It’s getting frosty in here… shoots rays of frost that freeze enemies, even permanently, and slows down any enemy in its chilling aura. Even bosses can be stalled!
The Blizzard Trooper is an evolved tower and the evolution of the Freezer. It can be unlocked by levelling up the Freezer with the necessary experience or skipping via paying 599.
At earlier levels, the Blizzard Trooper fires in bursts and cools down after firing a few shots. When attacking, enemies will receive a chill effect, slowing them down by a certain percentage varying based on the tower’s level. At Level 2+, if the chill percentage goes over the max chill value, the hit enemy will be briefly frozen, unless they are freeze immune. Freezing has a global cooldown of 3 seconds across all Blizzard Troopers. Level 2 also unlocks defence melting. At Level 3+, the Blizzard Trooper unlocks the Frosty Whirlwind, a passive ability that creates a small snowstorm, slowing enemies within a small radius. Freeze immune enemies are 80% resistant to this and the Blizzard Trooper’s primary attacks’ stalls overrides the Frosty Whirlwind’s stalls.
At later levels, the Blizzard Trooper will split paths, both with different gimmicks unlocked at Level 6 and both unlocking full auto attacking at Level 4.
Top path attacks relatively slowly but deals more damage per attack and unlocks Permafrost, which permanently freezes non-boss enemies and slows freeze immune enemies by 90% upon reaching a certain amount of health based on exponential value, calculated as. The enemy also has to be hit a certain amount of times before being permanently frozen.
Bottom path deals more overall damage and fires quicker, being able to apply a minor chilling effect to bosses. Freeze immune bosses are 25% resistant to this effect.
The Blizzard Trooper has Lead Detection at all levels and Hidden Detection at Level 2+. It has a placement limit of 3.
Upgrades
Icicle Ammo
Level 1 • Evolution Level: 0 • Cost: $450
Damage: 2 -> 3
Range: 13 -> 15
Upgraded Suit
Level 2 • Evolution Level: 0 • Cost: $1,200
Damage: 3 -> 4
Firerate: 0.125 -> 0.1
Burst Count: 3 -> 4
Cooldown: 0.75 -> 0.55
Slow: 10% -> 12.5%
Max Slow: 20% -> 25%
Hidden Detection
Now freezes enemies when going above max chill.
Freeze Duration: 0.5
Now melts the defence of enemies. Can stack with other sources of defence melting.
Defence Melt: 5%
Max Defence Melt: 15%
Artificial Blizzards
Level 3 • Evolution Level: 0 • Cost: $3,500
Damage: 4 -> 7
Range: 15 -> 16.5
Burst Count: 4 -> 5
Freeze Duration: 0.5 -> 0.65
Defence Melt: 5% -> 7.5%
Now has the Frosty Whirlwind passive ability active, slowing down enemies in a small radius.
Radius: 6
Slowness: 30%
Hypothermic Rays
Level 4 • Evolution Level: 0 • Cost: $6,500
Damage: 4 -> 20
Firerate: 0.1 -> 0.45
Slow: 12.5% -> 15%
Max Slow: 25% -> 30%
Freeze Duration: 0.65 -> 0.75
Slow: 30% -> 40%
Radius: 6 -> 7
No longer fires in bursts, but in full auto mode instead.
Particle Stasis
Level 5 • Evolution Level: 5 • Cost: $10,000
Damage: 20 -> 28
Range: 15 -> 16
Slow: 15% -> 17.5%
Max Slow: 30% -> 35%
Freeze Duration: 0.75 -> 0.85
Slow: 40% -> 50%
Radius: 7 -> 8
Absolute Zero
Level 6 • Evolution Level: 15 • Cost: $16,500
Damage: 28 -> 35
Range: 16 -> 17
Firerate: 0.45 -> 0.4
Slow: 17.5% -> 20%
Max Slow: 35% -> 40%
Freeze Duration: 0.85 -> 1
Defence Melt: 7.5% -> 10%
Max Defence Melt: 15% -> 20%
Slow: 50% -> 60%
Radius: 8 -> 9
Can now freeze enemies permanently through the Permafrost attribute when an individual Blizzard Trooper has hit an enemy a set number of times.
Hit Threshold: 10
Exponential Value: 0.75
Frigid Minigun
Level 4 • Evolution Level: 0 • Cost: $8,250
Damage: 7 -> 9
Firerate: 0.1 -> 0.15
Max Slow: 25% -> 27.5%
Defence Melt: 7.5% -> 12.5%
Max Defence Melt: 15% -> 25%
Radius: 6 -> 6.5
No longer fires in bursts, but in full auto mode instead.
The Freezer is an excellent choice to deal with early waves, especially when multiple are placed down, due to its cost efficiency and low price.
Other towers should be used against higher health enemies like the Fallen Giant.
Later on, it does not have enough DPS to handle other enemies, due to their much higher health, but can still be used for stall.
The Freezer can be used to deal with lead and hidden enemies early on, which can be very useful in Hardcore Mode.
The Freezer plays a very similar role in early-game defense to Golden Scout, making Freezer a viable alternative to it.
The Freezer can be very effective at slowing down enemies, especially at Level 3+, as its burst count allows it to freeze an enemy in a single burst.
It can be very effective at slowing down fast average-sized enemies, like the Fallen Rusher or Bolt.
It is much less effective against bigger enemies like the Fallen Giant, as freeze time is reduced on larger enemies. It also cannot freeze or slowdown freeze immune enemies.
While it cannot freeze Bosses as they are immune to freeze by default, they are not immune to the chillness slowdown effect unless they have the Freeze Immunity. However, Bosses are slowed down by much less than regular enemies.
The Freezer's defense dropping ability can be useful for decreasing an enemy's defense, allowing your towers to deal more damage to it.
However, do note that as the defense dropping happens when an enemy is frozen or slowed down. Because of this, freeze immune enemies cannot have their defense dropped.
Do note that only a burn defense dropping tower and a poison defense dropping tower, like the Pyromancer or Toxic Gunner are required to do this. The Freezer can still be used to speed up the process.
However, the Freezer's defense drop does not stack with other freeze defense dropping sources, such as the Frost Blaster's and Cryomancer's defense drop.
Unlike some other towers that slow down enemies, the Freezer has no placement limit.
This means that, theoretically, you can easily stop a decent number of enemies from progressing for a long time.
It is recommended to have multiple Level 3-4 Freezers set to Random, as this allows them to slow down the highest amount of enemies.
The Freezer is especially useful when paired with towers that have long charge-up times or a high firerate.
One example would be pairing the Freezer with the Accelerator.
The Freezer can be quite useful when combined with towers that can deal damage to multiple enemies, such as the Demoman, Mortar or Rocketeer as it can cluster up a group of enemies. This allows these towers to damage more enemies within their fixed attack radius.
The Freezer'sFrost Grenade ability is quite effective against crowds of enemies, due to it being able to freeze five enemies at once and freezing them for longer than with its regular attack.
While it does freeze enemies for a longer amount of time, it is not recommended to use it on singular enemies as it has a hefty 15 second cooldown.
This can be somewhat mitigated by having multiple Level 4 Freezers.
This ability should not be used on enemies with Freeze Immunity, as it will do nothing on them, wasting the ability.
Trivia
When the Frezer was first released, it did not have any statistics for its upgrade descriptions. Instead, its upgrade description was "sans ice gun".
Before the MEGA Update, the Freezer had an ability called Ice Drop, which dropped ice on the first enemy within the Freezer's range. This froze all enemies within a 10 stud radius for 6 seconds (except major bosses and those immune to the Ice Drop). It used to cost $250 and had a 75 second cooldown.
This ability was unusable against enemies under a roof since the drop would never collide with them. This did not apply to Crystal Cave as that roof was non-collidable.
The Freezer'sIce Drop was able to freeze the Gold Titan and Molten Boss prior to the 15th of August 2019.
Before the Overhaul Update, the Freezer had another ability called Ice Age which froze all enemies around the Freezer in a 10-stud radius for about 3 seconds. It had a 30 second cooldown.
Additionally, the Freezer gained the Frost Mark at Level 3. It slowed enemies down by about 20% for a short duration after they had thawed.
Any enemy with the Frost Mark effect could not be frozen by the Freezer. This included the Frost Blaster's Frost Mark.
This was seemingly replaced by the Frost Grenade ability.
Prior to the MEGA Update, the Freezer fired in bursts, similar to the Soldier, except that it targeted different enemies with every shot within a burst.
If there was only one enemy in range of the Freezer, then it would target that enemy only once.
However, if an enemy had Basic Freeze Immunity, then the Freezer could target those enemy multiple times.
This burst functionality would later be re-added in the Krampus' Revenge Update, though it would target an enemy based on its targeting.
Prior to the Overhaul Update, the Freezer fired an explosive ice projectile which could freeze multiple enemies.
After the 24th of December 2019, the Freezer was the only explosive tower to have direct damage.
This meant that it could deal damage to a targeted enemy that had explosive immunity (like the Golden) but could not deal damage to other enemies with explosive immunity if they were not the intended target.
This meant that the total damage was effectively doubled for the targeted enemy, if they were caught in the projectile explosion.
This tower may be loosely based on the Ice Monkey from Bloons Tower Defense as well as the Cryo-Gunner from Tower Battles.
The original Level 1 upgrade name is a reference to R2DA'sFrost Knuckles.
Prior to the 5th of May 2023, the IcyTea skin decreased the Freezer's placement footprint. It was the only skin that could decrease the tower's placement footprint.
It was also one of the only skins in the game to change a tower in any other way than its appearance at the time, with the other being XR500Turret.
When the third act of the Lunar Overture Event released, the Freezer, alongside all other freezing towers, were able to permanently stop enemies from moving, making them ridiculously strong. This, however, was fixed few hours later.
599.
