Late Game and Freeplay (BTD6 Era)

A late game defense optimized to achieve the Bloon Master Populous Achievement.

Late game and Freeplay are two distinct, yet often interchangeably used, terms in Bloons TD 6 describing high rounds. Late Game refers to the rounds near the end of the Hard and Impoppable gamemodes (usually between 75-100). However, Late Game also describes round 100+ as these rounds consist mainly of MOAB-class bloons and Super Ceramic rushes. Likewise, Freeplay refers exclusively to rounds after the gamemode has been beaten and XP downscaling begins. So, Freeplay can begin on round 41 on Easy Mode, 61 on Medium, 81 on Hard, and 101 on Impoppable, C.H.I.M.P.S. and Boss Events. As a result there is overlap in the definitions of Late Game and Freeplay. In either case, this article will focus on Late Game and Freeplay past round 75.

There are many reasons a player would want or need to play Late Game. Practical reasons include gamemode requirements. Players must be able to survive the grueling MOAB rushes of round 81-100 in order to beat C.H.I.M.P.S. and Impoppable. This is furthered in Boss Events, where late game towers are a necessity to combat round 100-140. Beyond these rounds, Late Game also provides an environment rich in RBE and MOAB spawns, perfect for obtaining achievements like Bloon Master Populous and Sapper. Another reason is that expensive upgrades like Super Mines, Legend of the Night, True Sun God, and Paragons are largely inaccessible until round 90+. Going into Freeplay allows players to experiment and push these towers to their upper damage limit. However, the most fundamental motivation for players venturing into freeplay is the sense of accomplishment for achieving a high round or pop count, and showing off to other players via their profile statistics.

After round 80, rounds have modified rules. The following sections detail this behavior and some general strategies to survive Late Game.

Behavior

Freeplay Warning

General Freeplay Information

Freeplay Begins once the final round is beaten. The cutoffs are

• Round 41 on Easy Gamemodes
• Round 61 Medium Gamemodes and Deflation
• Round 81 on Hard Gamemodes
• Round 101 Impoppable, C.H.I.M.P.S., and Boss Events.

During freeplay, XP rewards are decreased to 30% of the original rate before round 100, and 10% after round 100.

General Late Game Behavior

Rounds 51-60 :

• Cash per pop is reduced to 50%.

Rounds 61-85 :

• Cash per pop is reduced to 20%.

Rounds 81+ :

• Ceramic bloons become super ceramics with 6x more health, but only one line of children. (They still give the same amount of money.) MOAB-Class bloons slowly start gaining more HP and all bloons start getting faster.

Rounds 86-100 :

• Cash per pop is reduced to 10%.

Rounds 101+ :

• Cash per pop is reduced to 5%.

Rounds 121+ :

• Cash per pop is reduced to 2%.

Rounds 141+ :

• From this point, all rounds become randomly generated, except for round 163, 200, and 263. (Rounds 10,000 and above are also pre-determined, but they aren't humanly possible to reach)

Rounds 150+

• Some bloon status duration decreased.

Rounds 231+:

• BADs are now guaranteed to spawn every round, except for Round 263.

Rounds 251+:

• Fortified BADs are now guaranteed to spawn every round, except for Round 263.

Rounds 511+:

• By this point, stack of 5 BADs and 5 Fortified BADs with 0 spacing are guaranteed to spawn throughout the round to make it considerably harder.

Rounds 10,006+:

• Now every round guarantees 100 Fortified BADs with nothing else no matter what.

HP Ramping

Rounds 81-100 :

• MOAB class bloons' health now increase by 2% every round. (r81 : x1.02, r100 : x1.4).

Rounds 101-124 :

• MOAB class bloons' health now increase by 5% every round. (r101 : x1.45, r124 : x2.6).

Rounds 125-150 :

• MOAB class bloons' health now increase by 15% every round. (r125 : x2.75, r150 : x6.5).
  • Round 140 fortified BAD has 200,000 health and 429,920 RBE.

Rounds 151-250 :

• MOAB class bloons' health now increase by 35% every round. (r151 : x6.85, r250 : x41.5)
  • Round 200 fortified BADs have 960,000 health and 1,995,520 RBE each.

Rounds 251-300 :

• MOAB class bloons' health now increase by 100% every round. (r251 : x42.5, r300 : x91.5)

Rounds 301-400 :

• MOAB class bloons' health now increase by 150% every round. (r301 : x93, r400 : x241.5)

Rounds 401-500 :

• MOAB class bloons' health now increase by 250% every round. (r401 : x244, r500 : x491.5)

Rounds 501+ :

• MOAB class bloons' health now increase by 500% every round. (r501 : x496.5, rN : 5N-2008.5)

Speed Ramping

Rounds 81-100:

• Every bloons' speed now increases by 2% every round. (r81: 1.02, r100: 1.4).

Round 101:

• At this point, the speed suddenly jumps to 1.6x faster than base speed. From this point onwards, the speed bonus for all bloons increases remains at +2% every round. (r101: 1.6, r150: 2.58).

Round 151:

• At this point, the speed suddenly jumps to 3x faster than base speed. From this point onwards, the speed bonus for all bloons increases remains at +2% every round. (r151: 3, r200: 3.98).

Round 201:

• At this point, the speed suddenly jumps to 4.5x faster than base speed. From this point onwards, the speed bonus for all bloons increases remains at +2% every round. (r201: 4.5, r251: 5.5).

Round 252:

• At this point, the speed suddenly jumps to 6x faster than base speed. From this point onwards, the speed bonus for all bloons increases remains at +2% every round. (r252: 6, rN: 0.02N+0.96)

Use this pseudocode programming language for better analysis:

    if (r <= 80) v = 1;
    else if (r <= 100) v = 1 + (r - 80) * 0.02;
    else if (r <= 150) v = 1.6 + (r - 101) * 0.02;
    else if (r <= 200) v = 3.0 + (r - 151) * 0.02;
    else if (r <= 250) v = 4.5 + (r - 201) * 0.02;
    else v = 6.0 + (r - 252) * 0.02;

And on Java:

    double r = 251;
    double v = 0;
    
    if (r <= 80) {v = 1;}
    else if (r <= 100) {v = 1 + (r - 80) * 0.02;}
    else if (r <= 150) {v = 1.6 + (r - 101) * 0.02;}
    else if (r <= 200) {v = 3.0 + (r - 151) * 0.02;}
    else if (r <= 250) {v = 4.5 + (r - 201) * 0.02;}
    else {v = 6.0 + (r - 252) * 0.02;}
    
    System.out.println(v);

Status Resistance

This includes:

• All Stun effects (including Cripple MOAB debuff)
• Bloon Sabotage and Grand Saboteur ability slowdown
• Snowstorm ability (Absolute Zero unaffected)
• All Knockback effects, but not Press effects

Round 150-199:

• All statuses above has -10% duration.

Round 200-249:

• All statuses above has -20% duration.

Round 250-299:

• All statuses above has -30% duration.

Round 300-349:

• All statuses above has -40% duration.

Round 350+:

• All statuses above has -50% duration.

Strategies

Late game presents a number of challenges including dense MOAB rushes, high HP super-ceramics, and stun resistance. However, by far, the two biggest threats are high speed DDTs that can rush though a defense early in the round and BAD bloons which can not be stunned or slowed in any way, and can eventually cruise through any defense. Where early and mid-game rounds are focused on finding effective synergies and being efficient with income, a Late Game defense requires a fairly inflexible strategy centered around 5 critical aspects: Income, High Damage Per Second (DPS) towers, maximal buffing, MOAB stalling, and lag reduction.

To learn about these various strategies, see BTD6 Freeplay Mode/Strategies.

Trivia

• As of version 37.0 of BTD6, the last round that has Bloons is round 536928, which technically is the "round limit".
• The highest legitimate round ever to be achieved in BTD6's Freeplay Mode prior to version 11.0 is round 3275 by nucleon_oz. Link.
• Theoretically, The Navarch of the seas could get 884 billion pops in a real game (round 536928 challenge editor 2000% Moab hp) by taking down a fortified BAD using hook ability
  • On version 11.0, rounds above 1100 were possible to be achieved due to a bug with Obyn Greenfoot hyperbuffing Vengeful True Sun God sun avatars. Link.
  • Ever since the Obyn bug has been patched in version 12.0, rounds above 600 is extremely hard to legitimately accomplish.
  • There was an ongoing legitimate run on version 16.2, in which round 1000 was achieved. The strategy involves 23 Sun Temples and more than 30 Unstable Concoctions, taking advantage of the enormous health ramping of B.A.D's at higher rounds to set off chain reaction explosions. However, this results in massive performance drops and each round is said to take 40 minutes to complete, totalling at 270 hours to reach round 1000.
  • Hypothetically, one could have reached high rounds using an exploit in 31.0 involving getting more than one Paragon. This exploit however has been patched in the 32.0 update.
• Purple Bloons have the least RBE (6 RBE) of any freeplay Bloon, although many are stacked with 0 spacing. The freeplay bloon that has second least RBE is Fortified Lead Bloon (10 RBE).
  • As of 26.0 update, rounds from 101 to 140 are pre-determined, they never occur in normal gameplay. They still appear on specific rounds, but with much larger spacing by "symbolized numbers". For example, Round 107 spawns 444 camo purples and Round 129 spawns 77 camo purples.
  • As of 27.0 update, as the beginning stage of pre-determined standard freeplay rounds contains Fortified Leads, now rounds 101-120 in Apopalypse/ABR are able to spawn stack of 100 Fortified Leads with 0 spacing.
• In BTD6, some Freeplay Rounds show resemblance to regular rounds that are 100 rounds before. For example, round 163 (many Lead Bloons and Ceramic Bloon) and round 63; round 200 (2 Fortified BADs) and round 100.
  • Some pre-determined freeplay rounds on rounds 101-140 also show resemblance to regular rounds that are 50 rounds before. For example, round 126 (Dense DDTs instead of regrow ceramics) and round 76; round 128 (Camo Fortified Ceramics instead of purples and rainbows, BFBs instead of ceramics, Fortified DDTs instead of camo ceramics) and round 78.
• In BTD6, the last random round is round 9,999. From round 10,000, every round till round 2,147,548 contains 100 Fortified BADs, excluding rounds 10,001 to 10,005, which have a long wave of some other bloon type instead. From round 2,147,549, there won't be any Bloons at all.
• As of Version 21.0 in BTD6, when the player loses in Freeplay Mode, instead of showing 'Defeat', the game will show 'Game Over' as well as a stat card similar to the one when the player wins, though the player can still continue if the game they're playing allows them to.
• There was a bug on Version 27.0 where every level after entering freeplay mode rewarded cash if the player exited to the main menu and reloaded the game. It was fixed shortly afterwards.
• Before update 37.0, some seeds would randomly crash the game. (full list here) Additionally, several other seeds crash on specific rounds; a total of 529 seeds were found to cause crashes, if the mentioned seeds occur on that round (initial seed + round - 1). Since there are 2^31 - 2 possible combinations, it is almost impossible to encounter these specific glitched seeds.

Version History

8.0

• Additional Instamonkeys are now rewarded every 100 rounds completed in Freeplay.

9.0

• General minor difficulty increases for freeplay (unsure what exactly; more needs investigation)

11.0

• Freeplay difficulty scaling and bloon groupings have had a massive rework to be considerably more difficult. Only Rounds 101+ are affected.

17.0

• Removed Freeplay speed cap

24.0

• Freeplay XP reduction before Round 101 reduced (-90% → -70%)

25.0

“	For more challenge consistency in high rounds, the standard roundset has been extended up to round 120. Now in game modes with standard roundsets the freeplay rounds from 101-120 will be predetermined. This is a big deal for us and we plan to do more custom rounds past 120, so we do want to hear feedback from the community here...	”
	~ Ninja Kiwi

• Freeplay rounds 101-120 now have a default round for each.
• Groups of hyperstacked purple bloons removed, however some rounds now contain dense DDT groups, considerably dangerous for most players

26.0

“	Freeplay rounds from 121 to 140 have now been added in the default round set, so like the recent 101-120 additions, these will now be consistent rounds. Interesting, I wonder if Ninja Kiwi is up to something...	”
	~ Ninja Kiwi

• Freeplay rounds 121-140 now have a default round for each.
• Round 140 now features Fortified BAD (requires twice as more damage to pop, but income unchanged; considerably harder for most players without specific strategy)

27.0

“	...and also roughly easing up on the freeplay health ramping of MOABs by a similar amount	”
	~ Ninja Kiwi

• Freeplay formula for MOAB Health Increase from round 125-150 reduced from 0.20 → 0.15
• Freeplay formula for MOAB Health Increase from round 151-250 reduced from 0.50 → 0.35

33.0

“	To encourage challenge diversity using the new extended list of preset rounds in freeplay, we have decided to make a tweak to freeplay income tax to drop it off slightly slower and allow a little more cash to be earned naturally in this range.	”
	~ Ninja Kiwi

• Round 101-120 natural income generation increased from 2% → 5%. Round 121+ natural income generation remains at 2%.

37.0

• Freeplay budget scaling reduced slightly (by up to 20%)