You’re staring at the end-game screen of a Round 100 CHIMPS run on Muddy Puddles. The victory feels great. But then you see it: that massive, multi-million monkey kill count—or what the game calls "pops"—attached to your Sun Avatar or your Prince of Darkness. It looks impressive. Honestly, it looks huge. But if you’re trying to use those numbers to figure out which tower is actually the "best," you’re probably looking at the data all wrong.
Numbers lie. Well, they don't exactly lie, but in Bloons Tower Defense 6 (BTD6), they definitely exaggerate.
Understanding the monkey kill count requires peeling back the layers of how Ninja Kiwi actually calculates damage. A "pop" isn't always a kill. Sometimes it’s just a layer. Sometimes it’s "moab damage" that doesn't result in a destroyed blimp for another ten seconds. If you want to actually beat the harder maps, you have to stop chasing the biggest number and start looking at effective damage.
The Big Confusion: Pops vs. Damage vs. Kills
Most players use the terms interchangeably. They shouldn't.
In the BTD6 engine, the number you see when you click on a tower is technically its "Pop Count." However, this is a bit of a misnomer. If a Red Bloon has 1 health and your Dart Monkey hits it, the count goes up by 1. Simple. But what happens when a Ceramic Bloon shows up? A Ceramic has a lot of internal health. If your tower hits a Ceramic and shreds it down to the Rainbows inside, your monkey kill count increases by the total amount of "health" or layers removed.
It gets weirder with MOAB-class Bloons.
A MOAB has 200 health (on standard difficulty). If a Sniper Monkey with the "Deadly Precision" upgrade hits that MOAB, it does 20 damage. Your tower’s counter goes up by 20. It didn't "kill" anything yet. The MOAB is still flying. This is why towers like the MAD (M.A.D - Missile Anti-Dreadnought) rack up millions in their monkey kill count while a Glue Gunner might show a pathetic few thousand, even though that Glue Gunner was the only reason the MAD didn't miss half its shots.
Why the Alchemist ruins your data
If you’re a high-level player, you’re using the 4-2-0 or 4-0-1 Alchemist (Stronger Stimulant). You have to. It's the best tower in the game. But the Alchemist provides a buff that increases the damage and pierce of other towers. When your Ninja Monkey goes on a rampage while buffed by an Alchemist, the Ninja gets all the credit in the monkey kill count.
The Alchemist gets nothing.
This creates a skewed perspective of value. You might think your Ninja is the MVP, but without that acidic mixture, it would have leaked dozens of Lead Bloons. The "kill count" is a selfish stat. It doesn't account for synergies, slows, or stalls.
How the Monkey Kill Count Scales in Freeplay
If you’ve ever gone for a high-round run—let’s say past Round 200—the numbers become essentially meaningless.
Bloon health scales exponentially. By Round 300, a reinforced BAD (Big Abominable Device) has millions of hit points. This is where the monkey kill count enters the realm of the absurd. You’ll see a Vengeful True Sun God with a pop count in the billions.
Does this mean the tower is better than it was on Round 80? No. It just means the targets have more "meat" on them.
- Round 80 ZOMG Health: 4,000
- Round 200 ZOMG Health: Roughly 35,000+ (depending on the specific scaling version)
When you’re looking at your stats after a long game, remember that the monkey kill count is heavily weighted toward the later rounds. A tower that performed flawlessly from Round 6 to Round 40 might only have 10,000 pops, while a tower you placed on Round 95 might get 200,000 in sixty seconds.
Don't let the late-game bloat fool you into thinking your early-game defense was weak.
The "Regrow Farm" Problem
You want to see a fake monkey kill count? Let's talk about Regrow Bloons.
If you set up a "Regrow Farm"—basically a situation where Bloons multiply faster than you can pop them, but you have enough knockback to keep them from hitting the exit—you can technically reach an infinite pop count.
- A Regrow Ceramic splits.
- It regrows back into a Ceramic.
- You pop it again.
- Your monkey kill count goes up every single time.
Ninja Kiwi has implemented some caps and logic fixes over the years to prevent people from using this to farm experience or achievements too easily, but the fundamental mechanic remains. If you’re stuck on a round for a long time due to regrows, your "kills" aren't actually progress. They're just a hamster wheel.
Which Towers Actually "Win" the Count?
If we're talking about pure efficiency—who gets the most credit for the least money—the list is surprising. It's rarely the towers you expect.
The Prince of Darkness (0-2-5 Wizard)
This guy is a stat-padder. Because he reanimates popped Bloons to fight for him, his monkey kill count includes everything his zombie Bloons touch. On maps with a single path, a Prince of Darkness will almost always out-pop every other tower in the mid-to-late game because he's constantly "touching" every single Bloon that enters his graveyard range.
The Bloon Area Denial System (0-4-2 Mortar)
In the middle rounds, a well-placed Mortar can rack up a massive monkey kill count simply because it deals massive "chip damage" across the whole screen. It isn't necessarily finishing the kills, but it’s the first tower to hit the Bloons, taking away those initial layers that count toward the total.
The Spirit of the Forest (0-5-2 Druid)
This is the king of "invisible" kills. The vines cover the entire track. Because it's dealing constant, ticking damage to every single Bloon the moment it spawns, the Spirit of the Forest often ends a game with the highest monkey kill count on the team. Is it the strongest? Kinda. But a lot of those pops are "trash damage" on Red and Blue bloons that your other towers would have handled anyway.
📖 Related: Finding the Gloves Befitting a Guard in Infinity Nikki: A Quick Way to Finish the Quest
What the "Total Pops" Achievement Really Requires
If you’re hunting for the "Sapper" achievement (which requires popping 5,000,000 Fortified Bloons), you’ve realized that the standard monkey kill count isn't your friend. The game tracks different things in the background.
"Sapper" is notoriously one of the hardest achievements in gaming. Why? Because most players finish a game by Round 100. By Round 100, you’ve popped a decent amount of fortified bloons, but not enough to move the needle on five million.
To maximize your "real" kill count for achievements, you have to go deep into freeplay. We're talking Round 300+. At that point, the monkey kill count becomes a lag-fest. Your CPU will struggle more than your monkeys will. The irony of BTD6 is that the higher your kill count goes, the more likely your game is to crash.
How to Use This Data to Actually Get Better
Stop looking at the end-of-game screen as a leaderboard.
If you want to improve your strategy, look for the towers that have low pop counts but were essential. Look at your MOAB Press Boomerangs (0-2-4). Their monkey kill count will be embarrassingly low. They might only have 50,000 pops in a game where your main DPS has 2,000,000.
But without those Boomerangs knocking the MOABs back, your main DPS wouldn't have had the time to get those 2,000,000 pops.
The "Clean-up" vs. "Main DPS" Divide
A good defense has a high-damage tower at the front (like a Sun Avatar) and a "clean-up" tower at the back (like a Perma-Spike).
The Perma-Spike (0-2-5) often has a very low monkey kill count because, ideally, it’s not doing anything. It’s just sitting there. If the Perma-Spike has a high count, it means your front-line defense failed. In this case, a high kill count is actually a sign of a bad strategy, not a good one.
Actionable Insights for Your Next Run
To truly master the mechanics behind the numbers, change how you evaluate your towers:
- Prioritize Support: Treat towers with low pop counts but high utility (Sabo Ninjas, Glue Hose, Maim MOAB) as the "enablers" of your high-count towers.
- Check the "Damage to MOABs" Stat: If you're playing certain modes or challenges, look at the specific damage types. A tower that excels at "cleaning up" small bloons will inflate its monkey kill count without helping you beat the Round 40 MOAB or the Round 100 BAD.
- Ignore Freeplay Totals: If you're testing towers in Sandbox, don't test them on Round 200. The scaling makes every tower look like a god. Test them on Round 63, Round 95, and Round 98 to see how they handle density and speed.
- Watch the "Cost per Pop": Divide the total cost of the tower by its final monkey kill count. You'll quickly realize that a 0-3-2 Draggy Breath Wizard is often way more "cost-effective" than a 5-0-0 Ultra-Juggernaut, despite the latter's potential for big numbers on specific maps.
The next time you finish a game and see that 2,000,000 pop count on your Tack Zone, give a little nod to the 3-2-0 Primary Training Village next to it. The Village has 0 pops, but it’s the reason the Tack Zone didn't look like a total chump.
Understanding the nuance of the monkey kill count is the difference between being a casual player and someone who can actually black-border a True Expert map. Focus on the win, not the scoreboard.