The Bloon Solver is the fifth and final upgrade of Path 1 for the Glue Gunner in Bloons TD 6. It improves the liquefying glue to deal much more damage against Ceramics and MOAB-class bloons at an astronomical rate of 9 damage and 6 damage per 0.1s respectively. In addition, The Bloon Solver attacks 4x faster than the base Glue Gunner along with gaining a powerful double Glue Splatter projectile that allows both glue splashes to hit up to 5 bloons (1 on impact, 4 with the splatter) each within a 12 blast radius. Each shot produces two splatters split by a 10° angular distance between. The Bloon Solver is the fastest-attacking Glue Gunner, firing each attack every 0.25s. The middle path upgrades increase splatter to hit 6 bloons with Bigger Globs and 8 Bloons with Glue Splatter, plus a bigger splatter with a radius of 25. The Bloon Solver's acid puddles now deal 15 damage instead of 4.
Outside of increased damage against MOAB-Class Bloons and Ceramics, the glue itself acts identically to its predecessor on other bloons. In fact, its glue is incapable of penetrating its extra damage bonuses through MOAB-class or Ceramic layers.
This upgrade costs $19,125 on Easy, $22,500 on Medium, $24,300 on Hard, and $27,000 on Impoppable.
The Bloon Solver wears a green protective suit throughout the monkey's entire body, carries an enclosed metallic-coated container, and holds a much more advanced glue gun. The glue gun has thin green windows on the nozzle. The monkey wears grey footwear, and the gas mask remains similar to Bloon Liquefier.
On the upgrade portrait, the monkey holds up the glue gun, with a visible green vapor of what is implied to be the toxic pungency of the glue.
The Bloon Solver technically upgrades the glue from a Level 4 glue to a Level 6 glue, allowing it to override MOAB Glue's Pink Glue, but can be replaced by Super Glue's Pink Glue. Bloons affected by Bloon Solver are inflicted with 1 damage every 0.1 seconds for the duration of the glue, 9 damage every 0.1s for Ceramics, and 6 damage every 0.1 seconds for MOAB-class. MOAB-class bloons receive half the duration.
In addition, the Bloon Solver causes popped bloons to leave acid puddles on the track. Puddles instantly deal 20 damage, including already glued targets, but cannot apply glue. Puddles cannot damage the same bloon after damaging them once. Puddles last for 7.7 seconds and damage to 3 Bloons without crosspaths. Acid puddles are improved with either crosspaths. For the middle path, Bigger Globs increases the pierce of the puddles by 1, Glue Splatter with More Splatty Glue increases it by 2 more. Stickier Glue allows glue puddles to carry over rounds and Stronger Glue increases the duration of the puddles by 9.1 seconds, for a total of 16.8 seconds.
Targeting Priorities[]
Bloon Solver 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.
Full Popology[]
Statistics[]
Updated as of Version 43.0
Base stats
Glue:
Projectile, acid type, 46 range, 0.25s attack cooldown, 0 damage, 1 impact pierce. Upon collision, creates Splatter. Applies Solver Glue DoT, slowing bloons down by 50%, soaking all bloon layers, and dealing 1 damage every 0.1s, 9 damage every 0.1s versus Ceramics, 5 damage every 0.1s versus MOAB-class, lasts for 11s. Classified as a Level 6 Glue. Can target MOAB-class bloons. When target fully pops, bloon creates Puddle. Bloons with more than one child only drop Puddle from the first child.
Splatter:
Burst, acid type, 5 pierce, 0 damage, 12 blast radius. Applies Solver Glue DoT, slowing bloons down by 50%, soaking all bloon layers, and dealing 1 damage every 0.1s, 9 damage every 0.1s versus Ceramics, 5 damage every 0.1s versus MOAB-class, lasts for 11s. Classified as a Level 6 Glue. Can target MOAB-class bloons but lasts for half duration. When target fully pops, bloon creates Puddle.
Puddle:
Burst, acid type, on-track, 3 pierce, 20 damage, can hit already glued targets. Lasts for 7.7s or 1 round before disappearing, whichever comes first. Cannot rehit the same bloon more than once.
Crosspathing interactions
5-1-0: Splatter pierce increases from 4 to 5. Puddle pierce increases from 3 to 4.
5-2-0: Splatter pierce increases from 5 to 7, Splatter blast radius increases from 12 to 25.
5-0-1: Solver Glue lasts for 24 seconds instead of 11. Puddle round duration increased from 1 to 2.
5-0-2: Solver Glue slows by 75% instead of 50%. Puddle duration increases from 7.7s to 16.8s.
Monkey Knowledge interactions
Increased Lifespan: Increases lifespan of glue projectile and acid puddles by 15%.
The main benefit of The Bloon Solver is its massive destruction to all bloon types, transforming from a traditional gluing tower into a massive DPS tower. Glue puddles placed on the track deal flat damage, as opposed to relying on a damage-over-time effect. As a result, it relies on synergy in order to dispense a large amount of acid puddles at once. If used correctly, it becomes a massive assistance against densely packed rounds, even Round 98, but remains weak against rounds with too few bloons. Try to utilize single-target damage to counter The Bloon Solver's single-target weaknesses, and add extra towers to quickly pop the bloons.
Compared to The Biggest One, The Bloon Solver has a weaker saveup potential and worse synergy with other Glue Gunners. The Biggest One has a better Tier 4 upgrade, possesses optional controllability and sufficiently high pierce to withstand large rushes of Ceramics, and gaining significant boosts in power through buffs, while The Bloon Solver only attacks within its own range. In addition, bottom path glue MOAB-class slowdown requires Relentless Glue and to not have the Corrosive Glue or Super Glue upgrades to work well with the Bloon Solver, making blimps have both the slowdown and damage over time on them (as long as the Bloon Solver applies glue first). This also means that mixing glues with The Bloon Solver is unreliable and quite finicky, whereas using The Biggest One can be combined with regular MOAB Glue without causing an unwanted dissynergy.
Tips[]
Although Solver formerly had troubles with dealing with Super Ceramics on shorter maps, the buff it received in 33.0 allows it to kill Ceramics significantly faster, making 5-2-0 the better crosspath for the extra pierce, bigger splash radius, and improved puddle power. As the main strength of Solver is its immense cleanup power, the piercing crosspath offers a significant boost for that role.
5-0-2 isn't much stronger than 5-2-0 since a large portion of the Solver's power comes from its incredible grouped cleanup power, rather than single-target, and that crosspath doesn't actually improve single-target damage. The extra puddle duration and increased bloon slowdown are usually not as helpful as increased pierce to both the glue and puddles, although there could be very niche situations where they help more. Acid puddles carrying over rounds is somewhat useful but not helpful if crowds of bloons already eat away at the acid puddles.
However, if comboing with The Final Harmonic Mermonkey, 5-0-2 is preferred to maximize the DoT to vastly improve the single target damage, as it can apply the glue rapidly over and over.
Pairing with Berserker Brew or Stronger Stimulant is more beneficial for a 5-0-2 Bloon Solver, as the pierce buffs become far more significant with bottom path Bloon Solver crosspath.
Mixing with other Glue Gunners is not a good idea, specifically Glue Storm or MOAB Glue, as it renders other glues useless. Glue Strike can still affect bloons already affected by Bloon Solver, but if Glue Strike applies before Bloon Solver can attack, it will not target that bloon until Glue Strike's effect wears out.
In terms of usage against Boss Bloons, The Bloon Solver has some usage in assistance against Bosses. For Bloonarius, it deals immense damage to Bloonarius by popping its swarms and creating masses of glue puddles that hurt it; this can be utilized in Tiers 1-4 Normal and Tiers 1-2 Elite, but serves the most use for Tier 2 Elite.
Notes[]
The double Glue Splatter are actually two projectiles with very small angular deviation, in a way similar to the Ninja Monkey's Double Shot upgrade.
Glue Puddles produced after completely popping a bloon do not benefit from any buffs. Glue puddles can damage a bloon affected by The Bloon Solver's glue, or any glue in general.
Version History[]
Balance Changes[]
An effective counter to Super Ceramics and deals decent MOAB-class damage, although the addition of The Biggest One has made The Bloon Solver less of a popular upgrade. Alongside preceding upgrade buffs to make The Bloon Solver more doable upon the saveup for said upgrade, its glue attack got slightly reworked in Version 20.0 to make it synergize better with buffs, more specifically pierce buffs. It has since received much stronger damage bonuses to Ceramics and MOAB-class, with particular attention to beating Super Ceramics. Since the Version 35.0 rework and 36.0 buffs, Bloon Solver has become significantly stronger and more reliable against hyperdense rounds. Solver had some nerfs later on, mostly in an effort to reduce its Race Event strengths.
8.0
Deals more damage to Ceramics and MOAB-class (2 → 3; essentially 3x faster than Bloon Liquefier's damage rate)
20.0
“
Many people seem to agree 5xx Glue is 'good', but simply outclassed (mainly by 5xx mortar at a similar price). This won't completely fix that, we hope to work on making the earlier stepping stone tiers a little easier to use and provide the 520 crosspath with a better niche by making Bloon Solver benefit from all pierce twice as much (which x2x provides).
”
~ Ninja Kiwi
Bloon Solver reworked to fire two 6-pierce projectiles instead of one 12-pierce projectile.
510 Bloon Solver fires two projectiles with 7 pierce instead of 1 projectile with 13 pierce
520 Bloon Solver fires two projectiles with 11 pierce instead of 1 projectile with 16 pierce
22.0
“
[...] Additional changes are a follow up reduction to The Bloon Solver's price and [...]
”
~ Ninja Kiwi
Bloon Solver costs less ($24,000 → $22,000
29.0
“
Since glue gunners can't work together as we all want them to and we could not bite that off for this update, for now have decided to do more for the top and middle paths themselves.
Bloon Solver's single target power feels like it ramps slowly on larger targets, and while it is mainly a grouped cleanup, we decided to give a nudge here with bonuses to large targets to help with higher round falloff.
”
~ Ninja Kiwi
Bloon Solver DoT increased damage to Ceramics and MOABs (3 → 4)
31.0
The Bloon Solver bonus MOAB-class damage increased from +3 to +5
33.0
“
We want to achieve an effect with Bloon Solver’s acid burning through the layers quickly but not instantly, though we haven’t so far achieved a good balance of this along with eliminating Super Ceramics in a timely manner, causing it to be disappointing or impractical on shorter maps. To solve this while retaining the vision we have boosted the ceramic bonus up significantly along with preventing this bonus from overflowing into the children layers.
”
~ Ninja Kiwi
Bloon Solver DoT's Ceramic bonus damage increased from +2 to +8
Bloon Solver DoT's Ceramic bonus will no longer penetrate Ceramics
35.0
“
We were unsure this rework would make it in at all until late and didnt want to mess around too much further before release, so we plan to make further refinements to the numbers in order to bring power properly in line with what we would like - however the long awaited mechanic rework for Relentless & Super Glue is here and we feel it is a promising start. Relentless Glue now brings some AoE stun on layer popping and glue track puddles has been reworked into a dps enhancement for the top path Bloon Solver instead of a hyper niche bottom path stalling bonus (the more ceramics the merrier!). Glue Gunner has also had a number of price changes aimed at improving the middle path / crosspathing while avoiding improving MOAB Glue. We’ve already found interesting uses for the top path change so keen to hear about your cool use cases.
”
~ Ninja Kiwi, referring to all Glue Gunner upgrades
The Bloon Solver upon destroying a Bloon now drops puddles of acid on the track that deal 1 pierce of 20 damage to whatever hits it. Puddles last for 5.0s but cannot hit targets that are already glued.
Ninja Kiwi states that they will likely lower damage but increase pierce to help improve crosspathing of the pools.
36.0
“
Our Glue rework last update wasn't quite ready soon enough to go through in depth balancing of how the new mechanics felt before release, but we still wanted to just get them out and see what people thought anyway, so this is mostly just a bit of catch up on that with fixes to crosspathing value.
”
~ Ninja Kiwi
Bloon Solver glue puddles duration increased from 5s to 7.7s
5-0-2 Bloon Solver glue puddles duration increased from 5s to 16.8s
Bloon Solver glue puddles pierce increased from 1 to 3
5-1-0 Bloon Solver glue puddles pierce increased from 1 to 4
Bloon Solver puddles no longer filter out glued targets
This lets glue puddles damage already glued targets.
38.0
“
This is not intended to be a significant nerf to the tower’s base game performance so we plan to keep an eye on the change; however the recent top path Glue Gunner changes where duplicating every high level glued Bloon into magnitudes more puddles due to the recurring children multiplication of pre-r80 Bloons. This caused performance issues and effectively broke the game in certain situations so we have limited these puddles to spawn from the first child of glued targets to keep the lategame performance unchanged but hopefully solve the root of this issue in the early game where the main attack is mostly enough to easily deal with all cleanup anyway.
”
~ Ninja Kiwi
Bloon Solver's Puddles of Acid now drop from only fully popped first bloon.
Bloon Solver’s puddles of acid no longer innately affect Camo
43.0
“
Increased duration has limited use on upgrades that completely destroy targets anyway, so a better crosspath benefit is being added onto 401 glue puddles. Bloon Solver’s pierce is being reduced as it is over-overkill for how many Bloons you realistically see at once, but this reduction should not be noticed for most players. Glue Splatter stands out as weirdly expensive for T2, and is rarely even needed so we’re significantly cutting its price to bring it down to a more affordable range with less pierce, we hope this should make it more worth considering for splatter coverage over piercing. [...]
”
~ Ninja Kiwi
5-0-1 The Bloon Solver allows track puddles to last +1 round.
5-0-x The Bloon Solver main projectile splatter pierce reduced from 5 to 4
5-1-0 The Bloon Solver main projectile splatter pierce reduced from 6 to 5
5-2-0 The Bloon Solver main projectile splatter pierce reduced from 10 to 8
45.0
“
Top path glue struggles with large numbers of targets until T5 where it suddenly has no trouble at all, to improve earlier tier cleanup we’re taking a small amount of power out of the T5 glue puddles but improving T4 puddles and increasing attack rate across lower tiers. [...]
”
~ Ninja Kiwi
5xx The Bloon Solver price increased from $22,000 > $22,500
Overall cost increase is $0 due to Bloon Dissolver price buff
This section is incomplete. You can help by expanding it.
Extra Notes (Version History)[]
Gallery[]
In-game model
The Bloon Solver doing massive damage to BFBs
The Bloon Solver shooting double glue splatters
Both splatters from single shot hit bloons
One of two splatters from single shot hit bloons
5-2-0 Bloon Solver liquefying Fortified Super Ceramics
5-0-2 Bloon Solver splatting on MOABs
5-2-0 Bloon Solver versus Fortified Ceramics
Bloon Solver acid puddles on the track
Enough XP to unlock The Bloon Solver
Masses of acid puddles incidentally hurting a camouflaged Fortified DDT (pre-38.0)
Bloon Solver splatting a bloon
Official artwork[]
Upgrade portrait
Upgrade icon
Instamonkey icon
In 'Sun Gods' Steam Profile background
Projectiles[]
Glue puddle
Videos[]
Bloon Solver 34.3
34.3 demonstration versus 98, without the puddles on Monkey Meadow and bonus supports
Bloon Solver 35.3
35.3 demonstration versus 98, with the puddles on Resort
Solver versus Round 98 on Middle of the Road, 35.3
35.3 demonstration versus 98, with the puddles on Middle of the Road
Solver versus normal Ceramics on Middle of the Road, 35.3
35.3 demonstration versus normal Ceramics
Trivia[]
The Bloon Solver's double Glue Splatter is potentially a reference to the BTD5 Mobile bug with Monkey Fort and Glue Splatter where Glue Splatters would pierce multiple times if boosted with Monkey Fort.
Both the tower's name and its description are a wordplay where both solution and solve mean to resolve and to dissolve.
On a Twitch stream of a Bloons content creator ISAB, specifically on 17th February 2023, Rohan from Ninja Kiwi made several comments about how the Version 35.0 buffs to The Bloon Solver allow the Solver + Unstable Concoction combo to synergize exceptionally well.
The first of these comments was "Solver + Conc is really fun now imo".
Afterwards, he mentioned that "Solver really just benefits the more and more ceramics there is, and conc likes doing that".
The Bloon Solver took the glue puddle concept from Relentless Glue.
Thus by extension, The Bloon Solver's glue puddles are likely inspired by the third upgrade of the Glue Gunner's Specialty Building, the Glue Supply Depot.
The Bloon Solver has a unique synergy with Super Brittle, causing brittle blimps to take nearly double the damage over time.
Pairing Solver with Embrittlement doesn't make much of a difference, as Embrittlement only adds +1 damage to Solver's 6 MOAB-class damage.