Portable Lake (BTD6)

Overview

BTD5

BTD6

“	Nowhere to float your boat? Smart monkeys know they can place a Portable Lake on land, allowing any water unit to be deployed within its waters.	”
	~ Bloons TD 6 description

Portable Lake Portrait

Portable Lake icon

Portable Lake is a Power in Bloons TD 6. It can be purchased for 50 or 40 with Cheaper Lakes. Portable Lake provides water, allowing for placement of water-based towers such as Monkey Subs, Monkey Buccaneers, and fish from the top path of the Beast Handler (such as Piranha). Portable Lake is an inflatable pool whose footprint is just larger than a Banana Farm. Portable Lake's terrestrial counterpart is Pontoon.

Portable Lakes can comfortably fit up to 4 Subs or 3 Buccaneers, or tightly fit up to 5 Subs or 4 Buccaneers. Unlike BTD5, Portable Lakes can also support Sun Temples, True Sun Gods, and Vengeful True Sun God, as the game considers all temples to be "amphibious". In this game, selling a Pontoon or Portable Lake will also sell the towers on top of them. In addition, Portable Lakes can be stacked on top of each other by using frozen water from Arctic Wind platforms; its only practical application is to increase a unit's tallness.

A "Portable Lava Lake" tower skin was released in the 25.0 update. It can be purchased in the Trophy Store for 35.

Strategy

Summary

Portable Lake serves as a convenient source of water for the use of water-related units. Note that the large footprint size of the Portable Lake may not necessarily support water on every possible type of land, only the sections of land that are large enough to fit it.

Tips

• Some maps don't support Portable Lakes at all. The one and only example as of now is Midnight Mansion.

Bugs

Current

• [31.2] Portable Lake stacked on top of each other about 20+ times causes all towers placed at the apex to have no footprint. Shown here is the bug.

Version History

Initial release (compared to BTD5)

• Portable Lake now supports Sun Temples (corresponds to Temple of the Monkey God)
• Portable Lake costs more (40 → 50)

Gallery

Official Sticker artwork

4 Monkey Subs in a Lake

It's possible to sell Portable Lakes in BTD6, even if there are towers in it.

BTD6 Portable Lake

A photo of stacking 24 Portable Lakes to oversee the ledge of the castle in Dark Castle.

The Portable Lava Lake

The bug that removes the footprint of towers on a stack of Lakes.

Trivia

• The toy duck in the portable lake is an instance of a non-mythical animal other than monkeys in the Bloons series.
• In BTD6, selling a Portable Lake or Pontoon will also sell the towers on top of them.
• In BTD6, stacking Portable Lakes can increase the vision level by 1 unit, allowing some towers to see over certain obstacles. One can stack Portable Lakes by using Arctic Wind to place Portable Lakes on top of each other.
  • By stacking enough Portable Lakes, a tower can eventually bypass all Line of Sight restrictions.
    • Notably, Ninja Kiwi has stated that this mechanic is not a bug and thus they will not patch it out.
• According to Ninja Kiwi's August 6th 2021 blog, and following up from previous week's blog, Portable Lake material is made of tack-resistant rubber but isn't made of Bloons at all. However, Dr Monkey can explain how both types of rubber are very distinct.
• According to Ninja Kiwi's 3rd June 2022 blog, Portable Lakes are filled with water from hoses.