Unlocking Beast Handler (Skip If You've Done It Already)
So this should be something most people might have already figured out on their own, but in case you didn't, well, to unlock the beast handler, talk to the monke with glasses and pink explorer hat in the main menu, select 'Epic Quest Beast', and complete the three part quest! After that, you unlock Beast Handler!
As for how to unlock the upgrades and such.. well, it's the same as all other towers: Use tower in a game, get exp, use exp to spend on the upgrade path you want and so on.
Beast Power And Merging
Some monke's are confused on what the purple numbers and merging do, so i'll be including that in the guide.
When you upgrade your monkey's beast (any path), you've probably noticed purple numbers showing up on your upgrade and also on top of your monke. That's what is called in-game as 'Beast Power'
Beast power is something you get from upgrading your monke's beasts and from merging. As for what it does, it increases your beast's DPS. In case of the top path (like shown in the top picture) beast power also turn the aquatic beasts into.. something similar to mid path buccaneer's harpoon, except it doesn't have a cooldown attached and is limited by the beast's power on what is able to pull down. Oh, and limited range.
As for how merging works, first you need to buy a second beast handler, pick the same beast path as the other, then you'll notice a purple merge button appear next to your beast upgrade.
Click on the merge button, click on the beast handler you want to merge, and your selected beast handler will become stronger!
Also, in case you're wondering, unlike the sun temple sacrifice, merging a beast handler with another doesn't remove the second beast handler. Also, you can spend your coins to upgrade the second beast handler instead of having to buy a ton of beast handlers just for merging. 4 beast handlers are usually enough, at least to get to T5 beasts. Oh and the beast handlers do not need to be in range of each other for merging. You can put them on the other side of the map if you want to.
Merging Limits And Max Power Requirements
In the merge section, I've explained how to merge. Also, you might have noticed that in the upgrades section, it shows you with two purple numbers, such as 4/6
On the left side of the upgrade, it shows how much beast power it has, while on the right side it shows the limit of the beast's upgrade. Every time you upgrade, your beast gets stronger while also increasing the limit. Each beast tier paths gives you the same amount of power and limits. You don't need to learn this list but in case anyone's curious:
T1 (Tier 1 upgrade) gives you 1/1 and obviously requires your one beast handler to upgrade.
T2 gives you 3/6 and requires 2 (total) T2 beast handlers (of the same path) to max out
T3 gives you 8/24 and requires 3 T3 beast handler to max out
T4 gives you 16/64 and requires 4 T4
T5 should have technically given you 36/132 for one T5 beast handler, but since you've got other maxed out beast handlers controlling it, then the real total number is 84/132 and requires 1 T5 and 6 T4 total to max it out completely.
Do Beast Handler Positions Matter?
So, something that you might have figured out is that you can move your beasts around by using the green buttons next to the beast handler icon and place them within the range of the beast handler themselves
Makes sense, right? Well, there's more to it. If you've merged your beast handler with another, you can also move your beast towards the other beast handler, or any other beast handlers you have merged with. which doesn't seem like much if you're more of a 'place and forget' kind of person, however in case of the birbs, placing the beast handlers around the tracks give the birbs more range to how far they can pick up bloons and place them towards their marked location.
However if you don't care about the micro-management path or you're not using birbs, then you can always place 4 beast handlers in an area next to a x22 or 2x2 village for the discount and either get camo detection or attack speed if you have etienne hero.
Monke Path
Now, let's look at the beasts you're given, you've got the top path, which is aquatic, the mid path which is jurassic, and you've got bot path, which is birb. They all have their pros and cons.
Top path:
As of when the beast handler got released, the aquatic path is considered to be the dominator of all moabs. A maxed out T3 shark can one-shot a regular Moab, while a maxed out T4 orca can oneshot zomgs. I wouldn't be surprised if it got nerfed, considering that compared to other monkeys specialized in taking down Moabs, a T4 orca without any merges can take down Moabs and BFBs without any problems. The downside to the top path is that depending on how many moabs there are, it might struggle a bit on taking all of them down at once since it takes a little bit of time to yoink the moabs into the depths of the portable lake. Speaking of portable lake, you can only use the top path in maps that has water or if you have portable lakes. Oh it can get blocked by obstacles, like the trees at the bazaar and has no camo detection (unless you buy it from other towers or etienne)
Also, a bit of a warning for people using top path during freeplay: when you go beyond 150, your maxed out megaladon will end up losing the ability to take down BADs and around 210 you lose the ability to take down ZOMGs
Mid path:
The jurassic path is somewhat the opposite of the aquatic path, but not as OP. You get a dinosaur that you can place on the ground to chomp on bloons, including lead. The more you upgrade, the more damage and range you get, while also unlocking the stomp ability, which stuns all bloons around it. It can also deal extra damage to stunned bloons (Similar to sauda at level 7) and well, that's it, really. It's decent for clearing out regular bloons but not great at dealing with Moab unless you use the stun ability on them.
Oh! Something that I'd like to mention related to Beast Power and mid path is that, besides increasing damage, it also reduces the CD on the stomp ability. A maxed out T-rex ability gets reduces from 34 (without upgrades) to 16 seconds. The downside to the mid path is that the T-rex is a land based tower, requires the ability to take advantage of Moabs (Or any other that can also stun towers) and is blocked by obstacles. Also no camo detection (unless you buy it from other towers or etienne)
Bot path:
And last, we have birb path. The birb follows a more of a support-crowd control compared to the other two paths. It can fly (obviously), starts with camo and ignores obstacles, and it can pick up bloons and place them on the green birb mark on the floor.
You can click the green birb button to move that mark around, preferably towards the start of the map, not the end. At T3 it can pick up a bunch of bloons and at T4 it does a decent job at stalling Moabs and BFBs, however a maxed out T4 condor doesn't seem to do anything against ZOMG, DDT, and BADs (Which, I mean, even a heli pilot with moab shove can at least deal damage to them and even slow them down). Thankfully the T5 is able to attack BADs, and even pick up all other moab types all the way to start.
Something that I've mentioned in the beast handler positions section, you can also increase the range of the birbs using more beast handlers placed around the map so with the right amount, you might be able to get a global range birb that can place bloons from finish to start. The downside to the birb is that the DPS isn't that great, and as mentioned and isn't able to hit ZOMG, DDT and BADs like all other paths. There's also the problem where you can't take advantage of the village discount if you're spreading the beast handlers around and T4 birbs aren't able to deal with lead bloons unless you have x3x village.
Extra Info
So this is the unsorted section where I throw in a bunch of stuff that didn't fit in any other category or wasn't worth making a dedicated category for it
The beast handler without any upgrades can poke bloons with their stick.
When it comes to buffs and such, the beasts function similar to Etienne and the drones: The beast handler gets buffed from the village and overclock, but isn't affected by alchemist buff. Also whatever buffs the beast handler gets also affects the beasts.
In 'Covered Garden', trying to merge a beast handler with another doesn't work if they're covered up by the rotating glass ceiling thing.
The only way to unmerge from another beast handler is by selling
Final Thoughts
Hopefully this guide has cleared up some of the things you might have been confused about, though there is the probability of me missing out on stuff that i might have forgot to mention, simply didn't know about, possibly have made some kind of mistake (or many) or an even higher probability of the Beast Handler changing because of a future update. To be honest, this was more about me wasting time because I had nothing better to do.. so.. yeah, hope you enjoyed reading the guide and learned something about the beast handler!
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2958320825
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