The Spike Factory is by far one of the more useful Support Towers players can place in all of BTD6.
Without any upgrades the Spike Factory isn’t the most effective Tower to place as it has a relatively slow attack speed, however, without upgrades it can be placed at the end of a track in order to catch bloons before they flood as the Spike Factory is able to place stacks of Tacks onto the track pre-emptively in order to ensure that the most bloons are taken care of.
In many cases the Spike Factory is used near the end of a map as it will take players a good amount of time to build up stacks of spikes in order to secure the takedown of most bloons.
While this is true, there are a few upgrades that are more beneficial when placed closer to the entrance of a map as they can help take care of stronger types of bloons.
The following guide will take you through everything you need to know about the Spike Factory, where to place each type and tips on when to place a Spike Factory.
PATH 1 TIER-5 SPIKE FACTORY – SUPER MINES
The Super Mines upgrade is an extremely powerful upgrade for players to choose as it provides players with the ability to deal a good amount of damage to bloons with explosions.
While the Super Mines attack relatively slowly, spawning in Super Mines every 4.4 seconds, the mines deal a great deal of damage, being 1,000 damage for each mine.
Super Mines are able to deal damage to 60 bloons per explosion, though what’s nice about the Super Mines is that players will be able to wipe out a single MOAB-class bloon at a time.
Before Super Mines have a chance to explode they will still deal damage to bloons simply by using their spikes.
Spikes deal substantially less damage, though in the grand scheme of things the damage that comes from the spikes is useful.
Each spike will now deal 10 damage, times the 16 spikes that are on each Super Mine equalling to a maximum of 160 damage per spike.
Not only that, another epic feature of the spikes is every time one is consumed, players will also deal an extra 10 damage in explosive damage that can affect 10 bloons.
Super Mines Spike Factories are quite effective Towers to place as they can shred through all types of bloons, including MOAB-class bloons, Camo Bloons and Lead Bloons.
The main concern for the Super Mines Spike Factory is Purple Bloons as explosions will not effect them, essentially rendering them useless in higher rounds with concentrated Purple Bloons, such as rounds 101-120. If players wish to raise the chances of the Super Mines being useful, players should pair up Spike Factories with rapid damage dealers that can take care of Purple Bloons in order to allow the Super Mines to deal with the rest of the bloons.
Towers to pair Super Mines up with in this case include the Crossbow Master and Path 1 or 2 Boomerang Monkeys.
Players will want to ensure that they place a Super Mines Spike Factory in the middle of a map in order to buy it enough time to place multiple Super Mines as placing it too close to the beginning will essentially waste the Super Mines on weaker bloons that may not have needed the epic popping power that this devastating Tower provides.
It’s best not to place the Super Mines Spike Factory at the end of the map as many of the Super Mines will expire by the time bloons actually reach it. Players can use another Spike Factory for these situations though, which I will cover shortly.
Super Mines are best for supporting a player against Super Ceramics as they can easily flood a player if they do not have enough support or Towers that are focussed on chipping away at Ceramic Bloons.
When it comes placing Towers in tandem with the Super Mines Spike Factory players are recommended to focus on Towers that provide support by slowing down MOAB-class bloons, especially on shorter maps.
Options include a Bloon Sabotage Ninja Monkey or a MOAB-Glue Glue Gunner as they provide the most slowdown in comparison to other Towers.
When it comes to cross pathing a Super Mines Spike Factory, players really have one option.
Path 2 will increase the speed in which Super Mines are deployed, significantly increasing the attack damage of this tower. This is always the best option.
Path 3 is extremely useless as it only increases the attack range and targeting option on the Super Mines Spike Factory and while admittedly there are a few times where this niche build can be useful, the fact that a Super Mines Spike Factory can essentially deploy unlimited Super Mines in the same spot makes it quite unnecessary.
Unfortunately the Super Mines Spike Factory isn’t a great tower on it’s own and it will need a number of Towers to support it’s damage output.
PATH 2 TIER-5 SPIKE FACTORY – CARPET OF SPIKES
By far one of the most useful upgrade path players can choose for the Spike Factory is the Carpet of Spikes upgrade.
Carpet of Spikes allow the Spike factory to automatically deploy Spike Storms every 15 seconds, lasting just over 20 seconds each, essentially making sure that the player’s map is always covered with spikes on it.
Spikes from this path upgrade do not deal a great deal of damage to bloons, each dealing 3 damage to normal bloons and 7 damage to MOAB-class bloons.
What’s nice is that spikes have 5 pierce, essentially help raise the damage output, though with the amount of spikes the Carpet of Spikes can deploy, especially when played in tandem with the special ability it retains from previous upgrades.
The Carpet of Spikes is most useful for dealing with MOAB-class bloons, essentially helping weaken the MOABs before they reach other towers.
Players will want to ensure that there is a way to shred through lower tier bloons so that the spikes spawned by the Carpet of Spikes is not wasted on them.
When it comes to placing a Carpet of Spikes Spike Factory, players should think about placing it in the middle of the map as this will help the Spike Factory build up some extra stacks of spikes in order to secure some extra bloons poppage.
Players can also place the Carpet of Spikes Spike Factory close to the exit of a map simply because it has the automatic ability to place spikes all over the map as well as the special ability that will also cover the map with spikes.
When it comes to cross pathing with a Carpet of Spikes, players should always go for Path 1 as this will double the total popping power of all the Spikes and the White Hot Spikes (2/-/-) upgrade will allow players to actually deal damage to DDTs, being one of the best uses of the Carpet of Spikes Spike Factory.
Similar to the upgrade above, having a Path 3 cross path will not be as useful as it will only provide players with extra range, though this can come in very handy in the early game.
The only time I would recommend a Path 3 cross path is if players are hoping to use a Monkey Village with Monkey Intelligence Bureau (-/3/-) though this is unnecessary.
Players will want to pair up a Carpet of Spikes with an Energizer Engineer Monkey in hopes of both reducing the cool down of both the special ability as well as the passive ability, this will greatly increase the damage to MOAB-class bloons.
PATH 3 TIER-5 SPIKE FACTORY – PERMA-SPIKE
By far another personal favourite Spike Factory is the Perma-Spike Spike Factory as it provides players with some of the highest defences they can receive in the game as Perma-Spike Spike Factories will last fairly indefinitely on the track.
The Perma-Spike Spike Factory will place spikes relatively slowly, being once every 6 seconds, though these spikes will pop a maximum of 50 bloons, each dealing 10 layers of damage per spike.
The Perma-Spike is known as the ultimate stockpiling Spike Factory allowing players to build 4 rounds of stacks (or 300 seconds of stacks) in hopes of ensuring that absolutely no bloons leak.
As the Perma-Spike Spike Factory has an extremely long lifespan, players are encouraged to place them directly at the end of a track as doing so will ensure that no bloons flood and will be able to catch any leaking bloons.
When it comes to cross pathing a Perma-Spike Spike Factory, players will have to make the cchoice based on what kind of bloons they are trying to defend against.
Path 1 will provide players with the ability to pop 700 bloons per spike and will allow them to shred through Lead Bloons .
Path 2 is much stronger as it will allow players to produce 875 damage every 6 seconds, though they will lack the ability to pop leads or DDTs, though players can place an Alchemist with Acidic Mixture Dip in order to fix this problem.
I personally like the latter as it will significantly deal more damage to bloons.
CONCLUSION
When it comes to placing a Spike Factory, the reality is that all of the upgrades are useful and can be used for any map, though selecting which one will depend on what kind of defences you need.
In most cases I build a Path 2 Carpet of Spikes as it will provide the most protection against bloons all across the map.
The Carpet of Spikes provides the most defense against MOAB-class bloons and quite frankly when placed in tandem with Towers that can speed up the Carpet of Spikes Spike Factory, they can be overwhelmingly powerful and provide some of the best support in the game.
My second choice is the Perma-Spike as it provides players with the most defences against leaking bloons.
While admittedly the Perma-Spike Spike Factory cannot provide the most support against stronger types of bloons, especially MOAB-class bloons, it is reasonable to place when players have strong Towers that are set to target “Strong” bloons instead of “First.”
Although I rate the Super Mines Spike Factory lowest, it’s not because it is weak, but more because it doesn’t usually fit in my play style or builds.
The Path 1 Super Mines Spike Factory deal extremely heavy damage to clumped up bloons and can help thin out bloons so towers can focus on big threats with their other Towers.
I’m also a player who frequently forgets about Purple Bloon defences and so to counter that I tend to spend my money on defending against them instead.
So I’m curious, what’s your favourite Spike Factory?
Do you like using your Spike Factories to deal with MOAB-class bloons?
Do you like to use them more for dealing with leaking bloons?
Or do you like to use them to deal with clumps of bloons?
Let me know in the comments below!
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