Prince of Darkness

“	Reanimate even more powerful Bloon servants to obliterate the enemy.	”
	^{~ BTD6 description of Prince of Darkness}

Prince of Darkness (sometimes shortened to POD or PoD) is the final upgrade in Path 3 of the Wizard Monkey in BTD6. It is the replacement for the Soulbind upgrade in Version 2.0. The Prince of Darkness upgrade allows the Wizard Monkey to summon undead MOABs and BFBs along with regular undead bloons, and the Wizard's personal graveyard capacity expands from 500 to 3000. In addition, all undead bloons, including his own undead bloons, will gain +1 damage and +50% duration lifespan. Like the previous Necromancer upgrade, all its attacks gain +1 damage per 200 undead bloons stored, up to 10 times. The Prince of Darkness gains a massive range and attack speed buff in addition to the aforementioned benefits.

It costs $20,400 on Easy, $24,000 on Medium, $25,920 on Hard, and $28,800 on Impoppable.

Description

Compared to its previous upgrade, the Prince has a greater range for its reanimation attacks, in addition to its capability to summon stronger undead bloons. The Prince also gains a buff to its main attack speed to four times faster than the base tower, which can help in taking down enough lesser bloons to summon undead M.O.A.B. Class Bloons. Shimmer also gains an attack speed buff to decamo bloons twice as fast.

In addition to his own extra benefits is a buff to all Necromancers, including himself. Each undead bloon gains +1 damage and +50% duration lifespan. Each Undead Bloon lasts for 15.0s instead of 10.0s.

Undead MOABs can deal 40 damage per hit and can deal damage to up to 20 bloons before reaching the pop limit or 30-second expiry (actually 20 seconds, but the +50% lifespan buff increases that value) but move at a similar speed to regular undead bloons. Undead MOABs consume 20 units from the Prince of Darkness's personal graveyard. This attack occurs every 3.0s, and only requires the personal graveyard to possess least 20 units before spawning.

Undead BFBs, on the other hand, move as fast as Undead MOABs but deal 100 damage per hit and can deal damage to up to 50 bloons before reaching the pop limit but last for a shorter time of 20 seconds (again, actually 13.3 seconds, but increased due to the same lifespan buff). Undead BFBs consume 50 units from the Prince of Darkness's personal graveyard, and it can only be spawned once the graveyard is at least 1450. This attack occurs every 3.0s, and it can replace the usual spawning of Undead MOABs.

Like Necromancers, Prince of Darkness stores popped bloons into a personal graveyard, local to each Prince of Darkness (if possible to have more than one Prince of Darkness), and can store accumulated bloons popped for up to 2 rounds. Undead Bloons are spawned +20% faster for every 100 graveyard units, capped at 500 graveyard units, for up to +100% faster. All attacks gain +1 damage per 200 graveyard units stored, up to +10 damage. Each personal graveyard stores up to 3000 accumulated pops. Undead MOABs and Undead BFBs consume more pops from the graveyard than regular bloons, though.

Tips

The Prince of Darkness, although super powerful at its maximum power, it requires some support in order to become effective on certain rounds, especially rounds like Round 80, 85, 87, 97, and 100. Add MOAB Eliminator to help its weakness against singular strong blimps.
Use 2-0-5 Prince of Darkness on maps with Line of Sight issues, like Flooded Lane, but use the 0-2-5 Prince of Darkness to utilize the potentially extremely high damage output that it can deal. Bear in mind that the Wall of Fire attack will not synergize well with the increased range and general randomness of deployment.
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.
Prince of Darkness, like Necromancer: Unpopped Army, is best used for anti-stalling and is optimized with anti-stalling. Place 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.
Compared to the Necromancer: Unpopped Army, the Prince of Darkness is a good choice as a general cleanup tower for beating late-game Super Ceramics and general MOAB damage. Provided it is supported by nearby backup defense, the Prince of Darkness can dish out some good damage overall.

Update History

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)

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)

16.0

Now rotates when it attacks

17.0

No longer rotates when it attacks

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

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.
xx5 Prince of Darkness max Graveyard capacity increased from 2000 -> 3000
Main bolt has more pierce (7 --> 8, inherited from the base Wizard pierce buff)

Gallery

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 himself, they simply have to be popped within his presence to become undead.
The undead Bloons, MOABs, and BFBs aren't affected by the Big Bloon Option.
From Version 11.0 onwards, due to a massive range buff, Prince of Darkness has more range than Arcane Mastery and their subsequent upgrades.
The tower's name might be a reference to a movie of the same name which is about a necromancer.
There was a glitch with this tower and Necromancer: Unpopped Army where if you exit your current game, go to sandbox, pop some bloons and spawn zombies, then go back and start the round, your Necromander or PoD would spawn the zombies from your 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.
- 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.
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.
- The 69th 2TC combo belongs to Prince of Darkness + Pre-Emptive Strike.