Perma-Spike (BTD6)

For the upgrade in Bloons TD Battles 2, see Perma-Spike (Battles 2).

Perma-Spike

High damage spikes become almost permanent.

Tower	Spike Factory — Path 3 — Tier 5
XP cost	29,500
Cash cost	$25,500 — Easy $30,000 — Medium $32,400 — Hard $36,000 — Impoppable

← Deadly Spikes

Mega Massive Munitions Factory →

Perma-Spike is the Spike Factory's path 3 tier 5 upgrade in Bloons TD 6. Spike piles are produced about 3.46x slower (without crosspaths, every 1.75s to 6.06s), but deal 10 damage, have 50 pierce (85 with 1-0-5), last up to 300 seconds, and carry over up to 3 rounds. Additionally, the 4x start-of-round speed boost now lasts for 10 seconds. Unlike other Spike Factories except its Paragon, spikes placed by a Perma-Spike are preserved when loading a save, though any buffs the spikes had will be lost.

Stats

For a complete list of Spike Factory stats, see Stats:Spike Factory (BTD6).

This data was last updated for: version 55.1

Tower
Display range 42 units Footprint radius 8 units Targeting options Normal Close Smart Automatic Set Target

Attack
Cooldown 6.0625s Offset (X, Y, Z) 0, 0, 20.1 Targeting Depends on targeting option Targeting range 42 units Filters Cannot target Camo
Ignores blockers
Projectile Pierce 50 Damage 10 Damage type Sharp Lifespan 300s Persists between rounds 3 Radius 6 units Rehit interval 0.001s Ignores blockers

Start-of-round buff
Cooldown modifier ×0.25 Lifespan 10s

1-0-5

Attack
Projectile Pierce 50 → 85

2-0-5

Attack
Projectile Damage type Sharp → Normal

0-1-5

Attack
Cooldown 6.0625s → 4.85s

0-2-5

Attack
Cooldown 4.85s → 3.6375s

Costs and sell values

Note: this list does not factor in Monkey Knowledge or other discounts.

Tiers	Total cost				Sell value
	Easy	Medium	Hard	Impoppable	Easy	Medium	Hard	Impoppable
0-0-5	$30,980	$36,450	$39,365	$43,740	$21,686	$25,515	$27,556	$30,618
1-0-5	$31,660	$37,250	$40,230	$44,700	$22,162	$26,075	$28,161	$31,290
2-0-5	$32,170	$37,850	$40,880	$45,420	$22,519	$26,495	$28,616	$31,794
0-1-5	$31,490	$37,050	$40,015	$44,460	$22,043	$25,935	$28,011	$31,122
0-2-5	$32,170	$37,850	$40,880	$45,420	$22,519	$26,495	$28,616	$31,794

Strategy

This section was last updated for: version 55.2

Perma-Spike is a very versatile T5 tower. It can serve as a perfectly consistent cleanup tower, leak-catcher and/or win condition for CHIMPS. Since the tower only cares about how much RBE it has to absorb, it is potent against DDTs and Super Ceramics, being able to handle every DDT through round 100. This also means that alongside being a DDT counter, Perma-Spike can also trivialise round 100 by exploiting the single BAD's relatively low RBE. Pair Perma-Spike with Stronger Stimulant, Abyssal Warrior, and Jungle Drums to improve its capacity. Overclock is another, more expensive option. If your strategy relies more heavily on Perma-Spike for general damage output, and not just cleaning up or answering DDTs and the BAD, use it with stalling towers; Horned Owl and MOAB Shove are the best, while Cryo Cannon and Maim MOAB require less micromanagement. It excels on maps where it can cover every exit, such as Glacial Trail and Workshop. On maps that Perma-Spike cannot reach every exit, such as Muddy Puddles, use the Reposition abilities of Support Chinook or Dan D'Monke. Smart Targeting is an inconsistent option for these maps, and another micro-heavy option is to repeatedly alternative between the "Close" and far "Set Target" targeting options to ensure spikes are balanced in each exit.

As a cleanup tower, Perma-Spike should not be solely relied on to tank most blimps from the dense lategame rounds like 96 and 98. However, it highly complements towers with high raw damage that also tend to leak Bloons. Unstable Concoction should be used if your strategy uses Perma-Spike, as it is cost-efficient extra damage, and its usual downside of leaving huge packs of MOABs and Ceramics is not a problem for Perma-Spike. For Heroes, Admiral Brickell, Corvus, and Ezili's abilities are good for cutting away large amounts of RBE from dense rounds. Benjamin is a niche choice; he can use Syphon Funding to drastically reduce the densest rounds, and it is this synergy with Perma-Spike being the primary reason to ever consider him in CHIMPS.

Perma-Spike struggles in Freeplay as it does not scale well with the increasingly denser rounds. Outside of standard gamemodes, its main use case is in Races, by using it to instantly pop the remaining Bloon spawns after the bulk of rounds have been cleared.

Both crosspaths are almost equally effective. 1-0-5 is slightly cheaper, has marginally better DPS (1.7× instead of 1.667×), and has the option of upgrading to 2-0-5 in Ice Monkey-centric strategies (usually for frozen Bloons; Lead Bloons aren't a concern unless Acidic Mixture Dip isn't available) for the same overall cost as 0-2-5. 0-2-5 benefits slightly more from flat pierce buffs, including One More Spike; if Perma-Spike has Stronger Stimulant supporting it, 0-2-5 has slightly more DPS than 1-0-5, assuming the Alchemist can maintain enough uptime on it with the brew buff.

Update history

For a complete list of Spike Factory changes, see Update history:Spike Factory (BTD6).

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Version 2.0

•  Upgrade cost increased ― $22,000 → $25,000
•  Attack cooldown increased ― 3s → 6s (attack speed reduced by 50%)
• Far targeting no longer causes the game to crash if it cannot reach the track (bug fix)

Version 8.0

1-0-5, 2-0-5

•  Pierce increased ― 60 → 70

Version 12.0

•  Upgrade cost increased ― $25,000 → $30,000
•  Projectiles are now saved
•  Projectile lifespan reduced ― 350s → 300s
•  Projectile max rounds reduced ― 4 → 3

Version 14.0

•  Now gains a 4× attack speed buff for 2.5 seconds at the start of each round

Version 15.0

•  Spike piles no longer save (bug)

Version 21.0

•  Rounds before projectiles expire increased ― 3 → 4 (undocumented)

Version 23.0

“

Like a few other towers before it, the attack speed crosspath for Spike Factory has outshined the others. We have reworked the lower Spike Factory tiers to distribute this power more evenly while keeping high tier factories at a similar level of power.
— Update notes

”

•  Overall cost increased by $200 (due to cost changes for previous tiers)

0-1-5

•  Rate reduced ― 3.6s → 4.8s (undocumented)

0-2-5

•  Rate reduced ― 2.7s → 3.36s (undocumented)

Version 23.2

“

[...] after recent changes to low tiers unintentionally caused it to perform much worse
— Update notes

”

•  Attack cooldown reduced ― 6s → 4.85s (attack speed increased by 23.71%)
  • Stacks with 0-1-5 Faster Production crosspath ― 4.8s → 3.88s
  • Stacks with 0-2-5 Faster Production crosspath ― 3.36s → 2.716s

Version 24.0

“

In addition, Permaspike’s neglected crosspath has had a small pierce increase as currently their only real use is under custom challenge rules.
— Update notes

”

•  Smart targeting now places spikes as far back on the track as it can, rather than directly in front of the Bloon closest to leaking (undocumented)

1-0-5

•  Pierce increased ― 70 → 80

Version 28.0

“

Some minor changes to a few upgrades on Spike Factory evening out some aspects of it.
— Update notes

”

1-0-5

•  Pierce increased ― 80 → 90

Version 36.0

•  Spike per spike pile reduced ― 50 → 25
•  Damage increased ― 10 → 15

1-0-5, 2-0-5

•  Spike per spike pile reduced ― 90 → 45

Version 38.0

“

Finally, we enjoyed the hard hitting nerf to Permaspike’s early game, but admittedly this change didn’t really change much of anything for its endgame power while impacting pre r80 rounds far more, so we’re redoing the nerf into a pure attack speed nerf along with an increased benefit to the start of round rate buff to reduce the necessity in playing slowly with it
— Update notes

”

•  Pierce increased ― 25 → 50
•  Damage reduced ― 15 → 10
•  Attack cooldown reduced ― 4.85s → 6.0625s
•  Start of round attack speed buff duration increased ― 2.5s → 10s

1-0-5, 2-0-5

•  Pierce increased ― 45 → 90

Version 39.0

•  Spike Factory no longer can shotgun spikes for exactly one frame after spawning (bug fix)

Version 45.0

“

Permaspike is seeing a small crosspath fix, as the x2x rate change threw this balance out.
— Update notes

”

1-0-5, 2-0-5

•  Pierce reduced ― 90 → 85

Version 49.0

“

This update we’ve finally decided to nerf Permaspike by completely removing the ‘Far’ target priority from the earlier Smart Spikes upgrade. We know that this loss will be incredibly painful to deal with for the many spike factory enjoyers out there, so we have also included a couple other minor QoL adjustments to the Smart Spikes upgrade in a hopeful attempt to offset this.
— Update notes

”

•  Reworked targeting options ― Normal, Close, Far, Smart → Normal, Close, Smart, Set Target, Automatic
  •  Smart Spikes: Adds a "Set Target" option, which allows to select the place inside the Spike Factory's range where the spikes go to.
  •  Smart Spikes: Adds a "Automatic" option, attempts to directly target the first bloon
  •  Removed "Far" targeting option

Gallery

For more Spike Factory images, see Gallery:Spike Factory.

Screenshots

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Assets

• 
  Portrait
• 
  Upgrade icon
• 
  Insta Monkey icon

Trivia

• Perma-Spike has received numerous update notes regarding its lack of nerfs. This is a running gag created by Ninja Kiwi starting with update 46.

In other languages

Language	Name / Description	Notes
Arabic	مسامير دائمة تصبح السنون والنتوءات عالية الضرر شبه دائمة.	—
Danish	Perma-søm Højeffektive søm bliver næsten permanente.	—
German	Perma-Stacheln Nägel mit hohem Schaden sind fast permanent vorhanden.	—
Spanish	Permaclavo Los clavos de gran daño se vuelven casi permanentes.	—
Spanish (LA)	Permaclavo Los clavos de gran daño se vuelven casi permanentes.	—
Finnish	Pysyvä piikki Tehokkaat piikit tulevat melkein pysyviksi.	—
French	Perma-pointes Les pointes à dégâts élevés deviennent presque permanentes.	—
Italian	Perma-aculeo Gli aculei a danni elevati diventano quasi permanenti.	—
Japanese	パーマスパイク 高ダメージスパイクが、ほぼ永久的に持続するようになる。	—
Korean	영구 스파이크 공격력이 높은 스파이크가 거의 영구적이 됩니다.	—
Dutch	Permaspies Stekels die grote schade doen worden bijna permanent.	—
Norwegian	Perma-spiker Spiker med høy skade blir nesten en permanent funksjon.	—
Polish	Perma-kolce Kolce zadające duże obrażenia stają się niemal permanentne.	—
Portuguese (Brazil)	Espinho Permanente Espinhos de alto dano se tornam quase permanentes.	—
Russian	Вечные шипы Наносящие сильный урон шипы становятся почти вечными.	—
Swedish	Permaspik Spikar som åsamkar stor skada blir nästan permanenta.	—
Thai	ตะปูถาวร ตะปูดาเมจสูงแทบจะอยู่อย่างถาวร	—
Turkish	Kalıcı Çivi Yüksek hasarlı çiviler neredeyse kalıcı hale gelir.	—
Chinese (simplified)	永久刺钉 高伤害刺钉变得几乎不可磨灭。	—
Chinese (traditional)	永久針刺 高傷害針刺幾乎變得永久存在。	—
This list was last updated for: version 43.1