- For the original 1.0 version, see Soulbind.
“ | Reanimate even more powerful Bloon servants to obliterate the enemy and enhances all other Necromancers. | ” |
~ In-game description |
Prince of Darkness (sometimes shortened to POD or PoD) is the fifth upgrade of Path 3 for the Wizard Monkey in Bloons TD 6, and the replacement for the Soulbind upgrade in Version 2.0. The Prince of Darkness can summon undead MOABs and BFBs along with regular undead bloons, and its personal graveyard capacity increases drastically, from 500 to 3,000. Undead bloons in the Prince of Darkness's graveyard are also stored for up to 3 rounds instead of 2. In addition, all undead bloons, including its own, get +1 damage and +50% lifespan (lasting 15 seconds instead of 10). Similar to the previous Necromancer upgrade, all the Prince of Darkness's attacks (including crosspaths Fireball and Wall of Fire) deal +1 damage per 300 undead bloons in its graveyard, up to +10 damage with 3000 bloons stored. As with Necromancer: Unpopped Army, level 11+ Ezili increases the pierce of reanimated bloons by 50%, which is added before other buffs to pierce are applied, and Guided Magic improves lifespan of all undead bloons by an average of +50%. Any summoned undead bloons can have their spawn point adjusted via manual location targeting, or set back to default by simply cancelling the manual targeting selection menu.
On top of all the previous buffs, the Prince of Darkness's main bolt attack becomes 4 times faster, and the Shimmer attack becomes 2 times faster. Prince of Darkness also gets a massive range increase from 60 to 80, and also increases the detection radius and blast radius of the Shimmer attack from 60 to 80 and 75 to 100, respectively.
This upgrade costs $22,525 on Easy, $26,500 on Medium, $28,620 on Hard, and $31,800 on Impoppable.
Description[]
Overview[]
The Prince of Darkness is a monkey skeleton donning a black cloak with a purple rim. It sits upon a purple crystal throne decorated with a single green orb on top and 4 black skulls with green eyes. The Prince's eyes have green pupils and completely black sclera (or potentially none), and it wears an unamused or possibly angry expression. In its upgrade icon and portrait, the Prince is eminating green ghosts, and its throne sits on top of a fissure in the ground that glows green.
Compared to its previous upgrade, the Prince has a higher graveyard storage for its reanimation attacks, in addition to its capability to summon stronger undead bloons, including Undead MOABs and Undead BFBs. The Prince of Darkness also casts its magic attack four times faster than the base tower, which can help in taking down enough lesser bloons to summon undead MOAB-class Bloons. Shimmer is also cast twice as often, improving the tower's reliably as a decamoer. Its range also increases, allowing it to summon Undead Bloons from further, spread shimmer wider, and increase opportunities to hurl its powerful bolts more often.
In addition to its own extra benefits is an added buff to all Necromancers, including itself. Each undead bloon gains +1 damage and lasts 50% longer.
Like Necromancers, the Prince of Darkness stores popped bloons in a personal graveyard, local to each Prince of Darkness (if possible to have more than one Prince of Darkness like in Co-Op), and the graveyard can store accumulated bloons popped for up to 3 rounds. Undead bloons are spawned +10% faster for every 100 graveyard units, capped at up to +100% faster with 1000+ graveyard units. All the Prince of Darkness's attacks deal +1 damage per 300 graveyard units stored, up to +10 damage. The personal graveyard stores up to 3000 accumulated pops.
Targeting Priorities[]
Like most towers, Prince of Darkness's main attack has the four standard targeting priorities for BTD6, those being First, Last, Close, and Strong; this also applies to its Fireball, should it choose 0-1-5 crosspath.
- 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.
Additionally, it also has Camo Prioritization, and its Shimmer defaults to Close in regards to determining pierce consumption. If crosspathed for 0-2-5, its Wall of Fire defaults to Close.
The undead bloons it spawns, meanwhile, are an On-Track item with Undead Movement, and default to Smart targeting, spawning as close to the exit as possible. Zombie bloons travel 175 units before despawning, zombie MOABs travel 225 units, and zombie BFBs travel 150 units before despawning.
Crosspathing with Guided Magic increases distance zombie bloons may travel by 75 units.
Costs[]
- Updated as of Version 44.0. 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-X-5) | $22,525 | $26,500 | $28,620 | $31,800 | - | |||
Total (0-0-5) | $26,965 | $31,725 | $34,265 | $38,070 | $18,876 | $22,208 | $23,986 | $26,649 |
Crosspath (1-0-5) | $27,090 | $31,875 | $34,425 | $38,250 | $18,963 | $22,313 | $24,098 | $26,775 |
Crosspath (2-0-5) | $27,470 | $32,325 | $34,910 | $38,790 | $19,229 | $22,628 | $24,437 | $27,153 |
Crosspath (0-1-5) | $27,220 | $32,025 | $34,590 | $38,430 | $19,054 | $22,418 | $24,213 | $26,901 |
Crosspath (0-2-5) | $27,900 | $32,825 | $35,455 | $39,390 | $19,530 | $22,978 | $24,819 | $27,573 |
This upgrade's prices (or included crosspath's prices) are affected by the following MK: Magic Tricks, Better Sell Deals
Necromancy[]
Like Necromancers, the Prince of Darkness can summon Undead Bloons (sometimes informally referred as "Zombie Bloons"), which move backwards along the track to damage the enemy bloons. In order to produce Undead Bloons, it relies on accumulating graveyard units to build up its stockpile of Undead Bloons, which can be obtained by having bloons popped within 70 range. Upon gathering an adequate number of graveyard units, it consumes some of its graveyard units to create Undead Bloons. A single Prince of Darkness can stock up to 3,000 graveyard units, each unit lasting up to 3 rounds before automatically depleted.
Undead MOABs can deal 40 damage per hit with 20 pierce, expiring after 30 seconds (actually 20 seconds, but the +50% lifespan buff increases that value). Each undead MOAB consumes 20 units from the Prince of Darkness's graveyard. This attack occurs every 3.0s, and only requires the graveyard to have at least 20 units before spawning.
Undead BFBs, on the other hand, deal 100 damage per hit with 50 pierce, but only last 20 seconds (again, actually 13.3 seconds, but increased due to the same lifespan buff). Undead BFBs consume 100 units from the Prince of Darkness's graveyard, and they can only be summoned once the graveyard contains at least 2000 units. This attack occurs every 3.0s, and it replaces the spawning of undead MOABs.
Since the Prince of Darkness actually gains a much higher maximum graveyard capacity, it gains a higher cap for damage scaling, up to +10 at 3,000 graveyard. Maximum bonus attack speed for the summoning of Undead Bloons remains at +50%, which is achieved at 500 graveyard.
Graveyard Units[]
- See also: Undead Bloon
Graveyard units represent the mana of that Prince of Darkness, which increases if bloons are popped within its collection range and decreases over time as Undead Bloons are produced or by round-based expiry. Undead Bloons and graveyard units are related but represent distinct entities; Undead Bloons are just the product of graveyard units.
Accumulation[]
The Prince of Darkness receives graveyard units when bloons are popped within 70 range of the Prince of Darkness (these do not have to be popped by the Prince himself). Each layer popped gives 1 graveyard unit; for instance, popping a MOAB only gives +1 graveyard unit, but popping an entire Rainbow Bloon gives +46 graveyard units. However, from Rounds 81+ when Super Ceramics arrive, popping a Super Ceramic layer gives between 7-10 graveyard units, inclusive, to compensate for the fewer child bloons per Super Ceramic. The Prince of Darkness's graveyard can hold up to 3000 units.
Depletion[]
Every time the Prince summons undead bloons, it will randomly consume 1-10 graveyard units. 1 to 4 undead bloons are summoned at a time, each consuming the previously mentioned quantities of graveyard space. Each undead bloon has 1 base pierce and gets bonus pierce equivalent to how many graveyard units were consumed.
Undead blimps start spawning after achieving a certain amount of graveyard units. Undead MOABs require at least 20 units in the graveyard before they can spawn, consuming 20 units each, and undead BFBs require at least 2000 units to start spawning, consuming 100 units each. The undead BFBs replace undead MOABs until the Prince's graveyard count drops below 2000.
For every 100 units in the Prince's graveyard, it summons undead bloons +10% faster, up to 100% faster at 1000+ graveyard units. Each undead bloon and undead MOAB also gets 1 bonus damage for every 200 graveyard units (up to +10 at 3000 graveyard units) that the Prince had right before he summoned the bloon. Undead BFBs do not get this bonus damage.
Graveyard units stored in a Prince of Darkness last for up to 3 rounds before being automatically depleted.
Strategy[]
Summary[]
With the massive Version 21.0 buffs to Prince of Darkness, it is an extremely powerful cleanup tower, and actively acts as a guard against the exit. Undead MOABs and undead BFBs can demolish huge groups of weaker bloons with ease, especially normal MOABs and Super Ceramics in late-game. The greatly-enhanced Shimmer attack is also useful for countering the camo properties of DDTs. It becomes extremely powerful with sufficient supporting DPS towers nearby, but without them it becomes extremely weak.
The Prince of Darkness comes with massive enhancements to all its attacks: 4x faster bolts, 2x faster shimmers, and +1 damage and +50% lifespan for all undead bloons on screen. The scaling attack speed and damage of all undead bloons becomes even more significant on the Prince of Darkness, for up to +10 damage and +100% faster, alongside up to +10 pierce like all other Necromancers. At maximum strength, the powerful army of undead bloons paired with undead BFBs can obliterate large groups of DDTs and bloons below ZOMG with almost no trouble.
Tips[]
- The Prince of Darkness, although super powerful at its maximum power, requires some support in order to become effective on rounds where single-target damage per second is important, especially rounds like 80, 85, 87, 97, and 100. Adding towers that are effective countermeasures against high-HP singular blimps, such as Maim MOAB or Spike Storm, are helpful.
- Prince of Darkness can also get overwhelmed with too many ceramic bloons at once, meaning support is recommended for it to beat rounds like round 98.
- When used in combination with general supporting damage to build up its undead bloon count, Prince of Darkness can fully solo the DDTs on rounds 90, 93, and 95, as well as almost completely solo the Fortified DDTs on Round 99.
- Letting the majority of the main defense attack close to the Prince of Darkness is helpful so that the Prince of Darkness can generate graveyard count a lot more reliably. Since the Prince of Darkness's actual graveyard collection range is slightly larger than its massive base range (70 range instead of 60), it is important to add supporting towers nearby it for assistance.
- Use 2-0-5 Prince of Darkness on maps with line of sight issues, like Flooded Valley, but use the 0-2-5 Prince of Darkness to utilize the potentially extremely high damage output that it can deal, since the Prince gets up to +10 damage on all attacks with a full enough graveyard. Note that Wall of Fire will always target the closest area of track, which means the massive range of Prince of Darkness does not affect the Wall of Fire attack's positions whatsoever.
- Just like Necromancer: Unpopped Army, the Prince of Darkness is best used on single-lane maps, although because of the new Version 21.0 buffs it will always spawn from the exits and aim towards paths where bloons are closest towards the exit.
- Like the Necromancer, the Prince of Darkness is best used for anti-stalling and is optimized with anti-stalling. If used purely for anti-stalling purposes, place it near the start of the map alongside extra MOAB-class damage support. This will allow the Prince of Darkness to easily gain maximum graveyard capacity to summon many powerful undead MOABs and undead BFBs, for maximum damage output. Otherwise, place it close to the exit(s) to optimize its cleanup potential in CHIMPS games.
- Placing Necromancers nearby a Prince of Darkness can actually compete for the same pop, meaning that they can actually steal Prince of Darkness pops. However, having nearby Necromancers is not always a bad idea because this can make all of them pack a bigger chain reaction against dense bloons.
Version History[]
Balance Changes[]
Replacing the old Soulbind upgrade, Prince of Darkness's role is to improve the undead bloon attacks. However, it was initially very weak outside of exploiting a Sandbox Mode bug that was later patched out. One major rework in Version 18.0 increased its overall reliability, but not nearly enough to make it useful outside of custom challenges. However, the Version 21.0 balance changes has extremely improved Prince of Darkness's power to the extent that it become an extremely cost-effective mid-to-late-game Tier 5 tower.
Version 21.0 has overhauled the power of the Prince of Darkness by adding a significant damage-scaling mechanic to all its attacks, alongside a few quality-of-life changes that improve its reliability as a higher-scale cleanup tower in the late-game. The damage scaling was toned down in Version 23.0, but nonetheless has made its way as a very popular CHIMPS tower for not only its incredibly powerful cleanup role but also for reliable decamo. Version 28.0 nerfed Prince of Darkness's pop accumulation of Super Ceramics by lowering the upper boundary of graveyard units gathered per popped Super Ceramic. Version 30.0 nerfed the 0-2-5 crosspath in particular but also reduced its base range to both weaken PoD's power and for ease of determining undead bloon positionings. Version 31.0 would then proceed to nerf PoD's price, with Ninja Kiwi admitting that even with various nerfs, it was still slightly overperforming at its current price point.
- 2.0
- First released, superseded Soulbind upgrade.
- 4.0
- Zombie MOABs and Zombie BFBs now do more damage (20 → 40 for Zombie MOABs, 20 → 100 for Zombie BFBs).
- 8.0
- Changed visuals of Undead MOABs and Undead BFBS from 2D to 3D
- 11.0
- Prince of Darkness now gives +1 damage to all undead bloons spawned from any Necromancer, including himself.
- Prince of Darkness now gives +50% duration to undead bloons spawned from any Necromancer, including himself.
- Prince of Darkness range increased (40 → 80)
- 13.0
- Prince of Darkness undead bloons now have +1 damage (from the Necromancer: Unpopped Army buff).
- 18.0
- Princes of Darkness now each have their own personal 'graveyard' of 2000 capacity rather than 1 shared pool of 2000.
- Princes of Darkness will display their current graveyard size above their portrait next to their pop count. Any Bloons popped within their range can be absorbed into that graveyard, but 1 pop will not fill more than 1 graveyard.
- Princes of Darkness will now be able to retain any Bloons in their graveyard for 1 extra round before expiring.
- Princes of Darkness Zombie lifespan increased from 12s → 15s.
- Princes of Darkness Zombie spawn rate is increased by a flat 10% for every 100 Bloons in the grave reaching a maximum of double attack speed at 500 capacity.
- Prince of Darkness can no longer increase zombie count via pops on Sandbox Mode and then returning to a certain game.
- 21.0
“ | Though it was never a goal for the base tower to be great, given the additional purple weakness since BTD5 and how poorly it currently performs we feel it deserves to take rank as the cheapest magic tower along with a small buff. [...] Finally, Unpopped Army changes are also here! We wanted to cover all of the usability issues with this upgrade while also powering it up and expanding more on the mechanic that makes it so unique. We hope this will be enough to make Wizard very useful in a number of ways, but will be keeping a watchful eye on how it plays out. | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi, referring to base Wizard and Necromancers |
- Undead Bloon attacks now gains a bonus to graveyard after round 81 to make up for the total decrease in child Bloons that are created from Super Ceramics (about 10 per pop).
- Undead Bloon attack targeting has been reworked to function in a smarter way, summoning Zombie Bloons further back to avoid them spawning behind Bloons, and also on multi-lane tracks targeting the lanes that are likely to leak sooner.
- Necromancer (and by extension Prince of Darkness) now enhances the power of all of its attacks by 1 for every 200 souls in its Graveyard. This can stack up to 10 times for Prince of Darkness.
- Prince of Darkness max Graveyard capacity increased from 2000 → 3000.
- Main bolt has more pierce (7 → 8, inherited from the base Wizard pierce buff).
- 23.0
“ | [...] We've also added some previously intended minor changes to Prince of Darkness which were held back due to bugs that have now been resolved. | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi |
- Prince of Darkness pops retained in graveyard increased (2 → 3).
- Prince of Darkness grave required for damage stacks increased (200 → 300).
- Fixed obscure bug whereby undead bloon count slightly drops for undead bloons accumulated on the previous round. Also applies to Necromancer.
- 25.0 (Possibly? 27.3 discovered)
- [Undocumented] 1-0-3 Shimmer now activates over walls
- 28.0
“ | [...] Prince of Darkness has been performing extremely well after all its buffs and this is nice after it underperformed for so long, but the round 81 change to counter reduced Bloon Children with bonus Graveyard per pop has made it sustain high levels of graveyard too easily, this bonus has been lowered a little. | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi |
- Affected by Monkey Sense providing Camo Prioritization
- Prince of Darkness 'bonus grave' after r81 reduced from 7-13 to 7-10
- 30.0
“ | [...] Wizard Prince of Darkness is annoying to position correctly due to the sudden massive radius increase & it also needs a power nerf. So overall here we are moving all of the range increase down into a lower amount at the T3 so that range positioning is known before buying any necromancer upgrades, as well as moving some of the lifespan of the zombies themselves into the lesser used 1xx lifespan crosspath. | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi |
- Prince of Darkness tower range reduced 80 → 60
- Prince of Darkness base Zombie travel distance without Guided Magic reduced 250 → 175. 1-0-5 Prince of Darkness base Zombie travel distance remains at 250
- Prince of Darkness base MOAB travel distance without Guided Magic reduced 300 → 225. 1-0-5 Prince of Darkness MOAB travel distance remains at 300
- Prince of Darkness base BFB travel distance without Guided Magic reduced 200 → 150
- Prince of Darkness BFB travel distance with Guided Magic increased from 200 → 225
- 31.0
“ | [...] As we somewhat expected the last Prince of Darkness rework didn't end up really nerfing it so much, so we are now following up with a small price nerf. | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi |
- Prince of Darkness price increased ($24,000 → $26,500)
- 33.0
- Affected by Shimmer decamo range bonus
- 35.0
“ | [...] Necromancer strategies are very dependent on where your Zombie Bloons spawn which would enable more strategies with more range, but then too much range is very harmful making the spawn location difficult to place & forcing you to often place these towers in silly locations which makes the shimmer not work well. Allowing Necro to select a spawn point addresses this issue and we hope provides some interesting micro uses, so please share any cool ones. | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi, referring to Necromancer |
- Prince of Darkness spawn point can be adjusted manually
- 38.0
- Prince of Darkness spawn point can now be un-targeted by exiting the manual targeting menu
- 39.0
“ | [...] Shimmer’s range/radius values are being adjusted to match the attack trigger area to the tower’s range but with a far larger radius on the actual effect once it is triggered, this reduces inconsistency where Shimmer would often hit only first camo target to enter radius then be stuck on long cooldown. As targeting improvements for Necromancer zombie spawns feel well ironed out now and deal with the old problem that increasing range used to have at T5 we’re bringing back the much larger range on Prince of Darkness which will now also benefit from these Shimmer changes. | ” |
~ Ninja Kiwi |
- Prince of Darkness range increased (60 → 80)
- Prince of Darkness's Shimmer decamo pulse range now matches tower range, detection range remains 80.
- Shimmer decamo pulse radius set to 25% more than tower range, radius increased (70 → 100)
- 43.0
- [undocumented] Prince of Darkness buff no longer gives +50% all undead bloons lifespan to itself or other Necromancers. Does not affect Undead MOABs or Undead BFBs.
Bug Fixes and General Changes[]
This section is incomplete. You can help by expanding it. |
- 16.0
- Now rotates when it attacks.
- 17.0
- No longer rotates when it attacks.
- ???
- Description changed to include Necromancer buffing
Extra Notes (Version History)[]
- From Version 11.0 until Version 30.0, due to a massive range buff, Prince of Darkness has more range than Arcane Mastery and their subsequent upgrades.
- There was a glitch with this tower and Necromancer: Unpopped Army where upon exiting the current game, go to sandbox, pop some bloons and spawn zombies, then go back and start the round, the Necromancer or PoD would spawn the zombies from the sandbox session allowing for easy zombie spawns.
- This was patched as of Version 18.0. Now the "graveyard" stores all popped bloons from last round, and the amount of bloons sent there will be constant.
- The description for Prince of Darkness was changed to include buffing all other Necromancers, and has been confirmed on Version 18.0, although the description may have been changed well before then.
- The Version 23.0 nerf to Prince of Darkness was intended by Ninja Kiwi to have been incorporated in the previous update, but they pulled it back due to previously unresolved bugs while attempting to balance it out. The new balance change has made Prince of Darkness more reliable at stockpiling but less capable of maxing out its graveyard damage stacks.
Bugs[]
- Current
- [43.0] Prince of Darkness's +50% lifespan buff to itself and others no longer works since Version 43.0 for an unknown reason, despite the
distanceMultiplier: 1.5
remaining the same in the in-game code for the behavior of the undead bloons in theBehaviors.PrinceOfDarknessZombieBuffModel
section.
Gallery[]
Official artwork[]
Undead Bloon Projectiles[]
Videos[]
Removed artwork[]
Trivia[]
- The Prince of Darkness is sitting on a throne that does not rotate with the tower's aiming.
- Before update 2.0, this upgrade used to be Soulbind. The Soulbind upgrade unlocked an ability that allowed the player to bind towers to the Wizard and sacrifice them for extra lives if bloons got through.
- The graphics for the Soulbind/Prince of Darkness upgrades remained the same through the update; both towers have/had the same graphics.
- The Wizard moves its hands when attacking and summoning bloons.
- Note that similar to its predecessor, the Wizard does not have to pop the bloons itself, they simply have to be popped within its presence to become undead.
- The undead Bloons, MOABs, and BFBs are not affected by the Big Bloon Option.
- There was a glitch before Version 18.0 where Prince of Darkness could produce stronger undead bloons by manipulating game waves; by exiting a game, increasing undead pops by sending bloons that get popped, the Prince of Darkness could begin a round at full capacity. ISAB posted a couple of videos showcasing the "Prince of Darkness glitch", the latest being the video "Zombie Bloons Are A DISASTER On This Map (Bloons TD 6)", which he used to attempt to beat a certain challenge set on Dark Castle Medium CHIMPS with higher HP Ceramics and higher HP but slower MOAB-class.
- There is a variable named
distanceMultiplier
under theBehaviors.PrinceOfDarknessZombieBuffModel
section that determines the multiplier for the lifespan of Undead Bloons.
Cultural References[]
- The tower's name might be a reference to a movie of the same name which is about a necromancer.
Community Achievements[]
- With the Version 21.0 buffs, one 0-2-5 Prince of Darkness can almost fully solo basically any round on Logs CHIMPS except Round 97 and 100. Additionally, a multitude of 2TC combos with Prince of Darkness were done within two days, with a majority within even a single day: Inferno Ring, Perma Charge, The Anti-Bloon, Pre-Emptive Strike, Carpet of Spikes, MOAB Eliminator, Admiral Brickell, First Strike Capability, MOAB Domination, Churchill, and Avatar of Wrath
- On the third day, Perma-Spike, Glaive Lord, and Comanche Commander were also additional added as 2TC combos with Prince of Darkness.
- Within the first day of release of the Dartling Gunner, all Tier 5 Dartling Gunners have 2TC combos with Prince of Darkness.
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