Bloons take huge damage while frozen including MOAB-class Bloons.
”
~ In-game description
Super Brittle is the fifth and final upgrade of Path 1 for the Ice Monkey in Bloons TD 6. It further improves its own vulnerability effects of Embrittlement and produces many more powerful shards from shardable Bloons. It can freeze and affect any bloon type, including White Bloons, and Zebra Bloons, and attacks about 11% faster than Embrittlement. This upgrade's debuff stacks with Embrittlement, for a total of +5 damage. Any bloon damaged by Super Brittle takes +4 damage for 3 seconds, and for the same duration, the bloon(s) become vulnerable to attacks that normally cannot pop frozen or lead (DDTs included). MOAB-class Bloons are not frozen in place, but are permanently slowed down by 25% (via the Permafrost effect to MOAB-class, excluding BADs and Bosses). Each freeze will deal 1 damage by default, while shards deal 5 damage by default, although Super Brittle also benefits from its own debuff, and produces 6 shards per bloon instead of 3.
This upgrade costs $23,800 on Easy, $28,000 on Medium, $30,240 on Hard, and $33,600 on Impoppable.
This upgrade changes the Ice Monkey's skin color from red to purple. It loses its pupils and its grey headband; the decoration in front reverts back to a diamond shape. The in-game model's head decoration is slightly different from the artwork, being kite-shaped instead of diamond-shaped. The fur below the chin is more pronounced.
Each attack now allow popping of every type of bloon. Allows application of permafrost to MOAB-Class Bloons but for only 25% slowdown. Brittle effect can be deals more extra damage and duration. Also attacks slightly faster, and more shards with extra damage.
Targeting Priorities[]
Super Brittle produces freezing blasts in a zone-like style. Technically, the Ice Monkey is locked on the Close targeting priority. However, for simplicity reasons, this monkey has no targeting priorities.
Full Popology[]
Statistics[]
Updated as of Version 40.0
Base stats
Freeze:
Zone, normal type, detects partial hitbox, 25 range, 2.16s attack cooldown, 1 damage, 40 pierce, freezes for 1.5s, removes Camo and Regrow properties permanently. Can target MOAB-class bloons. Blast radius matches current range. Can detect Camos.
Applies Permafrost status effect, slowing down affected bloons by 50%, and MOAB-class by 25%.
Applies Shardable to affected bloons, which release a spray of 6 Shards in a 60° formation if popped, duration equal to freeze length.
Apples Super Brittle, causing affected bloons to become vulnerable to +4 damage from all damage types for 3.0s.
Shards:
Shrapnel, shatter type, 3 impact pierce, 5 damage. Can hit Camos.
Crosspathing interactions
5-1-0: Attack cooldown reduced from 2.16s to 1.62s, freeze duration increased from 1.5s to 1.75s.
5-2-0: Freeze duration increased from 1.75s to 2.2s, freeze penetrates two layers, Freeze pierce increased from 40 to 45.
5-0-1: Range increased from 25 to 32.
5-0-2: No interactions compared to 5-0-1.
Monkey Knowledge interactions
Icy Chill: Freeze radius slightly increased. Increases by +3.
So... Cold...: Ice Monkey's Permafrost upgrade slows by 60%. Increases effect from 50% to 60%.
Come On Everybody!: Primary towers attack 5% faster if all are below tier 3, and cost 5% less if all are tier 3 or 4.
Despite its tiny range, Super Brittle is extremely effective in combination with high-DPS towers, specifically fast-attacking, high-projectile towers (e.g. Overdrive, The Tack Zone), which often utilize sharp-based attacks. The temporary debuff towards regular bloons and MOAB-class bloons can prove super effective at demolishing them, especially DDTs and high-HP blimps (BADs and Boss Bloons in particular), although the Super Brittle itself has rather low pierce for its price. Super Brittle benefits much from the range bonuses from Primary Mentoring, which helps rectify its low range and improve its consistency.
Tips[]
The Ice Monkey still has a small radius, so placement is vital.
It is best to place it around a hairpin bend, and planning in advance is almost always required. Note that the Ice Monkey's range does not have to directly encompass the track itself in order to attack and debuff blimps along the path.
Since the damage boost is additive, not multiplicative, it works best with towers which hit many times per second, such as towers with fast attacks, high pierce, and multiple projectiles per attack. The more often the targets are hit, the more often the damage bonus is applied.
Super Monkeys are a classic example of towers that attack quickly.
In terms of relative damage, Avatar of Wrath already has high damage per hit, so Super Brittle only adds ~12% damage when the Avatar has its full damage bonus. The Poplust Druids only deal 1 damage per hit, so the +4 bonus is a +400% increase. However, in terms of absolute damage, Avatar of Wrath attacks twice as quickly, so it will apply the damage bonus twice as often as an individual Poplust Druid.
The 5-2-0 crosspath is recommended over 5-0-2 as the monkey's fire rate is still slow.
Re-Freeze actually works at refreshing the brittling debuff with full uptime as long as it is hitting the same bloon, as its attack speed is still faster than the duration of the status effect.
There is currently no visual indicator for blimps affected by the Super Brittle debuff. A working debuff is can be seen through blimp(s) degrading quickly, or by watching the pop count for a tower with low damage-per-hit.
Super Brittle can cause affected DDTs to become damaged from attacks that normally cannot pop lead. Therefore, a sharp attack such as Avatar of Wrath's thorns or an energy attack such as Laser Cannon's lasers can damage DDTs affected by Super Brittle's debuffs. However, explosion type attacks still cannot damage DDTs even when the DDTs are hit by Super Brittle, as the DDTs retain their black properties.
Super Brittle's low range but immense support potential has long been considered underrated among experienced players. It has been slightly buffed over a few updates. Over time, it has become a popular option for debuffing Bosses.
2.0
Super Brittle pierce increased 30 -> 40, due to base Ice Monkey pierce buff.
17.0
Super Brittle range increased (20 → 25)
Super Brittle now grants the Ice Monkey camo detection.
Super Brittle now also removes camo & regrow properties from anything hit
Super Brittle now applies Permafrost effect to blimps, although half the slowdown
24.0
“
Small tweaks to the benefit of still under-utilized T5 Ice Monkey upgrades.
”
~ Ninja Kiwi, referring to Brittle and AZ
Super Brittle costs less ($30,000 → $28,000)
25.0
[Undocumented, possibly a bug] Ice Shards and above now always require Re-Freeze in order to pop Frozen Bloons and therefore activate their own shards regardless of adding a nearby MIB or not. This includes Super Brittle.
[Undocumented, bug] Super Brittle no longer applies +4 damage vulnerability to bloons or blimps but can still apply Permafrost effects to all bloon types
25.1
[Bug fix] Super Brittle now applies damage vulnerability again, although only to bloons hit once again by the +4 damage vulnerability.
34.0
“
Ice Monkey base pierce is too high, very easily countering large numbers of strong Bloons early, mid or late in the game for small investment, leading to very low tiers of ice monkey (below t3) being highly effective spam options over upgrading your ice. We are reworking some of this base pierce to require crosspath investment and buffing the damage Ice 3xx Ice Shards to compensate for some of its reduced pierce.
”
~ Ninja Kiwi, referring to Ice Shards
Super Brittle base freeze pierce reduced 40 -> 30. Does not affect 5-2-0.
Super Brittle base shard damage increased 1 -> 2
39.0
“
We’re happier with more recent freeze changes succeeding in some of the intentions of older nerfs, given the base tower value in races being hit far more than intended we’re going back over the pierce for Ice Monkey base & middle crosspath. [...]
”
~ Ninja Kiwi
Affected by base Ice pierce buff
40.0
“
We want to try out allowing the Ice Shards sub-projectile to benefit from all sources of damage buff, as currently this path gets nice support use sometimes but can’t do much on its own in the base game - along with this the T5 Ice Shards are also generally being improved. [...]
”
~ Ninja Kiwi
Super Brittle shard damage is now uncapped, allowing for external buffs
Super Brittle ice shards damage increased (2 → 5)
Super Brittle number of ice shards increased (3 → 6)
Bug Fixes and General Changes[]
This section is incomplete. You can help by expanding it.
Gallery[]
In-game model
Super Brittle freezing bloons
Super Brittle decamoing a DDT
Super Brittle after striking onto the ground, which created a highly damaging freeze
Super Brittle causing affected DDTs to become damaged by The Tack Zone
Official artwork[]
Upgrade portrait
Upgrade icon
Instamonkey icon
Videos[]
Super Brittle + Refreeze
Interaction with Re-Freeze (tested in Version 27.0, likely implemented in 25.0)
Trivia[]
As of Version 7.0, this upgrade has the smallest range out of any Tier 5 upgrade, excluding all towers whose "range" is represented for inclusion purposes (of which are Sniper Monkey, Heli Pilot, Monkey Ace, Mortar Monkey, and Dartling Gunner).
Absolute Zero used to also have the smallest range, but since Version 7.0 Absolute Zero now has twice the range of a normal Ice Monkey.
Even with the Version 17.0 buffs to its range, Super Brittle remains the smallest range out of any Tier 5 without "dummy" range.
The second-smallest goes to The Tack Zone, at 30 range, compared to Super Brittle's 25 range.
The upgrade icon for Super Brittle is displayed as shattered MOAB.
The design of the Super Brittle monkey is likely inspired by the design of Yeti in Team Fortress 2 as seen in the official Jungle Inferno update trailer.
The current upgrade description is ambiguous. More specifically, if the description was interpreted such that it implied that Super Brittle could apply a freeze status effect, MOAB-class bloons can be targeted and permanently slowed by the Permafrost effect but not be "frozen". However, this could just be due to the word "frozen" being the past participle of the word "freeze" and the act of attacking a blimp with its freeze blast attack referred as "freezing".
Embrittlement starting from Version 29.0 also uses the word "frozen" in that sense too.