Monkey Ace (BTD5)

“	The only unit that moves, the Monkey Ace patrols the skies above the action, regularly strafing the area with powerful piercing darts.	”
	~ Bloons Tower Defense 4 Description

“	Monkey Aces are best suited to more spread out tracks where they can inflict the most poppage.	”
	~ Round 38 on Bloons Tower Defense 4

“	Patrols the skies above the action, regularly strafing the area with powerful darts in 8 directions.	”
	~ Bloons Tower Defense 5 Description

“	Monkey Ace patrols the skies above the action regularly shooting 8 powerful darts in all directions. Good for thinning out bloon formations.	”
	~ Description upon unlocking in BTD4

“	Flies above the ground shooting volleys of high-pierce darts.	”
	~ Bloons Tower Defense 6 description

Monkey Ace (BTD5)
General Information
Appearances	Bloons 2 Bloons TD 4 Bloons TD 4 Expansion Bloons TD 5 Bloons TD 5 Deluxe Bloons TD 5 Mobile Bloons Monkey City Bloons Monkey City Mobile Bloons TD Battles Mobile Bloons TD 6
Unlocked at	Rank 12
Cost	$765 (Easy) $900 (Medium) $970 (Hard) $1080 (Imppopable)
Tier-4 upgrades	Spectre Ground Zero
Final upgrades	30
Special Abilities	Ground Zero
Camo detection	Yes (0/2)
Specialty Building	Ace Private Hangar
Hotkey	A (BTD4), F (BTD5)
Statistics
Range	Depends on path formation
Pierce	5 per dart 6 with Monkey Knowledge 8 with Sharper Darts
Damage	Unknown
Attack Cooldown	Slow (Fires 8 shots at 0.55 times per sec excluding bonuses gained from Monkey Lab and/or Upgrades)

The Monkey Ace is a moving unit operated by a monkey that debuted in Bloons Tower Defense 4. It also appears in its Expansion, Bloons Tower Defense 5 and Bloons 2. In BTD4 and BTD5, it costs $765 on Easy, $900 on Medium and $970 on Hard. It will automatically fire at the Bloons. When the player places it on the screen, it will automatically fly in a figure eight form, and has infinite Range. However, in BTD5, the player can switch the Monkey Ace's route between an 8 shape, an ∞ (infinity symbol) shape and an O shape that encircles the runway. The O shape is usually most efficient, as the monkey ace does not move out of the screen (unless you place it near a corner). In BTD6, the Ace was given to option to have a centered path that is a circular path that is centered on the middle of the map. It is slightly bigger than the regular O pattern.

The Monkey Ace has accuracy issues due to its wild fire, but can become devastating if Bloons fill up the screen, which will make hitting them with the high popping power very easy regardless. Remember to have ally towers cripple the more sturdy threats such as Lead and Regen Bloons, and clean up anything that sneaks through as well.

In Bloons TD 4, the Monkey Ace can be placed anywhere. However, in Bloons TD 5, the Monkey Ace has a runway, so the player has to place the runway on land.

Bloons Tower Defense 4 Upgrades

Pineapple Express - Drops highly explosive Pineapples

The Monkey Ace begins dropping Pineapples for extra popping power.
$170/$200/$215.

Spy Plane - Allows towers near Monkey Ace to detect Camo Bloons

All Tower near the Monkey Ace while patroling can detect Camo Bloons.
$300/$350/$380

Rapid Fire - Increases attack rate

Shoots darts and drops Pineapples faster.
$595/$700/$755

Operation: Dart Storm - Our darts will block out the sun.

Shoots 16 darts at a time instead of 8. Also increasing shooting and dropping rate.
$2975/$3500/$3780

Total Selling Price: $4805/$5650/$6100

Rate of fire:

• Un-upgraded: 25 shots per minute
• Rapid Fire: 40 shots per minute
• Operation: Dart Storm: 50 shots per minute

Bloons Tower Defense 5 Upgrades

Path 1

	Easy	Medium	Hard	Impopable
Rapid Fire Shoots darts more often.	$595	$700	$755	$840
Sharper Darts Monkey Ace darts can pop 8 bloons each!	$425	$500	$540	$600
Neva-Miss Targeting Darts seek out and pop bloons intelligently.	$1,870	$2,200	$2,375	$2,640
Spectre Flying Fortress of bloon doom. Missiles has 100 pierce and pops 2 layers.	$15,300	$18,000	$19,440	$21,600
Total Sell Amount	$14,560	$17,880	$18,496	$21,432
Total Cost	$19,000	$22,350	$24,135	$25,680

Path 2

	Easy	Medium	Hard	Impoppable
Pineapple Present Drops an explosive Pineapple every 3 seconds.	$170	$200	$215	$240
Spy Plane Allows Monkey Ace to hit Camo Bloons. Does not grant detection to other towers.	$300	$350	$380	$420
Operation: Dart Storm More darts = win.	$2,550	$3,000	$3,240	$3,565
Ground Zero Ground Zero Ability: drops a single devastating bomb that destroys all bloons on screen and heavily damages MOAB-class bloons.	$11,900	$14,000	$15,120	$16,730
Total Sell Amount	$11,936	$14,040	$15,164	$17,736
Total Cost	$14,920	$17,550	$18,955	$20,955

Bloons 2

A Monkey Ace flies into some Spikey Bloons.

Monkey Aces make another appearance here. They pop Bloons that they fly through. The player must pop a Monkey Ace Bloon to give the monkey 2 flags, allowing the player to send them to pop Bloons. If the Monkey Ace hits a wall, it will explode, and the pilot will parachute down. The explosion will not pop any Bloons.
When the Reverse Gravity Bloon is popped, the plane flies upside down, and the pilot parachutes up when it crashes.

Glitches

• In BTD5, if you place a Monkey ace and switch from "vertical 8" circling to "round" circling, sometimes the Ace will indefinitely fly towards the top right, though eventually it will re-adjust and go back to normal.
• Monkey Ace landing sites can be placed more closely together when below other landing sites than when on top. The landing sites also go slightly right when placed down.
• In BTD5 the ace's artwork shows a red cone but in the actual tower it's blue and in BMC Mobile if it's flying above your city it's green.
  • This reverses when upgraded to Pineapple Present, the artwork shows it have blue cone, while the actual tower have red cone.
• You can glitch the Monkey Ace by buying one, this should take you so you can upgrade whenever you want, hover over the ace so it has white outlines on it, then, press backspace (this will sell the tower) and left-click your mouse again as fast as possible, then this should take you to a Monkey Ace with no picture, that you can upgrade, upgrade the Ace (you cannot use the upgrade hotkeys, nothing happens), and you will notice that there is an another ace, that you even upgrade to 4/4 (Seriously), through you would just have a spectre with the Ground Zero ability. This glitch has been fixed.

  

  Where's my landing station? Why do I have a nuke? Why do I feel invisible!? Can someone explain what's going on!? (This is the result of using one of the glitches on this page)

  

  An Operation: Dart Storm ace flying sideways.

• In BTD Battles, you can put a monkey fort next the 4-x/Spectre Ace, and it will give +1 pierce to the missiles. This gives an advantage because the missiles deal 2 damage in the explosion radius, but if it pierces through, it will do another explosion, which also deals 2 damage, and if a bloon is in both explosion's radius, it will deal 4 damage to that bloon. Surprisingly, no one really abused, or even used, this glitch. I think it is patched by now, but I don't see it in the patch notes.

Differences Between BTD5 Flash and BTD5 Mobile

Base cost of Monkey Ace is more expensive ($900 → $925).

Pineapples from Pineapple Present have smaller explosions.

Ground Zero yields more cash when used against Ceramic Bloons.

Spectre mortar explosions duplicate when its landing base is under a Monkey Fort.

Update History (Bloons TD Battles Mobile)

In general, Monkey Ace is hardly buffed or nerfed in updates, but is still not very popular, due to its frequent missing as a lower-tier tower. However, Monkey Ace can be more useful in combination with other towers, as it does help in reducing the overload of Bloons. Whenever used, most players tend to aim towards purchasing Operation: Dart Storm, in which they could also go towards Ground Zero if necessary.

There are very few widely used Monkey Ace strategies, but one very popular strategy that uses Monkey Ace is Dart-Farm-Ace, especially advantageous for doing the large-scale bloon cleanup. Another popular loadout that use the Monkey Ace is Heli-Farm-Ace, with some considering it to be the new meta when update 4.6 came out.

3.9

Ground Zero price increased ($14,000 → $16,000).

4.3

Neva-Miss Targeting price decreased ($2,200 → $1,800).

Spectre price decreased ($18,000 → $17,000).

Spy Plane price increased ($350 → $400).

4.3.1

Ground Zero damage increased (350 → 400).

Spy Plane price decreased ($400 → $350).

Bloons Tower Defense 6

Monkey Ace
General Information
Appearances	Bloons TD 6
Unlocked at	TBA
Cost	$680 (Easy) $800 (Medium) $865 (Hard) $960 (Impoppable)
Final upgrades	Sky Shredder - Tsar Bomba - Flying Fortress
Special Abilities	Ground Zero - Tsar Bomba
Camo detection	Yes (x/2/x and 5/x/x)
Hotkey	V
Statistics
Range	Depends on path formation
Pierce	5
Damage	Unknown
Attack Cooldown	TBA

The Monkey Ace makes a return in BTD6. Just like in BTD5, it has a landing pad that takes up space. It's got a number of new changes, especially splitting several of the most popular upgrades in its predecessor game into different upgrades, most notably being the Operation: Dart Storm becoming a Tier-4 upgrade of Path 1 instead of the Tier-3 upgrade of Path 2. Another change is that when the tower when spawned, it will briefly run on its runway first.

The first path generally increases the numbers of darts sent out, the second path generally primarily centers around bombing, while the third path generally deals with efficient projectile distribution.

It is listed as Military class tower.

Path 1

	Easy	Medium	Hard	Impoppable	Unlock XP
Rapid Fire Shoots faster than normal.	$550	$650	$700	$780	160
Lots More Darts Shoots 12 darts at a time.	$550	$650	$700	$780	750
Fighter Plane Flies fast and launches anti-MOAB missiles.	$850	$1,000	$1,080	$1,200	2,700
Operation: Dart Storm Shoots 16 darts per volley, and twice as fast.	$2,550	$3,000	$3,240	$3,600	8,000
Sky Shredder The Bloons will wish they had never come. (Shoots much faster with 32 darts per volley. Attacks deal more damage and can pop any type of Bloon, including Camo, regardless of other upgrades.)	$34,000	$40,000	$43,200	$48,000	35,000
Total Sell Amount	Tier 4: $3,626 Tier 5: $27,426	Tier 4: $4,270 Tier 5: $32,270	Tier 4: $4,610 Tier 5: $34,850	Tier 4: $5,124 Tier 5: $38,724	N/A
Total Cost	Tier 4: $5,180 Tier 5: $39,180	Tier 4: $6,100 Tier 5: $46,100	Tier 4: $6,585 Tier 5: $49,785	Tier 4: $7,320 Tier 5: $55,320	46,610

Path 2

	Easy	Medium	Hard	Impoppable	Unlock XP
Exploding Pineapple Drops an exploding pineapple every few seconds.	$170	$200	$215	$240	120
Spy Plane Allows Monkey Ace to hit Camo Bloons.	$295	$350	$380	$420	600
Bomber Ace Drops a line of bombs when crossing the Bloon track.	$765	$900	$970	$1080	2,500
Ground Zero Ground Zero ability: Drops a huge bomb that destroys most things on screen. (Ability deals 700 damage to all bloons on screen)	$11,900	$14,000	$15,120	$16,800	15,000
Tsar Bomba A very, very large bomb. Someone put a stop to craziness! (Ability deals 3000 damage and stuns all surviving Bloons except the B.A.D.)	$29,750	$35,000	$37,800	$42,000	30,000
Total Sell Amount	Tier 4: $9,667 Tier 5: $30,492	Tier 4: $11,375 Tier 5: $35,875	Tier 4: $12,285 Tier 5: $38,745	Tier 4: $13,650 Tier 5: $43,050	N/A
Total Cost	Tier 4: $13,810 Tier 5: $43,560	Tier 4: $16,250 Tier 5: $51,250	Tier 4: $17,550 Tier 5: $55,350	Tier 4: $19,500 Tier 5: $61,500	48,220

Path 3

	Easy	Medium	Hard	Impoppable	Unlock XP
Sharper Darts Darts can pop 8 Bloons each.	$425	$500	$540	$600	160
Centered Path New central flight path for maximum map coverage.	$255	$300	$325	$360	600
Neva-Miss Targeting Darts automatically seek out and pop Bloons by themselves.	$1,870	$2,200	$2,375	$2,640	3,000
Spectre Rapidly fires darts and bombs, dominating most Bloon types easily.	$20,400	$24,000	$25,920	$28,800	19,000
Flying Fortress This is a BIG plane. (Fires 3 streams of more powerful bombs and darts twice as fast. The bombs can damage all bloon types, excluding camo if no camo detection granted)	$102,000	$120,000	$129,600	$144,000	45,000
Total Sell Amount	Tier 4: $16,541 Tier 5: $87,941	Tier 4: $19,460 Tier 5: $103,460	Tier 4: $21,018 Tier 5: $110,338	Tier 4: $23,352 Tier 5: $124,152	N/A
Total Cost	Tier 4: $23,630 Tier 5: $125,630	Tier 4: $27,800 Tier 5: $147,800	Tier 4: $30,025 Tier 5: $157,625	Tier 4: $33,360 Tier 5: $177,360	67,760

Gallery

Monkey Ace upgrades menu, in BTD6

Trivia

• This and the Heli Pilot are the only towers with aircraft.
• This tower seems to be based on the Sopwith Camel, a British World War One fighter plane. In Bloons TD 4, it looks similar to a Stratolaunch carrier plane (but is most likely just a Sopwith Camel).
• In Bloons TD 4, the Rapid Fire upgraded plane is very similar to the P-38 Lightning, while the monkey ace in Bloons TD 5 Operation: Dart Storm and Ground Zero are like the F-117. In addition, Spectre is just like the real AC-130.
  • It is confirmed in Bloons Monkey City that the Spectre is based off the AC-130 as the special buiding required to unlock it is called the AC130 Construction Hangar .
• In Bloons TD 5, the Pineapple Present drops faster for 2 upgrades (Rapid Fire and Operation: Dart Storm).
• This is the first moving tower in the BTD series, with the second being the Heli Pilot.
• This tower is deadly in mass amounts, especially if upgraded to tier 3.
• An Operation: Dart Storm appears dropping a crate of cash in BTD5, when the player activates the Supply Drop ability.
• In Bloons TD 4, the pineapples will drop every time the plane shoots, no matter what upgrade. While in Bloons TD 5, it will just drop one Pineapple every 3 seconds, but some upgrades slightly decreases the time between drops.
• It is possible to beat all rounds in Bloons TD 4 by filling the screen with Monkey Aces upgraded once; however, this will create lots of lag and takes a long time as Aces in BTD4, Aces do not have a specified tower and you have to click on the exact plane you wish to upgrade.
• The Premium Upgrade Grilled Pineapples makes the Pineapples that the Monkey Ace drop explode after 1 second as well.
• Ground Zero, one of the last upgrades for the Monkey Ace, is very useful in higher levels since 2 of them can instantly pop B.F.B.s, leaving just M.O.A.B.s. The player will still need a way to pop Z.O.M.G.s, though.
• In BTD5, the icon for the Monkey Ace upgrade Spectre shows the ace dropping 2 bombs with words on both bombs that are hard to read, the first saying "From: Ace" and the second saying "To: Bloons".
• Both of the final upgrades are based off of real planes, the AC-130 and the B-2 Spirit Bomber for the Spectre and the Ground Zero respectively.
• In BTD5 Deluxe, the Ground Zero Ability does 1,000 damage instead of 350, instantly popping B.F.B.s. It also does 1,000 damage in BTD Battles.
• Despite the Monkey Ace having no set target (with the exception of Neva-Miss Targeting) the volley of darts will still not hit camo bloons without the Spy Plane upgrade.
• This is one of few Bloons power-ups that is inspired by the Tower Defense counterpart as opposed to vice-versa.
• In Bloons Monkey City, Darts from Neva-Miss Targeting will target Camo bloons but will not pop them without the Spy Plane upgrade.
• 2 Spectres can take out infinite Ceramics on most tracks.
• The Monkey ace is a biplane. Biplanes have two wings stacked on top of each other and they are connected by wires and struts to make one strong structure. The ace becomes a monoplane when at least x/3 or is 4/x.
• In Bloons Monkey City, there is a glitch that makes the Monkey Ace fly off the screen to switch back to the track you've selected when alternating between the 8 pattern and the O pattern. It comes back around when the pattern is changed, though.

  

  The glitch in action. The Monkey ace is leaving its pattern.

• In BTD5, it attacks in a way similar to the Dartling Gun; between rounds, when there are no bloons coming, the Monkey Ace will not shoot darts.