Paragon

Herald of Everfrost

Herald of Everfrost, the Ice Monkey Paragon: unlock, degree, Ice Lance Beam and Snowstorm Roar, the +8 damage debuff, skull-skipping ability and value.

As the eternal frost descends and cold reigns supreme, even the baddest of Bloons are helpless against its icy grasp.

In-game description

Stats

Main attack

Damage: –
Pierce: –
Attack speed: –
Range: –

How to use Herald of Everfrost

Herald of Everfrost is the Ice Monkey Paragon. It combines Super Brittle, Absolute Zero and Icicle Impale into a support Paragon. Its value comes less from its own damage and more from what it does to bloons: freezing them, slowing them permanently and making them take far more damage from every other tower.

How it attacks

The Herald uses one attack that cycles through four Ice Lance Beams followed by one Snowstorm Roar. It only attacks when bloons are inside its 46 range, and at degree 1 it attacks every 4 seconds. It also has an aura that heavily slows bloons and MOAB-class bloons near it, and it freezes water across the whole map so land towers can be placed on it.

Ice Lance Beam, at degree 1:

An instant beam that travels to the edge of the map, ignoring obstacles. It deals 600 damage (+6,000 to bosses) with 500 pierce, and the freeze it applies deals another 600.
Bloons it hits are frozen for 10 seconds, six layers deep (BADs and bosses excepted), and grow icicles that damage other bloons they touch.
A trail of ice shard bursts follows the beam, each burst firing 6 shards for 25 damage (+50 to MOAB-class, +125 to bosses).

Snowstorm Roar hits every bloon on the map:

Freezes all bloons except BADs and bosses for 10 seconds (MOAB-class for 5).
Applies permanent permafrost: 50% slower for regular bloons and 25% slower for MOAB-class bloons, except BADs and bosses.
Strips camo, regrow, lead and frozen immunities.
Applies a debuff that makes bloons take +8 damage from every attack, and another +40 from cold, frigid and glacier attacks. BADs and bosses also receive this debuff. It overrides Embrittlement and Super Brittle.

Eclipse of Fimbulwinter

The activated ability waits 5 seconds, then freezes every bloon on screen for 10 seconds. BADs and boss bloons are frozen for 5 seconds, which makes the Herald one of the very few ways to stop a BAD. If a boss reaches a health skull while frozen by the ability, the skull effect is skipped and the boss thaws early. The cooldown is 90 seconds, it can only be used once per round, and it can cancel one skull per boss tier.

How to unlock Herald of Everfrost

Unlock all three Ice Monkey tier 5 upgrades, then spend the XP shown at the top of this page to unlock the Paragon. In a game, own Super Brittle (5-x-x), Absolute Zero (x-5-x) and Icicle Impale (x-x-5) at the same time, select one and buy the Paragon upgrade. Every Ice Monkey on the map is absorbed.

Degree and how to raise it

The degree (1 to 100) raises damage, pierce, attack speed and ability recharge, and it is fixed at purchase. Power comes from cash spent on absorbed Ice Monkeys (tier 5s excluded) plus the Paragon cash slider (up to 80,000 power), 6,000 power per extra tier 5 beyond the required three, damage dealt by absorbed Ice Monkeys (up to 125,000) and 2,000 per Paragon Power Totem from Geraldo. Degree 100 needs 200,000 power. Placing many cheap Ice Monkeys with cheap upgrades before buying is an easy way to raise it.

When to buy it

Buy the Herald when you already have strong damage and want to multiply it. The flat +8 damage per hit is enormous for towers that fire many small projectiles, and anything that works well with Super Brittle works even better with the Herald. Cold, frigid and glacier attacks gain even more.

In Boss Events, time Eclipse of Fimbulwinter so the boss is frozen when it reaches a skull. The ability cannot carry over between rounds, so trigger it within the round, accounting for the 5 second delay. Matchups vary: against Lych, skipping a skull avoids invulnerability phases, while against Bloonarius it is less useful because its spawns are easy to handle late on. In freeplay it is a key part of high-round setups, since only the Herald and Time Stop can slow BADs, and the two stack.

Is it worth it?

Yes, as a support Paragon. At $300,000 it is mid-priced, and its debuff and freezes often add more total damage than a damage Paragon would. Do not buy it as your only damage source, because its own damage is not its strength.