Bloons Wiki
Register
Advertisement
Bloons Wiki
BTD6

The Bureau grants special Bloon popping knowledge, allowing nearby Monkeys to pop all Bloon types.
~ In-game description

Monkey Intelligence Bureau (sometimes abbreviated as MIB for short) is the third upgrade of Path 2 for the Monkey Village in Bloons TD 6. It essentially grants all the towers in its radius the Normal Type (pops Black, White, Purple, Lead, Frozen) Normal damage type. All towers within its radius can pop Lead Bloons, Thermal Bloons, Frozen Bloons, and Purple Bloons, but not Dreadbloon class immunities, on top of camo detection via its previous Radar Scanner upgrade. This includes bloons that contain any mix of these aforementioned bloon attributes.

Note that the Monkey Intelligence Bureau buff does not necessarily grant towers the ability to target or affect any bloon type including MOAB-class bloons, but it allows them to damage any bloon type. Most attacks with status effects exclusively dependent on the condition of the attack damaging a bloon (e.g. Counter-Espionage shurikens removing camo from Camo Leads), rather than the effect of the status effect on a bloon (e.g. Pin's pinning effect on a Lead or Ceramic), are also affected by MIB. In some very special cases, the Monkey Intelligence Bureau can help allow specific attacks or status effects to affect and target specific bloon properties, but only up to Rainbow, such as Lead and Purple properties.

This upgrade costs $6,375 on Easy, $7,500 on Medium, $8,100 on Hard, and $9,000 on Impoppable.

Description[]

Overview[]

Monkey Intelligence Bureau turns the entire Village into a modern pentagonal-shaped steel building. It retains its pair of rotating radar speakers on top of a radio tower stand. Across the building, it has three orange windows per side. The door and entrance appear to be made of concrete.

The upgrade icon for Monkey Intelligence Bureau is not the same as it does in BTD5. It now appears to slightly resemble the COBRA but with sunglasses. It is a monkey in a black three-piece businesswear wearing black sunglasses.

Monkey Intelligence Bureau provides an MIB buff, allowing all nearby towers to pop all bloon types, alongside targeting of Leads and Purples. The specifics on how MIB works is far more complex, as explained below.

MIB Buff[]

Mib dart

MIB allowing Dart Monkey to pop Lead

Just like in BTD5, the Monkey Intelligence Bureau upgrade allows nearby towers to damage any bloon property. More specifically, the Monkey Intelligence Bureau awards an equivalent of the normal damage type to all nearby towers, allowing them to deal damage to any type of bloon property. Most of the non-MOAB status effects can additionally affect any type of bloon up to Rainbow.

  • Black and Zebra Bloons can be popped by all forms of explosive damage.
  • White and Zebra Bloons can be frozen by freezing damage (i.e. from Ice Monkey, Ball Lightning’s freezing balls, and Sentry Expert's Cold Sentry).
  • Frozen and Lead Bloons can be popped by sharp projectiles (e.g. darts, tacks, blades).
  • Purple Bloons can be popped by attacks that involve energy, plasma, or fire.
  • Lead Bloons can be frozen and popped by freezing damage (i.e. from Ice Monkey without Cold Snap, Ball Lightning, and Sentry Expert's Cold Sentry).
  • DDTs can be popped by sharp projectiles (e.g. darts, tacks, blades), explosive damage (e.g. bombs, missiles), or freezing damage (e.g. Snowstorm ability, Icicle Impale) without special upgrades.

However, this will not grant power to attack or affect MOAB-class, such as BADs, if the tower cannot attack them, like BTD5. It also does not grant a small number of non MOAB-class status effects with the power to affect specific bloon immunities:

  • Pin effects will never halt progress of Leads or Ceramics
  • Super Monkey's Knockback always has a weaker effect on Leads and Ceramics
  • Downdraft blowback never blows back Lead
  • Druid of the Storm blowback never blows back Lead
  • Distraction blowback never blows back Lead
  • Ice Monkeys cannot re-freeze frozen bloons without the Re-Freeze upgrade. (Possibly a bug)
  • Buckshot always has a weaker knockback effect against Leads and Ceramics.
  • Juggernaut always has a weaker knockback effect on Leads and Ceramics

On-damage status effects (e.g. Burny Stuff on Black Bloons, Counter-Espionage on Lead Bloons, Heart of Oak on Lead Bloons, Ezili property stripping on Purple Bloons) can be affected by MIB by switching the conditions of application onto the bloon to "true". However, status effects that rely on its effect on a bloon (e.g. percentage knockback on bloons via any source of knockback such as the Knockback upgrade, capability to target particular bloon types, and pinning effects on Leads and Ceramics) are almost always not affected by MIB. If a certain status effect depends upon damage but doesn't do any damage due to the nature of the attack, such as 3-2-0 Druid of the Storm tornadoes stripping Regrow from Regrow Lead Bloons (which it doesn't), the status effect does not apply.

There is one exception to all of these rules, which is granting some towers the capability to target bloons up to Rainbow. A notable example is Psi. Psi normally cannot target Leads or Purples, but giving Psi with Monkey Intelligence Bureau allows them to target those bloon types. This does not allow Psi to target Ceramics, however, and requires Level 7+ to do so. All birds derived from Bird Handlers (Beast Handlers with bottom crosspaths) except Pouākai can target Leads when given MIB, ignoring them completely without MIB. Giant Condor can also target DDTs if given a MIB buff.

Monkey Intelligence Bureau does not revoke a tower from retaining the Sharpening Stone buff, as MIB simply adds popping of all bloon types (e.g. Also affects Lead Bloons Lead-Popping Power, Also affects Black Bloons Black-Popping Power) in a similar way to setting a damage type to Normal Type (pops Black, White, Purple, Lead, Frozen) Normal. Strangely, since freezing towers still cannot re-freeze a bloon without Re-Freeze or similar, not giving Also affects Frozen Bloons Frozen-Popping Power to all attacks that create a Freeze (standard bloons, unspecified alt variants) Freeze status effect, MIB technically does not actually give all types of popping power; this is because it doesn't grant frozen targeting, which prevents Ice Monkeys without innate upgrades to refreeze bloons.

Note that Monkey Intelligence Bureau does not grant nearby towers the capability to bypass the class-specific immunities of Dreadbloon, but allows attacks that can't damage Lead to affect Dreadbloon. For instance, an 0-x-5 Avatar of Wrath (which can't pop Lead but deals high damage per projectile) with MIB can't damage Dreadbloon while Dreadbloon is under the Magic phase, but can damage it under any other case.

Targeting Priorities[]

Monkey Intelligence Bureau supports nearby towers with influential tower buffs. Because it also has Grow Blocker, it can attack any Regrow Bloon within its range, defaulting on Close for calculation purposes. However, for simplicity reasons, Monkey Intelligence Bureau has no targeting priorities.

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) $6,375 $7,500 $8,100 $9,000 -
Total (0-3-0) $9,305 $10,950 $11,825 $13,140 $6,514 $7,665 $8,278 $9,198
Crosspath (1-3-0) $9,645 $11,350 $12,255 $13,620 $6,752 $7,945 $8,579 $9,534
Crosspath (2-3-0) $10,920 $12,850 $13,875 $15,420 $7,644 $8,995 $9,713 $10,794
Crosspath (0-3-1) $9,730 $11,450 $12,365 $13,740 $6,811 $8,015 $8,656 $9,618
Crosspath (0-3-2) $10,155 $11,950 $12,905 $14,340 $7,109 $8,365 $9,034 $10,038

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

Strategy[]

Summary[]

This upgrade is very expensive in concept, but it proves very effective at countering DDTs. Strong DPS towers whose weaknesses are only specific bloon types would strongly benefit from this upgrade. The majority of popular strategies often rely on MIB to reduce weaknesses against DDTs. Sometimes a MIB is used to allow energy-based Magic Monkeys to damage Purples, most specifically to survive the pre-blimp stage of Round 95. Another viable use is to allow towers to damage Frozen Bloons in order to improve the negative synergy between sharp-based attacks and Ice Monkeys, particularly 0-1-2 Re-Freeze Ice Monkeys, Arctic Wind, or Icicle Impale. On certain scenarios, an MIB is used to allow high-pierce explosives such as Bloon Impact to pop Blacks and Zebras versus high-density rounds.

Despite how expensive this upgrade is, MIB will provide a drastic improvement for certain upgrades by eliminating a wide variety of attack weaknesses. As a full-time ranged buff, it does not rely on external attacks (such as Embrittlement's Brittle (temporarily becomes vulnerable to sharp and freezing damage) Brittle effects) or targeted buffs (e.g. Acidic Mixture Dip's lead-popping benefit) to allow popping of various bloon types.

Tips[]

  • The better crosspath depends on the situation, but 2-3-0 MIB is generally better overall, as it provides more coverage and provides Jungle Drums effects.
  • The player should provide some discounts via Monkey Commerce before upgrading to this upgrade, to save a good chunk of money.
  • In CHIMPS, it is important to try discount an MIB village by Monkey Commerce, although it is quite expensive to do so. The cost for buying the two separate Villages is $12,365 (a 0-0-2 village and a discounted 0-3-0 village in range of each other) rather than $11,800 (just a 0-3-0 village). The difference is $565. If the player is planning to put other monkeys in range of the towers then this difference is negligible.
  • Monkey Intelligence Bureau is very effective at countering the weaknesses of attacking DDTs, especially good for high-attack powerful towers with Lead or Black weaknesses.
  • There are some cases where a MIB is the only sensible option for overcoming properties of DDTs. Examples include Apache Prime on Infernal when playing on CHIMPS (note that Embrittlement's range is too small and attack slowly, and Permanent Brew isn't applicable for practical Infernal CHIMPS runs).

Bugs[]

Current
  • [~25.0] Possibly intentional, but fails to make sense when considering damage types, Ice Monkeys nearby MIB cannot refreeze bloons without the Re-Freeze upgrade. It can be seen as a bug due to the lack of logic when considering that Frozen Bloons are a property, as towers other than Ice Monkeys can pop Frozen when given MIB but the Cold Type (pops Black, Purple) Cold and Metal Freeze Type (pops Black, Purple, Lead) Metal Freeze damage types do not appear to fully embrace the Normal Type (pops Black, White, Purple, Lead, Frozen) Normal damage type.
Patched

TBA

Version History[]

No changes since Monkey Intelligence Bureau was first released in BTD6, although a few bug fixes were made in early versions of the game to address some unintended non-supported interactions.

Initial release (compared to BTD5)
  • NERF Monkey Intelligence Bureau costs more ($4300 → $7500).
2.0
  • BUFF [Bug fix] Ring of Fire and Inferno Ring now pop Purples when in range of MIB.
6.0
  • BUFF [Bug fix] Monkey Sub with Advanced Intel now will (correctly) damage DDTs while the tower is in range of a MIB.
7.0
  • BUFF [Bug fix] Wall of Fire attack can now pop Purples if the Wizard was in range of an MIB at the time of deployment.
25.0
  • NERF [Undocumented, likely a bug] MIB no longer grants Ice Monkeys with frozen-popping power
26.1
MIB still wont [sic] allow ceramic/MOAB targeting early. But, Lead and Purple should be seen more as 'properties' rather than tiers of Bloon... So we agreed that it was a little weird that MIB wasn't at the very least allowing them to be targeted.
~ Rohan Spibo, Version 26.1 comment about Psi + MIB interaction
  • BUFF Monkey Intelligence Bureau will now allow Psi to target Lead & Purple Bloons

Gallery[]

MIB Interactions[]

Official artwork[]

Trivia[]

  • The Monkey Intelligence Bureau upgrade icon is a monkey in black three-piece businesswear wearing black sunglasses.
    • The same upgrade icon looks similar to the COBRA's Misdirection tower avatar in BTD Battles.
    • The building could also be based off of the pentagon being shaped similarly.
    • It might be a reference to the movie Men in Black, considering the name, and the monkey with sunglasses in a suit.
  • According to Ninja Kiwi's 3rd June 2022 blog, the Monkey Intelligence Bureau provide the monkeys with special methods of defense, thanks to the investigative power of the MIB organization.
  • The 0-3-2 Monkey Intelligence Bureau shares a strong resemblance to the 0-4-1 IMF Loan. They are both blue buildings, with orange windows, a banana sign on top of the buildings, and have two crates (albeit in different locations). The difference only being the shape of the buiding and the crates.
  • Monkey Intelligence Bureau is most likely a reference to Men in Black, which itself is also a reference to the Central Intelligence Bureau.
Advertisement