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Overclock Ability: Target another tower to supercharge its attack speed for a short time.
~ In-game description

Overclock is the 4th upgrade of Path 2 for the Engineer Monkey in Bloons TD 6. Overclock grants the ability to temporarily increase the attack speed of the target tower by ~67% (decreases attack cooldown by 40%). If a Monkey Village is targeted, it receives a +25% range boost, on top of bonus attack speed if it can directly attack. If a Banana Farm is targeted, its income production is boosted by 1.66x, rounded up.

The duration of the Overclock decreases when used on higher tier towers or higher level Heroes, reduced by 15 seconds for each tier. For Heroes, the "tier" counts every 4 levels starting from 0 (i.e. Level 1-3, then 4 levels per tier), and ending at 20. Towers below Tier 4 and Level 1-15 Heroes receive 60s of Overclock, Tier 4 towers and Level 16-19 Heroes get 45s, and Tier 5 towers and Level 20 Heroes get only 30s.

In addition, Overclock's main attack increases from 3 pierce to 15 pierce (20 if crosspathed with Oversize Nails) and its nailgun projectile speed is doubled.

This upgrade costs $11,475 on Easy, $13,500 on Medium, $14,580 on Hard, and $16,200 on Impoppable.

Description[]

Overview[]

An Engineer with the Overclock upgrade exchanges its usual foam dispensing unit with a carryable white electric-powered machine with two amplifier drums. Its nailgun is more techno-futuristic, as with the rest of its attire. Its helmet has the most noticeable change, which now has a dark grey band with a neon-colored PCB visual pattern along the middle of his helmet. It also wears two grey gauntlets patterned with circle-shaped neon visual patterns. The official upgrade portrait for Overclock shows the monkey holding its fist up, appearing empowered by its electrically active gadgets.

Overclock's primary feature is the ability to boost a particular tower's attack speed by ~67%, with this ability having a cooldown of 45 seconds and duration differing based on the upgrade tier of the selected tower:

  • Base tower Tier 1-3/Level 1-15 Hero: 60 seconds (133% uptime)
  • Tier 4/Level 16-19 Hero: 45 seconds (100% uptime)
  • Tier 5/Level 20 Hero: 30 seconds (67% uptime)

If used on a Monkey Village, it instead increases their range by 25%; when used on Banana Farms, they receive 67% more income packets per round.

Activated Abilities[]

See also: Special Abilities (BTD6)#Overclock
OverclockUpgradeIcon

Overclock Ability

Overclock Ability
  • Ability: Target tower gains +66% attack speed temporarily. Also gains +25% range for Villages, and Banana Farms gain +66% more income instead of more attack speed.
  • Type: Instant + duration, can be used multiple times if cooldown refreshes before duration ends
  • Duration: 30-60 seconds depending on the tier of targeted tower
  • Cooldown: 45 seconds
  • Uptime: 66% with Tier 5 tower target, 100% with Tier 4 target, 133% with Tier 3 or below target
  • Initial cooldown: 15 seconds (33%)
  • Reduced cooldowns from: Monkey Knowledge, Relic Knowledge, global Energizer buff, Geraldo's Rejuv Potion

Targeting Priorities[]

Overclock 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.

Overclock's foam utilizes Selectable Target to deploy at a single spot within the tower's immediate range, and defaults on Close. The Overclock ability is a tower buff that targets a single tower based on user interaction.

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-4-X) $11,475 $13,500 $14,580 $16,200 -
Total (0-4-0) $13,040 $15,350 $16,580 $18,420 $9,128 $10,745 $11,606 $12,894
Crosspath (1-4-0) $13,465 $15,850 $17,120 $19,020 $9,426 $11,095 $11,984 $13,314
Crosspath (2-4-0) $13,805 $16,250 $17,550 $19,500 $9,664 $11,375 $12,285 $13,650
Crosspath (0-4-1) $13,420 $15,800 $17,065 $18,960 $9,394 $11,060 $11,946 $13,272
Crosspath (0-4-2) $13,605 $16,020 $17,300 $19,225 $9,524 $11,214 $12,110 $13,458

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

Strategy[]

Summary[]

Overclock is one of the most essential support towers for the mid-to-late game, notably on both Boss Bloon Events and CHIMPS. For a relatively low cost, it can be used to boost attack speed of any tower by up to ~66.6%, or increase range by 25% for Monkey Villages or Banana Farm income by 66%. With exception of non-damaging Villages and Farms, this ability grants a substantial attack speed boost the targeted tower, improving that tower's total DPS by a large margin. The range boosts for Villages and income boosts for Farms can be handy to use, but in most situations it is better to apply the ability onto a DPS tower instead of Villages or Farms. Exceptions to this rule are usually to apply maximum income greed, for Boss Bloon Events in particular, whether it be to buff the range of a pre-built Monkeyopolis or to maximize the strength of the strongest direct-income Farm.

Most of the time, particularly on CHIMPS, the Overclock ability should be used on the tower that performs the highest DPS, in order to make the most of its attack speed boosts. Note that Tier 5 towers or Level 20 Heroes may require more than one Overclock in order to have full uptime, but it is usually safe otherwise to keep on using the ability whenever it becomes available. Overclock has a special interaction with lower-tier towers that increases uptime for its overclocking effects, which can be utilized in different ways to maximize use of the speed benefits.

Tips[]

  • Good candidates for use of Overclock are usually the highest DPS towers. These will usually be singular powerful high-DPS towers such as Apache Prime or Perma Charge.
  • Overclock amplifies buffs previously on the target tower, such as effectively doubling the effectiveness of Poplust on Avatar of Wrath.
    • However, note that Alchemist buffs wear out more quickly under Overclock.
  • Unless it is for improving mid-game potential, crosspathing Overclock is generally unneeded. But if crosspathing is desired, Path 1 crosspath is useful for extra overall blimp damage and Path 3 crosspath for utilizing its in-built extra bloon popping power. Note that 2-4-0 is prone to accidental Overclock targeting to the Engineer's sentries.
    • 0-4-2 Overclock is far stronger in the mid-game due to a much higher pierce Pin and foamy slowdown, but otherwise, crosspathing should not matter too much in the long-run.
    • 2-4-0 Overclock's sentries deal more MOAB-class damage because of the Deconstruction upgrade, but otherwise statistically identical to a 2-3-0 Cleansing Foam's sentries.
  • Because of the new Overclock tier-based duration rework in Version 21.0, the Overclock ability is very strong with any tower up to Tier 4, as there is pretty much 100% uptime for said ability, with the 45 second cooldown versus the 45 second duration.
  • In terms of DPS, the best hero candidate for Overclock is Captain Churchill, as he levels slowly but is incredibly powerful compared to his level. Another solid hero candiate for Overclock is Pat Fusty, particularly Level 13+ Pat Fusty stunning MOAB-class bloons and therefore increase stun uptime against them.
  • Overclock applied on Banana Farms is usually not very cost-effective income production unless affecting a Banana Research Facility, Banana Central, Central Market, or Monkey Wall Street. Note that Overclock does not increase income of the end-of-round cash or abilities from a Banana Farm.
    • If the defenses can handle incoming rounds without Overclock, apply the Overclock ability to the strongest Banana Farm(s) until it seems it will be needed for DPS again.
    • Adding Overclock to Monkey Banks is no better than adding it to Marketplace or Banana Plantation, as only the pockets of cash are boosted by the ability. However, these extra pockets of cash can be influenced by interest, so adding the boost can be more worth it in some cases.
    • Despite having a function similar to a Banana Farm, Monkeyopolis will only receive the range buff all villages receive. It will not gain the +66% extra production speed. However, the range boost could be used onto a Monkey City to fit more Banana Farms into its radius prior to upgrading to Monkeyopolis, allowing it to absorb more Farms prior to purchase.
    • The best farm to buff is Banana Central, while the second-best and third-best are Banana Research Facility and Central Market or Monkey Wall Street, respectively.
  • For Boss Bloon Events, Overclocks are key to maximize income gain. They greatly increase the income of Banana Central, and for farming after the Tier 3 Boss, many should be placed once all space for Monkeyopolis and Banana Research Facilities has been taken up. This has the added benefit of easily building up the $250,000 of sacrifices needed for a high level Master Builder.
  • An Overclock Engineer Monkey can Overclock itself for boosted attack speed. This is not particularly useful in most games, but it may be a lifesaver in extreme challenges, such as specific 2TCs.
  • Overclocking a base tower and then quickly upgrading it to a higher-tier allows the duration of the ability to retain at its maximum duration. This is especially impactful for maximizing income via 0-0-0 Banana Farms into 4-2-0 Banana Research Facilities.

Version History[]

Balance Changes[]

Overall, the effectiveness of Overclock's ability has been nerfed in both boost quantity and boost duration. It still remains a strong upgrade for singular towers overall, just now a lot less effective on Tier 5 upgrades and max level heroes. Because the ability is the primarily the reason to buy this upgrade, the buffs to Overclock's main attack hardly matter in terms of this upgrade's overall viability.

12.0 (Engineer update, compared to BTD5)
  • NERF Overclock ability now works on a cost basis (i.e. <$15,000 lasts for 60 seconds, $15,000-$40,000 for 45 seconds, and $40,000+ lasts for 30 seconds).
14.0
  • NERF Overclock attack speed buff reduced from +100% → +66% (Monkey Farms remain at 100%).
    • Version 14.0's official patch notes has an error regarding the Overclock attack speed boost nerf. The nerfed attack speed boost was actually from +100% to +66% instead of to +80%; this mistake is likely due to a confusion between the concepts of attack cooldown (i.e. for the multiplicative increase/decrease for an attack per unit time) and attack speed (i.e. for the percentage increase/decrease for the numbers of attacks per second).
    • Some extra details about this discrepancy were explained on the official BTD6 subreddit here.
16.0
  • BUFF Overclock can now be targeted by Techbot.
20.0
  • BUFF Overclock ability active buff state will now be included in save files.
21.0
Engineer is quite poor in terms of crosspathing, so we've added crosspath benefits to Cleansing Foam as well as an overall price buff to the middle crosspathing upgrades. We've been somewhat unhappy with how Overclock sits in the game for a while and especially how the interaction with tower cost causes levelling heroes naturally to be far advantageous over purchasing upgrades when this is already underused. We have made an attempt to rework these issues by moving it to a tier-based system rather than price.
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • NERF Overclock attack speed buff for Farms reduced from +100% → +66% (66% extra income).
  • Change Overclock ability is reworked to operate on a tier basis rather than a cost basis:
    • NERF T5 duration is now always 30 seconds.
    • NERF T4 duration is now always 45 seconds.
    • Change T3 duration is now always 60 seconds.
    • BUFF T2 duration is now always 75 seconds.
    • BUFF T1 duration is now always 90 seconds.
    • BUFF T0 duration is now always 105 seconds.
    • NERF Hero duration is based on X/4, where X is level, starting from Level 0 (i.e. Level 1-3 is T0, Level 4-7 is T1, Level 8-11 is T2, Level 12-15 is T3, Level 16-19 is T4, Level 20 is T5).
  • BUFF Affected by Cleansing Foam crosspathing changes
23.0
[...] We've added a pierce & speed boost to Overclock's base upgrade [...]
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • BUFF Overclock's main attack's projectile speed increased (375 → 750).
  • BUFF Overclock's main attack's pierce increased (3 → 15).
29.0
  • BUFF Affected by smarter Cleansing Foam buff
31.0
  • BUFF Affected by Cleansing Foam crosspath buffs
33.0
[...] Cleansing Foam is only seeing a slight tweak to help it be more viable if you want to attempt it as 'main camo detection’, and this mainly fixes some issues in ABR games allowing it to catch quick initial camo spawns.
~ Ninja Kiwi, referring to Cleansing Foam
  • BUFF Affected by Cleansing Foam buffs
34.0
Overclock's considerable longer duration benefit on lower tiers currently serves little purpose and only leads to weirdness in upgrading boosted towers, so for now we’d rather minimize this on the early cases that don’t serve much purpose.
~ Ninja Kiwi
  • NERF Overclock no longer has a longer ability duration for towers below Tier 3 or Heroes below Level 12, reduced to 60s maximum duration.
    • Overclock buff to T0 duration reduced 105s → 60s
    • Overclock buff to T1 reduced 90s → 60s
    • Overclock buff to T2 reduced 75s → 60s
37.0
  • BUFF [undocumented] Overclock can no longer target upgraded Beast Handlers that lack any beast
  • NERF [undocumented] Overclock can no longer target or affect Beast Handler's birds
    • Note: Ninja Kiwi incorrectly addressed "5-x-x & x-5-x Beast handler paths are now overclockable", which implies that beasts from Paths 1 and 2 can be buffed from Overclock; from testing, the actual balance change is that birds no longer accept Overclock or Ultraboost buffs, and previously all Beast Handlers could accept the Overclock buff properly and pass them to their beasts, just now water beasts can accept the buff better by increasing rate of the splash.

Bug Fixes and General Changes[]

13.0
  • Change Description changed from "Overclock Ability: Target Monkey becomes super powered for 60 seconds." to "Overclock Ability: Target Monkey becomes super powered for a short time."
    • The old description used to be "...for 60 seconds", but has since been changed to "...for a short time" as of Version 13.0 due to accuracy reasons.
24.0
  • Change Description changed from "Overclock Ability: Target Monkey becomes super powered for a short time." to "Overclock Ability: Target another tower to supercharge its attack speed for a short time."

Sounds[]

When deploying Cleansing Foam:

When activating Overclock Ability:

Gallery[]

Official artwork[]

Trivia[]

  • In BTD6, Overclocked towers are indicated by green orbiting comets of energy rotating anticlockwise. Additionally, there is a mechanical "boost" sound effect for overclocking a tower, unlike in BTD5 generation games.
  • In BTD6, Overclock can overclock itself, similar to BMC Flash and BTD5 Deluxe. In BTD5 Mobile and other mobile versions, Overclock cannot overclock itself.
  • The Version 13.0 patch notes stated that Overclock's attack speed boost was nerfed from +100% to +66%, but it was incorrectly unimplemented until Version 14.0, where Ninja Kiwi once again reiterated the Overclock nerf, although in the second time they provided the wrong nerfed speed boost in the Version 14.0 patch notes.
  • Before Version 16.0, Tech Bot is not able to target an Overclock Engineer. But it was still possible to use it on an Ultraboost Engineer, and it will automatically reapply the ability on the previous targeted tower.
    • Starting in Version 16.0, Overclock can be linked by a Tech Bot. It will work in the same way as a linked Ultraboost.
  • According to Ninja Kiwi's 8th July 2022 blog, the Overclock effect on living organisms, such as monkeys, are similar to the effects of coffee.


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