment gameplay, but too many items reward spammable gameplay over these knowledge & reactions so we are targeting a lot of durations/stock amounts with minimal price increases where it feels necessary. These are clearly a lot of small steps, as we did not want to do too many big changes from multiple angles all at once.	”
	^{~ Ninja Kiwi}

Jar of Pickles price increased from $50 to 100
Jar of Pickles duration reduced from 8 to 5

35.0

“	We just wanted to give some QoL	”
	^{~ Ninja Kiwi}

Jar of Pickles now has a stack count number, representing the remaining round duration

36.0

“	Geraldo has a lot of items that are still undervalued compared to others while Pickles appears to stand far above the rest as the downside for the power increase isn’t quite enough. We’re pulling more of these lower & higher items closer in to the middle	”
	^{~ Ninja Kiwi}

Jar of Pickles speed penalty increased (1.25x → 1.33x)

38.0

Jar of Pickles no longer takes one more round to refresh stock if bought from full stock

43.0

“	Geraldo has been far too powerful for a while and all-round nerfs are coming to many outstanding aspects, however in return a little quality of life is coming with some more forgiving stock capacities and [...]	”
	^{~ Ninja Kiwi}

Level 11-15 Jar of Pickles no longer gives +1 Fortified damage
Level 16+ Jar of Pickles bonus damage to fortified reduced from +2 to +1

Bug Fixes and General Changes[]

31.1

All Geraldo items now correctly use Impoppable prices on Impoppable.
Geraldo's Lv11 and Lv16 Jar of Pickles now function as described. Level 11-15 additionally gives +1 Fortified damage, while Level 16+ increases bonus Fortified damage from +1 to +2

43.2

Updated Level 11-15 Jar of Pickles to default Jar of Pickles description, and Level 16+ Jar of Pickles ("[...] Now with EVEN MORE increased damage to Fortified Bloons!") with the old 11-15 Jar of Pickles description ("[...] Now with increased damage to Fortified Bloons!").

Extra Notes (Version History)[]

43.0

Level 11-15 Jar of Pickles still uses the old description with the bonus Fortified bonus, and Level 16+ Jar of Pickles still uses the old description of even more Fortified bonus. This was fixed later on.

Sounds[]

Applying a Jar of Pickles onto a tower:

[Smashed glass plus splash of magic]

Gallery[]

Not enough images!
There are not enough images on this page to sufficiently complete this page or section. You can help by uploading some images related to the article's subject(s).

In particular, this article needs: Jar of Pickles demonstration on a clearly stable one-damage tower (Tack Zone damage nerf in 33.0 kind of killed the demonstration of Jar of Pickles), though still keep the old one..

Trivia[]

When asked on the 6th May 2022 blog about whether Berserker Brew is made of pickles, given the logic of Jar of Pickles adding damage, Ninja Kiwi stated that Berserker Brew contains ingredients for pickling.
The pickles from the Jar of Pickles come from Geraldo's local farmer's market, according to Ninja Kiwi's 4th November 2022 blog. Geraldo tries to get the best deals on pickles from his local farmer's market.
Despite Version 43.2 renaming the Level 11-15 Jar of Pickles description to be the same as the Level 1-10 Jar of Pickles description, the Level 11-15 Jar of Pickles description still remains in the XML file for the upgrade descriptions of BTD6.