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. Uniquely, 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 51.1

Perma-Spike is a perfectly consistent cleanup tower that is exceptionally effective on maps where it can cover every exit, most notably for CHIMPS on maps such as Glacial Trail and Dark Castle. Since the tower only cares about how much Bloon HP it has to absorb, it is very potent against DDTs and Super Ceramics, and can handle every single DDT through round 100 as long as other Bloons and the Fortified MOABs on those rounds are dealt with. By contrast, it is fairly weak against hyperdense rounds such as 96 and 98, and needs heavy damage sources that can shave off most of the RBE from these rounds for it.

Pair Perma-Spike with Stronger Stimulant, Abyssal Warrior, and Jungle Drums to improve its capacity, and if the Perma-Spike is surrounded with more than 6 towers, add an extra Acidic Mixture Dip for full buff uptime. Both crosspaths are about equal, but 1-0-5 is slightly cheaper, very marginally stronger (1.7x damage output instead of 1.667x), and has the option of upgrading into 2-0-5 in Ice-centric strategies. If frozen Bloons are not a concern, then stop at 1-0-5, as AMD covers lead. Overclock is another, more expensive support option that can further boost its capacity.

At base, Perma-Spike gets an effective 140 DPS, which goes up to 288 average DPS with a standard buff set and 479 DPS with Overclock included. In a vacuum, this is very low for its price range, competing with cleanup towers like The Bloon Solver and The Biggest One, which can reach thousands of DPS on a hyperdense round before applying additional buffs, and therefore Permaspike has to focus on building up its spike pile to effectively handle incoming Bloons. Without stalling, Perma-Spike still benefits from its start-of-round attack speed boost giving it a temporary 4x attack speed increase, and can still easily handle all DDTs and Super Ceramics that head its way provided Bloon density is kept low enough, but will also easily get overrun if a horde of blimps crashes into the pile.

Its real power comes through when stalling is used to stockpile up to 5 minutes of spikes at the end of each round. Horned Owl and MOAB Shove are very effective stalls, while Cryo Cannon and Maim MOAB can work as easier alternatives. If the player can get a full 5 minute spike pile, and accounting for the increased attack speed at the start of the round, Perma-Spike can absorb 95,000 RBE with a basic buff setup. Only rounds 92, 94, 96, and 98 have more RBE than this during normal play.

Since Perma-Spike cannot leak Bloons before reaching its pierce limit, damage towers paired with it should focus on how much raw damage they can do against dense late game rounds. Unstable Concoction is very cost-efficient extra damage, and its usual downside of creating huge MOAB and Ceramic rushes is not a problem for Perma-Spike. For Heroes, Brickell, Corvus, and Ezili pair well with Perma-Spike as well, being able to cut away huge amounts of RBE from dense rounds via their abilities. Benjamin can also use Syphon Funding to drastically reduce the threat levels of the densest rounds, with his synergy with Perma-Spike being the primary reason to ever consider him in CHIMPS.

Some maps have too much distance between lanes for Perma-Spike to reach every exit, such as Muddy Puddles. In this case, a Support Chinook can carry the Perma-Spike to each lane to build separate stockpiles.

In Freeplay, Perma-Spike suffers partially from increasing blimp HP but mainly from the incredibly high density of many late game rounds, severely limiting its ability to handle cleanup. Outside of normal play and CHIMPS, its main use case is in Races, where it can be used after the bulk of round clearing is done in order to quash the last Bloon spawns as soon as they spawn.

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