Strategy:Rogue Legends

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Rogue Legends presents a higher level of challenge compared the base game due its mechanics, the random nature of rogue-likes, the variety of maps and the harder rounds, so players need to adapt to a different playstyle if they wish to conquer the campaigns.

Since there are different objectives to be reached, this strategy guide is divided in four parts:

• Regular campaign: For players that are just starting and wish to learn the mechanics in deep and start beating campaigns as consistently as possible.
• CHIMPS (XP farming): Players need around 170,000 XP to max every single upgrade in the shop and an optimal way of doing so is playing in CHIMPS mode with a high number of Curses.
• CHIMPS (High stages): One of the main reasons to play CHIMPS is to simply reach the highest stage possibly, here players will encounter Bloons that are even stronger than their Freeplay counterparts, and unlike it, the players must build a powerful enough defense in every single encounter from scratch and a limited amount of cash on a wide variety of maps.
• Artifact extraction: For the people who seek to unlock everything in the game, this section discusses a possible strategy focused on extracting Artifacts quickly.

Regular campaign

For people that is just starting in Rogue Legends, it is recommended to just pick up their favorite Hero and start a campaign to become used to the game mechanics, paying attention to the early game rounds, the Artifact and Boost system and the movement across the map, and getting used to the special tiles.

After they are familiar with the mechanics, players can now focus on beating a the campaign, and in order to achieve that, they need a strong party that can handle the much more difficult rounds, and for this, they should check they can deal with any type of Bloon, most importantly:

• Cover all types of Bloons including Zebra, Lead and Purple.
• Camo detection, specially for the Bloons described above.
• Moderate to high pierce for dense rounds, specially Ceramic rushes.
• MOAB-Class damage.
• And as the campaign advances, defense of of multiple lanes, DDT damage and counters for the Boss.

For example if the player selects Quincy as its Hero (0-0-3 Dart, 0-0-2 Sniper Monkey) the player can perform the following analysis:

• Dart Monkey and Quincy himself can deal with Camo Zebras and Puples, but not Camo Leads reliably even with Quincy's Exploding arrows.
• Bottom path Sniper has decent MOAB-Class damage with top (cross)path or can help with dense rounds and Camo detection using middle path, but also can't deal with Camo Leads and might not be the most reliable tower against Ceramic rushes.
• From the two previous points going for middle crosspath on the Sniper is redundant with Dart and Quincy already covering Camo, but still useful if we have early pierce problems, and after MOAB-Class Bloons start showing up, then going for top path is better for single target damage and can defeat MOAB-Class reliably.
• Heroic Specialty lets Quincy benefit from artifacts meant for Primary towers but will have little impact at the beginning of the game.

We now know our main weaknesses, so our selections for Recruit or Artifacts need to be Towers that can deal with Camo Leads and that ideally can also help to handle Ceramic rushes. Since we are already focusing on Primary Towers due the Heroic Specially, we can pick options that will benefit from potential Artifact rewards later in the campaign such as 4-0-2 Juggernaut or 2-0-3 Cryo Cannon. Juggernaut can hit any type of Bloon and the Sniper can cover its single target damage weakness, while the Dart and Quincy can defeat Whites and Zebras for Cryo Cannon, but positioning is essential to not have the arrows doing nothing to Frozen Bloons. Other options include 0-3-2 Dragon's Breath, 0-3-2 Riptide Champion, 3-X-X Spike Factory or can be as just as simple to as picking up the Home Brew Alchemy Artifact to get an Alchemist to buff our towers, specially a 0-2-X Sniper, as it responds very well to buffs.

Some early game Towers or Artifacts that can be used to complement a defense are the following:

Type	Tower or Artifact
Can pop any type of Bloon, including Camo	4-0-2 Juggernaut, 2-3-0 Bouncing Bullet, 0-2-2 Monkey Buccaneer, 3-2-0 Razor Rotors, X-3-X Hydra Rocket Pods, 2-0-3 Flash Bomb, 2-X-X Spike Factory, X-3-X Cleansing Foam.
Camo detection	3-X-X Ice Shards, X-3-X Deadeye, 3-X-X Submerge and Support, X-X-3 Signal Flare, X-X-3 Shimmer, X-2-X Counter-Espionage, X-2-X Radar Scanner, X-3-X Cleansing Foam, General's Disposition, Perceptive Crow.
Dense rounds and Ceramic rushes	4-2-0 Juggernaut, 4-X-X M.O.A.R Glaives, X-4-X Blade Maelstrom, 3-2-0 Bloon Dissolver, 0-2-4 Avenger, 3-X-X Druid of the Storm, 3-X-X Abyss Dweller.
MOAB-Class damage	X-3-X Bionic Boomerang, X-3-X MOAB Mauler, X-X-4 Overdrive, 4-2-0 Twin Sixes, 2-0-3 Semi-Automatic, 2-0-3 Triple Guns, 3-X-X Destroyer, 3-X-X Fighter Plane, 0-2-3 MOAB Shove, X-3-X Dragon's Breath, 4-X-X Abyssal Warrior, 1-3-0 MOAB SHREDR, Malicious Mauling, Pure Damage.

As the campaign continues, keep adding towers that cover the detected weaknesses of the team and an answer to the current boss. Starting on Stage 2, players also need to have 3 to 4 low tier towers that can be dropped with the starting cash to cover multi-lane maps, specially on Expert maps, otherwise, it is advised to just skip those encounters. On stages 3 and 4 Artifacts start to become more relevant than the type of towers in the party as with the accumulation of Artifact buffs reaches a critical amount that makes virtually any tower work.

Tier 5 and other expensive towers should be taken with caution, as it will be nearly impossible to afford them during a game unless the player is facing a Mini Boss or the Final Boss , and in the later case, only towers cheaper than 25,000 cash should be taken, otherwise, those Tier 5 towers are just wasting a party slot. Also, Essence Of Bloonarius, Essence Of Dreadbloon and Essence Of Phayze are usually always worth taking over any Tier 5 reward.

Mini Games

Races

In early stages, getting great scores is very party dependent, but in general, towers that do well in regular races will also do well in Rogue Legends if they have support that cover their weaknesses (ex. Blade Maelstrom needs both Lead and Camo popping power as soon as possible). In stage 1 is usually safe to send up to 3 rounds at the same time if the towers have enough pierce, otherwise, it is better to send rounds at a slower, but steady pace and aim for a lower reward.

In later stages, even with a high amount of Artifact and powerful towers, sending many rounds at once is not advised as it easy to get pierce capped, and also DDT's, Fortified ZOMGs and BADs are dangerous threats, specially if they pop near the end of the track. It is recommended to start slowly and then do the full send when the main defensive towers are placed, but this can lead to high amounts of lag.

Endurance Race

The following table contains the recommended final round to be sent to reach each goal, this assumes no previous Bloon Encounters in the stage but this is compensated by the natural MOAB health scaling of Rogue Legends. However, on the early stages it might be necessary to send a couple more rounds in difficult maps as the MOAB-Class Bloons will have less health than normal.

The final round should be sent about 1 minute before the timer expires so it can be popped on time. Players can also send several rounds during the final seconds to boost the score by popping the weaker Bloons as the larger ones will not be able to reach the exit, but is recommended to exercise caution to avoid being pierce capped by the faster Bloons, particularly Ceramics, Purples or DDT's.

Recommended final round for Endurance Races

Stage	Common	Rare	Legendary
1	19	24	29
2	28	32	37
3	33	38	44
4	37	43	49
5	40	46	54
6	44	50	57
7	48	53	61
8	52	57	65
9	56	61	70
10	61	65	74

Least Cash

In most cases, players can play this as a regular Bloon Encounter, but it is important remembering that it can go for longer than regular encounters, so players need to have MOAB-Class damage ready when the final round is 15 or higher. This Mini-Game actually gets a fairly bit easier if the player has played several Bloon Encounters prior to the tile, as the amount of cash that the players can spend increases significantly with the amount of Encounters played. On later stages, specially if the player has Essence of Bloonarius, defenses can get pretty cheap by just using tier 3 or lower towers or by a single tier 4 tower helped by Essence of Dreadbloon and a high amount of Artifacts. Boosts are granted every round so they are used to scale the defense pretty quickly.

Mini Bosses

The speed on which the player can obtain the first few pops pretty much determines the outcome of the game as the amount of cash awarded per pop can snowball very quickly into expensive towers and upgrades that damage the Boss faster, grating more cash, or the opposite outcome is that the player just can't damage the Boss fast enough and by the time it gets a few pops, the Boss is already halfway across the track. In stage 1 is difficult to obtain anything other than the Common goal but it gets easier on later stages when the players can put more powerful towers right at the start of the game.

Defense against regular spawns can be pretty much ignored as the Phayze One round set is much, much easier than the Rogue Legends set so towers can focus on the boss and pop any other Bloon with just the pierce of the attacks.

Final Boss

Is important to prepare for the Final Boss as soon the stage starts, as unprepared parties will quickly fold to it. In general, players will need towers that cover three roles: Boss damage, counters to Boss abilities, and regular spawn defense / cleanup. In general players can mimic similar defenses to the ones used for Tier 1-3 in Boss Events.

• Bloonarius: Towers with high pierce to handle the ceramic rushes from a skull during the early stages, and in the late game, towers and artifacts should be powerful enough to handle Bloonarius and its spawns as long the player covers the entire track.
• Vortex: Attacking it from afar is the most reliable strategy, but if the player can't get the right towers or has bad luck with the map, it is important to split the defensive setup so the regular spawn towers doesn't get stunned, specially on short maps.
• Dreadbloon: Prepare towers of two different categories to deal with the immunity phases and the Dreadrock Bloons, a Primary setup is recommended. Using artifacts like Unification, Conscription, Monkey Academy and Master of all Trades allows towers to always damage Dreadbloon, regardless of its immunity.
• Phayze: Camo detection and towers with global range or that can follow Phayze around the track are always useful and it is also recommended to have high pierce towers or place regular defense in the back of the track to handle the regular spawns in a very short distance as Phayze advances. It is not recommended to use Towers or Artifacts that grant camo detection or strip it from Phayze and use towers with inherent detection instead, as Phayze's Radar Jam can leave the player in a very precarious position if it is enabled at the wrong time.
• Blastapopoulos: Keep in mind its Purple Bloon immunities and place towers near to the track so they can still see the incoming Bloons with the range reduction, it is also recommended to bring Spike Factories to protect the exits from the regular spawns during an overheat. Ability cooldown reduction is not really an issue as it can be easily countered by Artifacts and Boosts.

In general, the players should focus on defending the regular spawns first, specially because starting on Stage 2, the battle can happen on Expert maps with no prior warning. But players also need to keep in mind it is always possible to simply get unlucky and get extremely hard combination of Boss and Map that makes the fight almost impossible.

CHIMPS (XP farming)

Obtaining all possible upgrades from the Rogue XP shop requires a little over 170,000 XP. An efficient way to obtaining enough XP is to play CHIMPS mode with a high amount of curses and reaching the highest stage possible, as the largest source of XP are Final Bosses, which scale multiplicatively with each stage beaten. Reaching stages 15-20 generates roughly 50,000 Rogue XP. In general, 3 to 4 campaigns reaching stages 15-20 are usually enough to obtain the necessary XP. Stage 2-4 Merchants give very little XP and should be avoided.

In the following table is a list of all curses and a recommendation if the player should or should not enable them for XP farming runs.

Recommended curses for Rogue XP

Icon	Name	Curse Points	Recommended	Notes
	Low Stamina	10	Yes	Adding two more rounds to the tower cooldowns is mostly irrelevant if the games are short in the first place or if the Monkeys in the party are strong enough as the player might not even need to place additional towers at all mid-game with enough Artifacts.
	Market Crash	10	Mostly yes	Chests are a usually a better way to get artifacts in general and Mini Games / Bosses become easier on later stages so the need to obtain Artifacts from the Merchant is lessened, but players can play without this curse if needed, until they obtain enough starting tokens from the XP Shop. Going deeper into a campaign nets more Rogue XP than buying it from the Merchants.
	Perfectionist	10	Mostly no	With the limitations due other curses like No Rerolls, Hard Target, and Choice Starved, the ability to pick more Artifacts in the early game is useful to cover the party's weaknesses and reach a critical amount of Artifacts faster, even if the player cannot make it past the Common goal.
	No Selling	10	Yes	Standard CHIMPS rule; in most situations if the player is in a position where selling a tower is really needed, it means the party is really flawed in the first place and is likely that the campaign is not going to go too much further. Players concerned about maximizing lag on Mini Bosses should be frugal with getting the Legendary score anyway, and Adora's Blood Sacrifice can circumvent the No Selling rule outside of Blastapopoulos.
	Veteran Only	15	Mostly no	The early stages are the most difficult part of the run, so there is no need to make them even harder. Also, it's sometimes refreshing to see easier maps often to reduce the stress caused by the harder maps and the risk of losing the last few hearts before reaching a Camp Fire.
	Upgrade Toll	20	Yes	This doesn't affect base costs of towers and upgrades, which are already expensive, so making them slightly more expensive doesn't affect gameplay heavily, and there is counterplay by buying the discount upgrades from the XP Shop.
	No Handouts	15	No	Not having starting artifacts just makes the early stages extremely difficult, so is not worth it to have this curse enabled.
	Speedy	15	Depends	In the first runs, with less powerful starting party, this might become a problem with fast Bloons, so players can either skip this curse or enabling it while disabling No Leeway to get more margin of error.
	No Leeway	20	Depends	Standard CHIMPS rule which is judged in a similar to the previous curse, meaning the first runs could be done without this curse for an easier time and enable it later.
	No Boosts	20	Mostly yes	Like with the No Selling curse, if the player reaches a position where they depend entirely on boosts, something has gone wrong before reaching this point.
	No Rerolls	20	Yes	This will limit the Artifact reward options and adding some RNG to the run, but not to the point where the player will lose because of this. Even with no rerolls, it will be nearly impossible to see a situation where all Artifact reward options are detrimental. Also, with Boosts being disabled, so there's even less of a necessity to reroll. This curse and Choice Starved should not be active at the same time.
	No Income	20	Yes	Direct farming via Banana Farms and cash-generating abilities aren't great in Rogue Legends as the encounters won't last long enough to see the benefit of farming, so there's very little downside to have this curse active.
	Hard Target	20	Yes	This will only add a few more pops to the goal, so, in most cases, if the player can reach the Rare or Legendary goal without this curse, it's pretty likely they will also reach it with it enabled.
	No Hero	25	Depends	If the starting party is very strong, the Hero can be ignored, but in a lot of cases, Heroes are a very important part of the defense in the early stages.
	Faint of Heart	25	No	Skipping difficult encounters and having a safety net in case the player loses a game to keep a run alive is more important than the boost from this curse.
	Small Party	25	Depends	A party of 4 monkeys can be tough to build around in the mid-game as as a Party consisting of a main attacker helped by support towers will struggle on difficult maps like Dark Castle or Muddy/Bloody Puddles where map coverage is important and the available towers to place are few, so this curse should be disabled until the player upgrades Max Party Size at least a couple times or if the player can build a Party where each tower can handle Bloons by its own.
	Choice Starved	30	Depends	Chests are usually the main source of Artifacts in high Curse runs due the added difficulty of Mini Games, so reducing the amount of choices available makes the run much more RNG dependent, making it mostly a decision on how much the Starting Artifacts can carry the Campaign as the snowball of Artifacts is going to be much slower. This Curse and No Rerolls should not be active at the same time.
	Limited Resources	30	No	The key to reach higher stages on CHIMPS are a high amount of Artifacts that will make any tower overpowered, so an Artifact limit will just make the campaign much more difficult than needed.
	Low Knowledge	35	Depends	Players that are just starting the DLC won't have many XP Shop upgrades on the first place, so there is virtually no downside to this curse. Later, the player should evaluate if having easier and quicker campaigns is better than the 35% increase from this curse. Once the player is familiar enough with the game, is probable that they don't need the XP Shop upgrades on the first place.

The XP Shop upgrades that help the most with XP farming are the following, so they should be prioritized before the others:

• Starting Cash
• Up to Tier 3 Discount
• Max Party Size
• Starting Artifact Power
• Tier 4 and 5 Discount
• Extra Starting Tokens
• Legendary Tiles

Gameplay

Early stages (1-5)

The first few stages are the most difficult as is when the curses will really limit what the player can do, so it is recommended to start with a strong party that can breeze through the first few stages, for example:

• Obyn Greenfoot with Growing Steady artifact, using it in addition with 2-0-3 Druid of Wrath can easily defeat the early game, only leaving the party with a Camo weakness before Obyn reaches Level 8, in the meanwhile, it can be solved by bringing artifacts like General's Disposition or Crow's Nest + Portability or a tower that can handle them like a Spike Factory.
• Admiral Brickell with Full Broadside and Corrosive Torp-E-Darts. Using the Portable Lake to place the water towers makes this a extremely powerful defense as the starting sub can be upgraded to Submerge and Support which in combination with Corrosive Torp-E-Darts can handle any type of small Bloons, while the Buccaneers pop MOAB-Class by upgrading them into Destroyers or Monkey Pirates.
• Captain Churchill is always a great powerhouse that can be afforded pretty reliably thanks to the higher amounts of starting cash, it is recommended that the Artifacts can be used to cover its weakness like dense rounds before he gets its machine gun and Lead, Black and Camo Bloons before he levels up enough.

During this part of the campaign, it is recommended to not try to force an strategy and just keep along with what the game provides. On stage 1, the player should visit a couple of special tiles to start the Artifact collection; however, players should usually not greed this stage unless they are confident they can deal with strong Bloons like Fortified MOABS or BFBs. After obtaining a few Artifacts, specially Essence Of Bloonarius or Essence Of Dreadbloon, the players can now take greedy routes in stages 2-4 to get as many Artifacts as possible.

Mid-game (Stages 6-10)

The difficulty of these stages is heavily dependent on the player's Artifact luck in stages 1-5, so if players are still struggling against difficult rounds, maybe is better to take a route that can pass through many Chests and Merchants as possible to keep amassing Artifacts, and using Camp Fire to upgrade existing Artifacts and recruiting new Monkeys. Otherwise, if the artifacts were good enough to the point any Bloon Encounter is trivial, the player can just speedrun through the stage by skipping Bloon Encounters and only using healing at Fire Camps.

Late game (Stages 11+)

At this point, the player should have a good amount of the best Artifacts of the game so pretty much any tower can be overpowered, so players can experiment with many different types of towers to see what works and what doesn't, and also check which combination produce high amounts of lag. From this point it is recommended to rush through stages to reach the Final Boss as quickly as possible.

CHIMPS (Freeplay / High stages)

To reach a high of a stage as possible, players must be prepared face games where the Bloons scale much faster than in typical Freeplay gameplay. Compared to typical end-game Freeplay runs, the main similarities and differences are:

• Bloon / MOAB health is much higher, and scale faster past Stage 5, the player will be facing Double HP MOABs in most Bloon Encounters around Stage 10, and will reach 5× health on Stage 20, 10× by Stage 30 and 20× by Stage 40. All this health scaling will be on top of regular Freeplay scaling so tower damage needs to climb on the millions to beat regular Bloon Encounters.
• After Round 145, the round generation will be the same as in Freeplay, the scaling of Health, speed, status effect duration and cash per pop is also the same an in Freeplay.
• Tier 5 Towers and Paragons are practically unavailable in Rogue Legends, so defenses are typically composed of Tier 3 or 4 towers helped by Essence Of Bloonarius or Essence Of Dreadbloon until the player can afford the upgrades, by Stages 25+, players can start using the cheap and mid-price types Tier 5 towers with the starting cash and with a critical amount of Artifacts, they should be able to handle the defense by their own.
• Almost all the popping power will come by the combined effects of all Artifacts in the player's inventory. Allowing towers to attack extremely fast, have practically global range, and doing heavy amounts of damage by launching very high number of projectiles. Players should expect high amounts of lag comparable to Freeplay setups.
• The main threats will still be BADs, but DDTs and Fortified DDTs and Super Ceramics are also dangerous in shorter maps, but thanks to the power of Artifacts, anything that isn't a BAD can be permanently stalled by the appropriate towers. However caution is advised on "Zebra" Bloon encounters as in those tiles Bloons cannot be stalled.

Thanks to the power of Artifacts, nearly any tower can be used as DPS with very few exceptions. Tier 3 towers can be used as the main attackers with Essence Of Bloonarius, the artifact that allows them to be considered as any category (Unification, Conscription, Monkey Academy or Master of all Trades) and a form of Camo detection if they don't have it natively (General's Disposition, Radar Scanner) and should only get upgraded when both the Tier 4 and 5 upgrades can be purchased at the same time. Alternatively, Tier 4 Towers can be used to the same result with Essence Of Dreadbloon and Essence Of Phayze instead. Some examples include:

• Tack Sprayer
• Destroyer
• Triple Guns
• Super Monkey (All paths)
• Hydra Rocket Pods
• Dragon's Breath
• Druid of Wrath
• Spiked Balls
• Long Life Spikes
• Velociraptor
• Riptide Champion

Heroes

The selection of Hero in high stage Rogue Legends will almost be exclusively based on their Level 20 support capabilities (when not using One Monkey Army), alternate skins only modify the starting party and artifacts, and they have no impact on high stages.

Name	Portrait	How to use
Benjamin		Benjamin is the most efficient farm on the game in late stages, producing $5,000 Cash per round for free, players can easily use that cash to deploy their Tier 5 towers very reliably, while Biohack is an useful ability in the early game and Syphon Funding can remove a lot of RBE from the spawns. However, as it does not provide any offensive capability, players might struggle at the start of an encounter before its Cash generation can payoff. Obviously, avoid him if No Income curse is enabled.
Obyn Greenfoot / Admiral Brickell		Obyn's passive abilities provide a general boost to Magic towers, specially Druids and Brickell does the same for Buccaneers and Subs with her Naval Tactics ability. So they are the Heroes of choice if the player uses such towers. Striker Jones and Ezili can also be used for their boosts to other towers in a similar way.
Ezili		Sacrificial Totem is always a welcome boost, specially in the early and mid stages, but her biggest asset is the MOAB Hex ability that can get rid of BADs easing the job of the rest of the party. Having her on Stages 30+ makes Cats Meow almost a necessity because even with reduced ability cooldowns, she still could miss BADs as the ability can't keep up with the amount of them.
Adora		Using Blood Sacrifice to boost the power of herself and Sun Avatars is certainly worth it, specially with Divine Intervention as more attacks mean more opportunities of landing the Crit. However, the player should be careful with their Cash management in order to keep the buff always on. Adora can also be used as a One Monkey Army Hero, but she has a much more difficult early game than the Heroes listed below while using this Artifact.
Striker Jones / Captain Churchill		Using One Monkey Army on these Heroes convert them on powerhouses, capable of reaching Stage 20 by their own, and from that point they should be supported by towers that stall Bloons. However, they will struggle on the most difficult maps with line of sight blockers so hearts need to be used to skip those encounters.

Support towers and Artifacts

Regardless of the main DPS tower selected, these towers excel to provide utility to any party.

Tower	Portrait	How to use
Maim MOAB / Cripple MOAB		With enough artifacts, a 5-2-0 Cripple MOAB can stall permanently nearly any amount of Bloons that are not BADs, essentially acting as a filter, and has enough fire power to pop them on time, on high enough stages, it can handle the early round defense by its own, letting BADs leak with Cats Meow while the players saves enough money for the main defense, after that it can help wit the DDTs that spawn from popped BADs. One Shot helps to pop Bloons faster and its attack speed drawback is not enough to keep this tower from doing its job. A 0-2-5 Elite Defender with Rubber Bullets, Maim MOAB or any other tower with ZOMG / DDT stalling like MOAB Press or Avenger can be used as a cheaper alternative, but they won't be able to pop the Bloons they stall.
MOAB Glue / Relentless Glue / Super Glue + Sticky Situation		Surprisingly, these towers are here not really for the stalling support they provide, as that is covered by the Snipers, they are instead used to just put glue on the Bloons to enable the Sticky Situation Artifact, essentially doubling the total DPS of the entire defense after obtaining Essence Of Dreadbloon. With High Impact Glue, Super Glue can also become a powerful DPS tower on its own. Notably, glue types other than MOAB Glue and its upgrades do not trigger Sticky Situation on MOABs, meaning that Corrosive Torp-E-Darts does not work to proc it. The only glue that triggers Sticky Situation on BADs is Super Glue.
Support Chinook + Get to the Chopper		This is the next best farming setup after Benjamin as is not as expensive as the Tier 4 Banana Farms. The ability of moving towers around and even have a Door Gunner later in the game is just a plus for this tower. However, its utility is sometimes not worth it because a heavily boosted Downdraft generates very high amounts of lag.
Monkey Village + Biggest Beacon		With this artifact a single Monkey Village will have enough range to cover the entire map and provide necessary boosts Jungle Drums (and higher upgrades in the top path), Radar Scanner or Monkey Intelligence Bureau. Call to Arms can also benefit from ability cooldown bonus to have a higher uptime.
Berserker Brew / Stronger Stimulant / Overclock		These towers provide general boosts to the main defense. The Alchemist is really useful in the early and mid-game for a general utility tower and in combination with Home Brew Alchemy and other attack speed buffs, a single Alchemist can keep up the buffs on one or two towers all the time. Overclock fills a similar role and can be paired with ability cooldown buffs to keep it online a 100% of the time, even on Tier 5 towers.
Embrittlement / Super Brittle Glue Strike / Glue Storm Abyss Dweller / Abyssal Warrior / Lord of the Abyss		General purpose damage amplification towers. The top path Mermonkeys can also provide an useful pierce bonus.
Long Life Spikes / Deadly Spikes / Perma-Spike		Always useful as a last line of defense, but it excels against Final Bosses by handling the Bloons that Bloonarius spawns or be the entire defense while your towers get stunned by Vortex or Blastapopoulos. They benefit greatly from the high amount of pierce boosts that are in the game. Top path Spike Factories can be used for a similar role, but they can sometimes miss some Bloons when their spikes are cleared during a round transition.
Added Preservatives / Bouncing Projectiles		These help projectiles stay for longer on the map, allowing towers to use all their pierce. Middle path Mermonkeys can convert this added lifespan into additional damage, especially on maps with corners for rapid bouncing.
Cats Meow		Probably the most important artifact for Stages 30+ where even with the best artifacts and towers of the game, BADs can start to outpace the defense, so the only option to keep the campaign alive is to leak those BADs and only lose one life for each.
Unification, Conscription, Monkey Academy, Master of all Trades or Essence Of Dreadbloon + Many Artifacts		Making towers count as all categories is a very powerful bonus so they can benefit from Artifacts that weren't intended for them. These include all Quickening, Inspiration and Precision Artifacts, Critical Success, Discord, Just Like Magic, Mystic Twister, Overwhelming Synergy, Primal Instinct, Primary Specialist, Pure Damage, Squadron Together Strong, Support Specialist, Too Many Cooks and Zig Then Zag. The first four Artifacts should be used for Tier 3 and lower towers meanwhile the Boss Artifact is for Tier 4 and higher.
General Artifact boosts		These include BB Gatling Gun, Hawk's Eye, Slow And Steady, Slower Is Harder and Tit For Tat, alongside artifacts like Ability Stacking, Absolute Ability and Innate Ability if the player's defense is dependant on Activated Abilities.
Essence Of Bloonarius		This makes Tier 3 towers become extremely powerful, even surpassing their Tier 4 counterparts on most cases, making early rounds much easier to defend due the limited amount of starting cash being spent on more effient tower. Once you can regularly afford Tier 4-based defenses at the start of a map and stop relying on Tier 3s, however (around Round 35-40, roughly), it is often wise to replace Essence of Bloonarius with a Essence of Dreadbloon setup.
Essence Of Phayze		This Artifact will grant Camo detection to Tier 4 or higher towers for the rest of the campaign, and not even Phayze's Radar Jam is capable of removing its benefit. A Radar Scanner Village or an artifact like General's Disposition can be used for Tier 3 or lower towers.

Other towers that can provide great utility but are less used due their high initial costs which prevent them from being placed or upgraded on most games include the Tier 5 variants of towers listed above like Special Poperations, Homeland Defense, Permanent Brew, Ultraboost and other towers like Grand Saboteur, Sun Temple and Legend of the Night.

Gameplay

Early stages (1-5)

After selecting the starting Hero, the first few stages are played like a regular campaign. It is not recommended to try to force strategies and taking greedy routes on Stages 2-3 can payoff greatly. The focus at this point of the game is to just survive and start to accumulate Artifacts, specially Boss Artifacts.

Mid stages (Stages 6-15)

Now that the players have a decent inventory of Artifacts, Bloon Encounters should be cleared quite easily, regardless of the type of encounter or map, so this is the ideal stage of the game to build towards the late and endgame strategy using the Camp Fires to recruit towers and mentoring them with the desired upgrades. Players can return to take greedy routes and play all Mini Games and Legendary Augment tiles to quickly increase their stash of Legendary Artifacts. Most Bloon Encounters are not skipped at this point as the Camp Fires are being used to building the Party leaving no opportunity to heal and the Tokens are useful for Merchants and doing rerolls on recruits.

If the player wishes to have an specific Tier 5 tower on the party, it is recommended to keep their Tier 4 on the party and keep an eye for Legendary Augment Camp Fires rather than just try their luck and pull it from a Final Boss or from Recruit. Using a Legendary Augment Camp Fire to upgrade an Artifact to its Legendary version is in general not recommended as the chances of getting them from other sources is quite likely and a Recruit or Mentor is more valuable.

Late stages (Stages 16-25)

When the party is complete and the player has maxed out the Artifact slots the game progresses into its easiest stage. Since there is no longer a necessity use Camp Fires to Recruit or Mentor, it can now be used to Heal, meaning players can now skip most Bloon Encounters and just rush towards the Final Boss skipping as many encounters as possible. Mini Games can start to be skipped entirely or only use them to obtain the Legendary version of Artifacts.

If the player hasn't finished building their party yet, the mid-game can be extended until the early 20's rounds. Experiencing high amounts of lag at this point is quite normal as there are many projectiles on the screen and the rounds just become more dense.

Endgame (Stages 26+)

From this point, the Rogue Legends health scaling starts to grow more quickly, so Bloon Encounters start to become more and more difficult, so this is the point where player can showcase the defense they have been preparing up to this point. It is recommended to have a more conservative approach towards skipping Bloon Encounters because there will be the need to skip difficult maps and Zebra tiles (Bloons cannot be stunned or slowed down, though they can still be knocked back by effects such as Essence of Vortex).

After reaching Stages 30-35, it might be impossible to defend BADs during the early rounds, so the only way around it is letting them leak with the Cats Meow Artifact and pop everything else with the help of stalling towers that essentially act as a non-BAD filter. Campaigns are usually lost after a streak of difficult maps with little to no Camp Fires between them, so is important to pick the Encounters carefully.

As available starting cash increases, it may be worthwhile to switch defenses away from Tier 3 towers/Essence of Bloonarius and onto Tier 4 ones, as Essence of Dreadbloon's stacking scaling and the Tier 4s' higher base stats eventually eclipse Essence of Bloonarius.

Some late endgame defenses (Stage 40+) that rely on spawning many projectiles at once (e.g. middle path Mermonkeys) can become prone to very low FPS or even crashing if too many projectiles and Bloon interactions are happening, adding an additional limiting factor to defenses beyond raw damage output. Ironically, however, lag can become something of an ally otherwise, allowing more reaction time to use abilities and place towers than the high speed of the Bloons would otherwise allow.

After Round 145, round spawns revert to BTD6's usual random Freeplay round generation. This also includes the ceramic/lead rush on Round 163, the two FBADs on Round 200, and the DDT/FDDT rush on Round 263. If a map starts on Round 146 or later, players can return to the map to restart the game which "rerolls" the RNG seed which changes the starting round's spawns, otherwise if the spawns are good but the player still needs to restart for whatever reason, then the player should restart the game from the pause menu as it does not change the seed, keeping the same spawns.

Mini Games

For early stage recommendations see the Regular campaign section, this section will focus on the mid and late game strategies.

Races

Rounds should be sent in small waves of 2-4 rounds every 10-30 seconds to reduce the risk of being pierce capped, specially when BADs are popped as it is likely that many of them will pop in sequence. It is important to note that the available time reduces 10 seconds per stage until reaching a minimum of 3 minutes. The last round should be sent with around 1 minute left on the timer so it can be popped on time.

Endurance Race

Gameplay is similar to races; however, as stages go on, the Bloon health scaling will outgrow the scoring requirements, so it will reach a point where players will no longer need to send additional rounds. In extreme endgame, should one wish to respec a Legendary Artifact, it is possible to complete a single round with auto-start off and then wait out the timer to reach the pop count goal.

Least Cash

The defense should be based around Tier 3 or 4 towers boosted by Boss Artifacts, these are cheap and can be easily spammed to remain under budget. Boosts are awarded every round to increase their stats.

Mini Bosses

Any tower will start doing very larges amounts of damage to the boss instantly, so the pops will start going fast and the money can be spent on upgrades. Sometimes the actual difficulty will come from the length of the track more than from the Boss itself as score requirement can even be too much for even the strongest parties requiring hundreds of millions of damage to reach every additional pop.

Final Boss

Final Bosses start to become really easy as their health cannot keep up with the Artifact inventory.

• Bloonarius: Powerful towers can defeat Bloonarius instantly so all its insides will come out at once, for this a tower with very high pierce is needed to defend the huge rush of Rainbow Bloons during Bloonarius' death animation. The BADs can be ignored as they won't be able to reach the exit before the game ends, though in extreme lategame on some maps it can still be necessary to pop them.
• Vortex: The stuns that happen at each skull are the most dangerous part, so make sure that the towers that defend the regular rounds are outside of Vortex's stun radius. On multi-lane maps such as Muddy Puddles, however, the speed buff to other lanes' MOABs, BADs, and especially DDTs can be dangerous in extreme endgame as well.
• Dreadbloon: With Essence of Dreadbloon, this boss is the easiest of the group, as it can popped almost as fast as Bloonarius and the Dreadrock Bloons are much less of a threat than Bloonarius' spawns.
• Blastapopoulos: This boss also doesn't present too much of a challenge during the mid game. However, as the campaign progresses, Blastapopoulos can become the run-killer by appearing on a very short map where if it overheats, it stuns the entire defense giving ample time for the speedy DDTs, Purples and Ceramics to rush towards the exit. This makes Spike Factories almost a necessity during the late game.
• Phayze: Towers that can follow it as it moves through the track are extremely important to defeat it as fast as possible, because if skulls are delayed, the player might lose to the regular spawns as there will be not enough track left to defend. Ironically, Phayze can make multi-lane maps such as Muddy Puddles easier in some ways, since you only have to defend a single lane once the first portal spawns. However, shorter maps such as Dark Castle can be a run-killer if Phayze is not popped quick enough, due to its percentage movement whenever hitting its skulls.

Artifact extraction

To efficiently extract Artifacts it is recommended to do short campaigns, usually ending after beating the stage 1 Final Boss which can be reached quickly by sacrificing hearts to skip Bloon Encounters. Higher rarity Artifacts can be obtained by upgrading Commons at a Camp Fire or by beating Mini Games and Mini Bosses.

Before starting it is recommended to first extract all Hero Artifacts, this can be done by beating Stage 1 with each Hero Skin and extracting it upon defeating the Boss, this also allows to familiarize with the mechanics and the overall power needed to beat the first encounters and Final Boss and farm some Rogue XP. Players should also keep an eye on the Growing Steady, General's Disposition and One Monkey Army Artifacts and obtain them in the first available opportunity.

Recommended party

The following party has been selected for its ability to quickly clear stage 1 in nearly any situation while remaining strong in higher stages if the map difficulty is reasonable.

• Hero: Joan of Arc Adora (0-0-2 Ninja Monkey, 0-0-1 Boomerang Monkey and Heroic Edge Common)
• Starting Artifacts: Growing Steady Legendary and General's Disposition Rare.
• Rogue XP upgrades (in order of priority): Starting Artifact Power, Legendary Tiles, Starting Cash, Up to Tier 3 Discount, Tier 4 and 5 Discount, Extra Starting Tokens, Legendary Merchant.

Joan of Arc Adora is selected for being a strong Hero to complement the defense and having a great starting party. The Ninja Monkey is our main answer to Phayze but is also usually used to do heavy damage to the other Bosses like Bloonarius and Vortex, it also serves as a secondary defensive option by using the top path, specially if Camo detection is needed in multi lane maps. The Boomerang Monkey is one of the main offensive Towers used in regular encounters by using the middle path which can deal with early MOABs, it also excels in Races and against Bloonarius spawns by using the top path and is the main attacker against Dreadbloon and Blastapopoulos thanks to the Turbo Charge Ability. The Heroic Edge Artifact gives a small but always helpful pierce boost while helping Adora catch stray Bloons.

The starting party is complemented by a Druid strategy with Growing Steady which is the main DPS of the party while General's Disposition gives easy access to Camo detection for the Druid and Boomerang Monkey. If the player doesn't have the recommended rarities or less than 18 Artifact Power, the Common version of both Artifacts can be used instead, this leaves 3 Artifact Power remaining to bring any other Common Artifact, this one should be one whose Rare version is yet to be extracted. The Rogue XP upgrades just make things easier but are not needed for the strategy.

Gameplay

The general idea is to finish Stage 1 as fast as possible, so is important to plan ahead and take the route that can skip the most Bloon Encounters, while Camp Fires are used almost exclusively to heal. If there isn't enough hearts to skip all encounters, then is recommended to play the ones on easier maps saving hearts for later. This is also the reason to play in regular difficulty and not CHIMPS mode, as the reduction in hearts hinders the ability to skip encounters making stage 1 take more time without reason. Any Artifact the players may encounter from Chests, Merchants or Mini Games / Bosses should be picked for being extracted rather than to help the current run, this is fine as the party was selected to clear the stage without any additional help from other Towers or Artifacts, even if they receive some penalty from the current Artifacts in the inventory.

If the players must play Bloon Encounters, they can be handled by starting with Adora and a 2-0-3 Druid of Wrath on her range, then adding a 0-3-2 Bionic Boomerang, if the Encounter goes for longer, upgrade them to 2-0-4 and 0-4-2, respectively, and start building more 2-0-4 Poplusts.

Mini Games / Boss:

Mini Games will be the primary way to obtain Legendary Artifacts to extract as the party can easily clear the goal score in Races and Least Cash in stage 1, with Endurance Races requiring a little more practice.

• Race: Place Adora in a good position and buy a 4-0-2 Boomerang next to her. Send all rounds and place a Druid in Adora's range, upgrade it to 2-0-3 as the Cash comes in, this should be enough to win.
• Least Cash: Adora, 2-0-2 Druid and 0-3-2 Boomerang Monkey should be enough to beat the tile under budget, and if more defense is needed, either upgrade the Druid to 2-0-4 and add more Druids as the budget allows.
• Endurance Race: This is more difficult for the setup as the Towers can easily be pierce capped, start with Adora, 4-0-2 Boomerang and 2-0-3 Druid and build into 2-0-4 Poplusts as the money comes in. As The last round (usually 29) should be sent at most 45 seconds to 1 minute before the end of the timer to be popped on time, specially if the MOAB damage is not in the front to quickly defeat BFB's.
• Mini Boss: Reaching the Legendary goal is almost impossible for this setup so players might need to settle for the Common or Rare goal, to keep scoring pops, the common strategy is to constantly buy and sell Druids following the Boss along the path.

Final Bosses:

To beat each Final Boss the following strategies can be used.

• Bloonarius: 1-0-4 Sticky Bomb in the front to damage Bloonarius while Adora with 4-0-2 M.O.A.R Glaives and a 2-0-4 Poplust defend the Bleed and Skull Bloons alongside regular rounds.
• Vortex: 1-0-4 Sticky Bomb and 0-4-2 Turbo Charge (both set to Strong) should be enough to keep Vortex at the start of the track, so a 2-0-4 Poplust and Adora can defend the regular rounds, make sure those 2 can't be stunned by Vortex.
• Dreadbloon: Delay damaging the Boss until the player has two 0-4-2 Turbo Charges on the field, as the Dreadrock Bloons became difficult to defend during the Magic immunity phase, placing Adora and the Druid at the back for defense. Don't place the Boomerang Monkeys at the very front as Dreadbloon will advance by the time it comes back from cooldown, 1-0-4 Sticky Bomb can be used to break the Primary phase.
• Phayze: Keep Adora, Druid and Boomerang at the back while a 1-0-4 Sticky Bomb deals with Phayze, sell and rebuy the Ninja as the Boss exits the Ninja's range.
• Blastapopoulos: 0-1-3 Druid can start the damage while Adora, a 0-3-2 Boomerang and a 4-0-2 Bloonjitsu defend the regular spawns at the back of the track, add more Druids to attack the Boss as the game progresses. In higher difficulties is important to try to search for a Spike Factory as soon as the player knows Blastapopoulos is the Boss, as the overheat stun can be enough to let faster Bloons reach the exit before the player has time to react.

Extraction priority

If the player can choose between different Artifacts to extract, it is recommended do it in the following order so the harder to find Artifacts are obtained at the first available opportunity:

1. Legendary Artifacts which don't have a Rare version, except Boss Artifacts: Biggest Beacon, Homing Projectiles and One Monkey Army, but the last one is particularly hard to extract due its damage negation mechanics after picking it so it is recommended to consult the extraction section of the article for tips.
2. Rare Artifacts which don't have a Common version: Abundant Choices, Battlefield Commission, Blitzing Ape Barrage Emitter, Cats Meow, Conscription, Critical Success, Discord, Duckageddon, Heroic Specialty, Master of all Trades, Monkey Academy, No More Please, Primary Specialist, Rubber Bullets, Summer Fun, Summon Battle Cat and Support Specialist.
3. Any other Legendary Artifact, except Boss Artifacts.
4. Any Common Artifact not yet extracted.
5. Any Rare Artifact not yet extracted.
6. Hero Artifact.
7. Boss Artifacts.

Playing in Stage 2 and beyond

Bloon Encounters are handled in the same way as In Races and Endurance Races, rounds should be sent in a slow and steady pace to avoid getting pierce capped and build a Poplust army as the game progresses, it is important to note DDT defense will be needed for Endurance Races if the player aims for the Legendary goal (refer to the table in the Regular campaign section for the recommended final round to send). In Least Cash the player can build Poplusts as the budget allows.

For Final Bosses, Bloonarius is defended in the same way as stage one with some damage in the front and the spawn defense in the back of the track. On higher stages the ability to beat Vortex is highly map dependent, if needed, take longer routes for more Artifacts and Towers before facing it. For Dreadblon it is important to pick a second powerful non-Magic Tower along the way to cover that immunity, obtaining Monkey Academy Artifact is also useful. Phayze Any Boss fight will also benefit from towers that can attack the Boss from afar to complement the defense, specially against Vortex and Phayze, examples include Aircraft Carrier, Arctic Knight, Spike Storm and Elite Defender. However, there's always the possibility of having an impossible Boss fight it can happen on the more difficult maps.

Tips and general recommendations

• Even if a campaign ends on a defeat, players will always get the Rogue XP they have accumulated until that point, which can be used on the Rogue XP shop to make future campaigns easier.
• Unless the player is doing a One Monkey Army run, the choice of an starting Hero should be mostly taking considering the starting Monkeys and Artifacts and not the Hero itself, as it does not really matter in the long run because there aren't many artifacts that benefit them so it will quickly be left behind the main towers in terms of DPS, so Heroes are really only useful in the early game for defense and in Freeplay for the support it can provide.
• In general, maxing out the Starting Artifact Power from the shop to start a run with a Boss Artifact is generally not worth it, as it is better to reroll Stage 1 until the desired Boss appears, and beat it on it weakest form.
• The only heart that matters is the last one because because there are no extra rewards at any point for having spare hearts, so using them to retry Mini Games for Legendary goals and skip difficult Bloon Encounters is very useful; however, it is always recommended to Heal at Camp Fires if the player has less than 3 hearts remaining.
• One of the most useful skills that a Rogue Legends player can learn is to identify the moment where skipping a Bloon Encounter is the best action to take, as a stubborn player can easily lose a campaign by trying a difficult encounter two or three times and losing those hearts instead of just losing one by skipping. If the player can quickly identify a losing position, and have quick reflexes, they can go back to the stage map and just skip the tile with no additional penalties.
• The best moment on a campaign to take greedy routes to maximize the rewards is on Stages 2 and 3, this is because players will still receive larger amounts of Cash to start the game, the map pool has not reached its maximum difficulty and the player's party is not as weak as in Stage 1.
• When reaching a Camp Fire, it is always a good thing to look at the Recruit Monkeys before taking any decision on what to do.
• On the early game, players can quickly obtain a Tier 4 tower by Mentoring or Recruiting to have a cheap DPS tower and build the rest of the party around it.
• From the Boss Artifacts, Essence of Bloonarius, Phayze and Dreadbloon are almost always worth taking over any Tier 5 tower.
• Here are some powerful starting parties for beginners:
  • Obyn Greenfoot, 2-0-3 Druids can hit any type of Bloon and scale nicely into Poplusts after Obyn can grant them camo detection, but before that point the main priority at the start of the game is getting an early tower that can handle Camo Bloons. Growing Steady is the best artifact to bring with this setup if available.
  • Admiral Brickell, Portability allows to easily use water-based towers, her 0-3-0 Bucaneer has good popping tower in the early game and can get quickly upgraded to X-4-X to deal with MOAB-Class Bloons, camo detection can be easily obtained by crosspathing the Buccaneer to 0-3-2 or by upgrading the starting sub to 3-0-1. Full Broadside, Corrosive Torp-E-Darts, and Fata Morgana have amazing synergy with this party.
• The best way to obtain extra income is by using Rubber to Gold or Alchemic Engineering to convert Bloons to Gold, as the short games might not give Banana Farms time to even pay for themselves and the number of ability activations will also be limited.
• Always keep at least 3 or 4 towers that can be purchased with the initial cash to drop them immediately on the most difficult maps.
• When starting a new stage, scout the map carefully, as sometimes Legendary Augment tiles are hard to spot.
• Players can restart games for free if the first round haven't been completed yet, with the exception of Mini Games or Mini Bosses.
• When mentoring a Tower that was obtained from an artifact, it might be also useful to check if Enhancing said Artifact would give them the same Tower they are looking to upgrade, this way the players will get their desired tower and the benefits of the higher tiered Artifact on top.
• In general, it is not recommended to force a strategy or commit to one on the early game, as there is no guarantee that the player will obtain the Monkeys or Artifacts that have synergy with it.
• When obtaining an Artifact that doesn't have a real use in your current party, it is generally better to hold to it and just trade at the next Merchant, but there is also the possibility that the Artifact's drawback will just be too great to overcome, in that case, Artifact can always be dropped from the inventory.

External links

• Manual tracker for extracted Artifacts in BTD6 API Explorer website