Bloon Tower Defense 5 – Death Valley Hard SOLVED

Yes, you knew Death Valley – the last of the expert maps in Bloon Tower Defense 5, on Hard was going to be tough…. How tough?  Let me frame it out for you…..

Before starting this map, I did the following:

1. Built up my cash to over $2,500 (playing various Easy and Medium difficulty maps)
2. Purchased the following upgrads in the Monkey Lab:
   1. Popping Power = Level 8/8
   2. Attack Speed = 6/8
   3. Starting Cash = 2/8
   4. Starting Lives = 4/8
   5. Sell Price = 2/8
   6. Big Bloon Sabotage = 7/8
   7. Ability Cooldown = 1/8
3. Made the following Special Agent purchases:
   1. Radadactyl = 4
   2. Tribal Turtle = 6
   3. Meerkat Spy = 2
   4. Bloonberry Bush = 4

When I started the map, I laid out my Special Agents as seen below.  The first purchase I made was a Banana Farm, then a Monkey Village.  I then began placing towers tight to the Monkey Village.  I then purchased another Banana Farm and Monkey Village to continue balancing my defense.  I knew I had to stack the short side map heavily and as quickly as possible.

As it turned out, I had to use a $500 cash infusion FOUR TIMES before I could beat this map.

Lessons learned: I should have used several additional Special Agents to start the map.  Also, I should have setup a Monkey Village in the lower right corner of the map sooner. Because of the limited tower placement availability, there is no way to avoid building up the lower right corner of the map.