Bloons TD 3 Towers and Prices: What Every Tower Does

Bloons Tower Defense 3 lets you buy eleven different things, and the Buy Stuff panel gives you only a line or two about each. Here is every one of them, with its price on Easy and what it is good for. On Hard every price goes up — the Dart Monkey, for example, costs 270 instead of 215 — but the order stays the same.

The eight towers

Dart Monkey — 215. Throws a single dart at the nearest bloon. Its upgrades are piercing darts, razor darts and long range darts. It is the cheapest tower and the one you can afford two of on the first turn, so it is also the one that sets up your first corners.

Tack Shooter — 305. Fires a volley of tacks in eight directions at once. Against a single bloon most of them miss; against a crowd moving past it, every tack hits something. Its upgrade path ends in a blade shooter. Put it where two stretches of track run close together.

Boomerang — 440. Throws a boomerang that follows a curve and comes back to the tower, so it can pop several bloons on one throw. It upgrades to a glaive thrower. Good on long straight sections where the curve stays over the path.

Spike-o-pult — 510. Hurls a huge spiked ball that pops everything it touches along the way. Upgrades add range, speed and multi-shot. Line it up so its shots travel down the path rather than across it.

Cannon — 615. Launches a bomb that explodes on impact, popping everything in the blast. Upgrades give bigger bombs, longer range, and finally the Missile Launcher. It is also the tower that pops frozen bloons, which matters more than it sounds.

Ice Ball — 360. Freezes the bloons around it. The catch, straight from the panel: frozen bloons are immune to anything sharp. Darts, tacks, boomerangs and spikes bounce off until the ice breaks. Upgrades give longer freezes and a bigger radius.

Monkey Beacon — 850. Pops nothing by itself. It increases the attack range of every tower inside its area, its upgrade adds attack speed there too, and the last upgrade unlocks what the game calls "the most powerful ability ever". A Beacon with four good towers around it is worth more than a fifth tower.

Super Monkey — 3400. Shoots incredibly fast and upgrades to epic range and laser vision. The price means it arrives in the middle of a game, once the cheaper towers have paid for it.

The three one-round items

These go on the track itself and disappear when the round ends.

• Road Spikes — 25. Pop 10 bloons before they wear out.
• Monkey Glue — 30. Each blob slows 20 bloons, giving your towers more time on them.
• Pineapple — 20. Explodes shortly after you place it. Put it where the bloons will be in a second or two, not where they are now.

They are cheap, but a round's worth of them adds up. Keep them for the round that is about to leak.

Combinations that work

Ice Ball + Cannon. The ice stops a crowd in one place, the bombs pop it — and only bombs can. Keep your Dart Monkeys out of the freeze radius or they stand there doing nothing.

Monkey Beacon + the towers you already upgraded. Range is what a corner tower lacks. The Beacon gives it to everything nearby at once.

Glue + Tack Shooter. Slowed bloons bunch up, and a bunch is exactly what eight tacks at a time are for.

What to buy first

With 650 to start: two Dart Monkeys on Easy (430), or one Dart Monkey and a Tack Shooter where two paths meet (520). Before the tougher colours arrive, buy piercing darts, then a Cannon with an Ice Ball beside it. Save for a Monkey Beacon once you have three or four towers worth boosting, and the Super Monkey last.