NAPS
NAPS (short for No Agents, Premiums, or Specialties) is a type of self-imposed challenge in Bloons TD 5. Conceived by community players, it is not part of the game itself, but is an extrinsic way for a player to increase the difficulty of a game. It may apply to any game mode.
There are many variants of NAPS. The most common is NAPSFRILLS (short for No Agents, Premiums, Specialties, Farming, Road Items, Lives Lost, or Selling), which applies even more restrictions.
In Bloons TD 6, CHIMPS mode functions similarly to NAPSFRILLS, though it is a proper feature of the game rather than an extrinsic challenge. Additionally, the achievement Nah, I'd Win requires completing the harder version of Spa Pits using self-imposed restrictions similar to NAPSFRILLS, as stated in the achievement's description.
Rules
In a NAPS game, the player must abide by the following restrictions:
- The player cannot use any Special Agents.
- The player cannot use any premiums (meaning Premium Upgrades, injections, continues, and pre-game power-ups in the Flash version).
- The player cannot enable any Specialty Buildings.
In NAPSFRILLS, in addition to the above rules, the following restrictions also apply:
- Farming is not allowed. (There is no consensus definition of "farming"; this usually means Banana Farms are not allowed and the player may not use the Supply Drop ability or Support Chinook's Vital Supplies ability, but whether this also forbids Monkey Town, Bloon Trap, or Regrow farming is open to interpretation.)
- The player may not use Road Spikes or Pineapples ("road items").
- The player cannot lose any lives.
- The player cannot sell any towers.
The following rules are not explicitly covered by the names of NAPS and NAPSFRILLS (due to them pertaining to features introduced after community players created them), but they go against the "spirit" of the challenge:
- Double Cash Mode in Bloons TD 5 Deluxe, where it is not treated as a Premium Upgrade
- Injections and continues in Deluxe, the mobile version, and the console version, where they are not treated as premium purchases
- The Monkey Lab
- The Bloon Scrambler
- Free towers, Road Spikes, and Pineapples from Quests and Daily Rewards
These restrictions effectively limit the player to only using towers, upgrades, and (outside of NAPSFRILLS) Road Spikes and Pineapples.