Permanent Brew

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Permanent Brew is the fifth and final upgrade of Path 1 for the Alchemist in Bloons TD 6. It enhances the duration of all of its buff potions, the Stronger Stimulant potion and Acidic Mixture Dip potion, to last indefinitely instead of the original usage duration of 40 and 10 shots per applied potion respectively, provided that the Permanent Brew Alchemist is not sold or sacrificed.

The buffs are given separately from each other. The exact buffs given are +1 damage, +3 pierce, +17.6% attack speed (x0.85 attack cooldown), +15% range, same from the Stronger Stimulant's buff but with a different icon, and +1 damage to Ceramic, MOAB-class bloons, and Fortified Leads plus granting Lead-popping power from Acidic Mixture Dip.

This upgrade costs $40,800 on Easy, $48,000 on Medium, $51,840 on Hard, and $57,600 on Impoppable.

Description

Overview

An Alchemist with Permanent Brew has a much more crazy appearance. The monkey gains a full beard and a moustache, and wavy head hair, all colored red. On its back, the Permanent Brew Alchemist carries two huge kegs of brew and a large back fuming tank. It also carries two wooden root beer mugs in its hands. It is also fully clothed with a full orange suit underneath its orange cloak. Its pupils are dilated concave downwards.

Permanent Brew is just like Stronger Stimulant, except all its brews and AMDs are permanent. Towers buffed by Permanent Brew's brew are marked with an icon of a wooden root beer mug, although the perma-AMD has no unique icon.

Targeting Priorities

Permanent Brew targets bloons using the standard targeting priorities. It lobs potions at bloons based on current targeting.

• First: Targets the first bloon visible within its range.
• Last: Targets the last bloon visible within its range.
• Close: Targets the closest bloon visible within its range.
• Strong: Targets the strongest bloon visible within its range.

Alchemists with this upgrade can throw buff potions at nearby towers, giving them tower buffs. Acidic Mixture Dip is thrown on a random tower and prioritizes those without an AMD buff. Permanent Brew potions always target on Close relative to the Alchemist, and ignores already brewed targets, towers that normally cannot be targeted for buffs from alchemists, or those who have very recently been brewed.

Costs

Updated as of Version 46.0. Listed prices exclude external buffs, any sacrifices, and Monkey Knowledge.

This upgrade's prices (or included crosspath's prices) are affected by the following MK: Better Sell Deals

Strategy

See also: Alchemist Brewing Strategy

Summary

While most strategies will settle for a Berserker Brew or Stronger Stimulant, or other cheaper buff, Permanent Brew provides an extremely strong buff but at an extreme cost, lasting indefinitely while still providing a variety of benefits to attack speed, damage, pierce, and range. Because of this, Permanent Brew can buff every single brewable tower within range, provided enough time allows this Alchemist to throw support potions. Since the Permanent Brew's buffs last indefinitely (unless Permanent Brew is sold or sacrificed, or sapped by Gravelord Lych), Permanent Brew works best with large groups of rapid-firing, high-projectile towers, such as 2-0-4 Overdrives, 3-1-0 Destroyers, Sun Avatars, Druids of Wrath and Poplusts, and Bloonjitsus (especially when paired with multiple 0-3-2 Shinobi Tactics).

In CHIMPS, Permanent Brew tends be difficult to afford, but usable if planned out with an extremely greedy strategy. Outside of CHIMPS, it is much more accessible and good to add to defenses if there is a tower that receives buffs well, as its damage buff is unique and comes with pierce and attack speed buffs and can come in useful.

Tips

• Post-Round 81, the appearance of Super Ceramic Bloons means that it effectively acts as a +2 damage buff when both buffs are applied. In addition, it is frequently used as a Monkey Intelligence Bureau in strategies which use it.
  • Note that the acidified buff does not grant towers with the ability to pop Frozen Bloons.
• Pair it with good towers that benefit highly by increased damage, increased attack speed, and increased pierce. Permanent Brew sees most use with Sun Avatar due to its capability to save up to it. On easier maps, The Tack Zone is also one of the better towers that can save up to Permanent Brew. Hero choice is important because using Pat or Obyn will lengthen the amount of time the towers mentioned above can solo until Permanent Brew.
  • Grandmaster Ninja, other Super Monkey upgrades (e.g. Robo Monkey, Tech Terror, Dark Knight, Dark Champion), and Captain Churchill are other examples of towers who also benefit greatly from the buff, but it tends to be difficult to afford Permanent Brew with them.
  • Because Permanent Brew targets towers within its immediate range, towers coming in large groups such as Shinobi Tactics or Overdrive will also work well with Permanent Brew. For Shinobis, perma-buffing them will allow a greater number of important targets to be buffed too. For Overdrive, while Stronger Stimulant gives good uptime with Overdrive, Stronger Stimulant does not have enough uptime to sustain more than a small group of Overdrives; Permanent Brew can buff all of the Overdrives within range.
• Relocating the Alchemist with a Support Chinook allows it to buff otherwise inaccessible towers.
  • Dark Knights and Dark Champions can move themselves around through the Darkshift ability, which frees up space for other towers.
  • This also applies to the map Geared, where towers always move on each round.
• The crosspath for Permanent Brew has minimal impact, since the effect persists as long as said Alchemist is present. Additionally, the buffs don't change with crosspathing. However, the Faster Throwing crosspath (5-0-1) is preferred if possible, as it allows the tower to apply the permanent buff to a large number of towers more quickly after initially obtaining the upgrade.
  • Additionally, the faster throwing upgrade increases the efficacy of the tier 4 Stronger Stimulant upgrade to buff three moderate attack speed towers while saving up for the tier 5 Permanent Brew. Perishing Potions makes Stronger Stimulant last longer which helps fast attacking towers, so if opting for Permanent Brew in CHIMPS, crosspath is not a significant deal.
  • In Ranked Boss Events, players looking for top times on the leaderboard will need to buff hundreds of towers in the later tiers to improve their attack speed and damage. Thus, crosspathing it with faster throwing is significant to get as many towers buffed quickly, and Overclock is similarly useful to let it buff more towers faster.
• It is possible for Permanent Brew to buff towers that normally cannot receive Alchemist buffs (other alchemists, villages, farms, and Beast Handlers) by placing a tower, selling it after the alchemists throws its potion, then buying the desired tower in almost the exact spot that the potion lands. This will give towers that normally cannot receive alchemist buffs the permanent brew buff if done correctly, but may need multiple tries to get done correctly. Range buffs from True Sun God and Sun Temple's support buffs and Monkey Village can make this easier to accomplish by giving more time to place the monkey. This can also be done with lower tier top path alchemists, but ill advised for any alchemist except Permanent Brew due to how minimal the benefit is for the effort required.

Version History

Balance Changes

Bug Fixes and General Changes

This section is incomplete. You can help by expanding it.

Extra Notes (Version History)

Sounds

Starting from Stronger Stimulant, which includes Permanent Brew, the Alchemist now plays sounds as it buffs other towers.

When brewing a nearby tower:

• [glass smash]
• [glass smash]
• [glass smash]
• [glass smash]
• [glass smash]

Gallery

In-game model

Permanent Brew with Path 2 crosspaths

Permanent Brew range comparison with Stronger Stimulant (pre-44.0)

Lots of Permabrewed Ninja Monkeys within range (pre-35.0 range)

Lots of Permabrewed Ninja Monkeys within range (v35.0-v43.3)

Permanent Brew drinking permanent brew, one of its idle animations

Official artwork

Upgrade portrait

Upgrade icon

Instamonkey icon

Sticker

Assets

Permanent Brew beer (unused?)

Trivia

• Permanent Brew is the only upgrade whose name contains the word "Permanent". Other upgrades, such as Permafrost, Perma Charge, and Perma-Spike, all simply contain "Perma-" but not "Permanent".
• There was a bug where Stronger Stimulant would visually give more range than Perma-Brew, making the Perma-Brew buff seemingly weaker. This was fixed in update 6.0.
• Permanent Brew is possibly based on beer, as Alchemist holds wooden tankards used for drinking beer.
• Ninja Kiwi has referred to Permanent Brew as a shortened name "Permabrew" at least once. For instance, they had mentioned Permanent Brew retaining permanent Acidic Mixture Dip while commenting about a nerf to Acidic Mixture Dip in Version 33.0.