The Helicopter is an MH-6M Little Bird on its base level that fires at enemies with its machine guns. It is the first aerial tower added to Tower Defense X, allowing it to not take damage from enemies like Predators and Ravages, while being able to avoid a majority of attacks from bosses. The Helicopter essentially has infinite range as it is able to traverse around the map, which allows it to deal with leaks and its range is not restricted by obstacles unlike most towers. It cannot be buffed by support towers, and upon death, the Helicopter Pilot will lose control and will do a few spins before crashing down to the ground and exploding, which deals moderate damage to both towers and zombies alike, with the damage increasing based on the Helicopter's level. Both paths have Stealth Detection, Stun Immunity, and can ignore resistances on their max levels.
Upgrades[]
The Helicopter's Top Path grants it the ability to move to the first enemy on the map, with later upgrades changing its Damage Type to Explosive. This path is great for dealing with hordes of enemies on the later waves of Expert Mode due to it being able to counter enemies with high explosive resistance like Resurrected Juggernauts.
The Helicopter's Bottom Path grants it the ability to passively unstealth any enemies within its radius, and it is also granted Pierce, allowing it to damage two enemies at once. It also gains Stealth, preventing bosses like Apex Predator from destroying it. The Bottom Path also moves faster when compared to its Top Path counterpart, making it more efficient for players to use the tower's abilities mid-game.
The Helicopter's Passive Stealth Reveal can make it act similarly to the C7 Drone ability. It is highly recommended to at least have one X-5 Helicopter available, as certain high damage towers in-game don't have built in stealth detection, making the Helicopter great support tower as well.
Unlike other towers, the Helicopter does not have a specific placement spot, meaning that space can be saved for more important towers if it is an issue for maps.
This is especially useful for Impossible maps since all of them have little space for towers.
Because of this, you can position many of them on top of a group of 5-X Farms, which can make it produce more cash and in turn give you enough to invest back into the Helicopter.
The Helicopter can be considered as a "lazy pick" (a tower that doesn't require much skill/monitoring to use effectively). This is especially shown on the top path with its Pursuit ability, with the tower not requiring any monitoring except upgrading it from time to time for it to reach the required damage output.
However, it is recommended to be aware of fast enemies, especially in Endless mode, as it cannot catch up to them as quickly as you want it to.
One of its abilities is to follow the player around, only stopping to attack enemies in its radius.
This makes it a great option for catching enemies that are leaking, especially slow moving enemies. Since the player walks slowly though, it may not always be possible to do this on long maps like Research Base.
It can also be used to prevent the Helicopter from dying to high AOE damage attacks such as Apex Predator's Core Collapse.
The Helicopter is very strong against flying enemies like Vile Seraphs due to its high damage and base level air detection, especially with the Anti-Air Missiles that the top path Helicopter possesses.
Compared to many other towers, the Helicopter has no environmental obstacle that can obstruct it, increasing its effectiveness and reliability.
Trivia[]
The Helicopter was previously called Attack Helo.
The Helicopter is the first aerial tower that has been added to Tower Defense X.
The Helicopter is the second tower that is currently able to ignore resistance on both paths, with the other tower being John.
The Helicopter is also the third tower to have different damage types for each path, after the XWM Turret and Patrol Boat.
The Helicopter is currently the only tower which has different damage types for each path while also ignoring resistance on both paths.
The Helicopter was revealed in a few shots of the 1st TDX Official Trailer in the background, despite it not revealing on how it works or attacks since it's only seen flying around in the air for the entire duration of the trailer.
Although the X-3 upgrade is called the AH-1Z Viper, the model more so resembles the AH-1W Super Cobra.