Until June 10, all players that open Bloons TD 6 will receive a free pack containing 2000 MM, 3x Super Monkey Storms, 3x Monkey Boosts, 3x Cash Drops, and 3x Insta Monkeys: tier 4 Dart Monkeys of each path. You will also get an exclusive avatar for your profile!
Then try the new quest: Protect The Yacht. A challenge quest on a special map, where you need to protect the yacht.
We are so excited to bring the success of BTD6 back to players and share revenue with players who are helping in making the game more awesomer!
The system allows players to gift player creators with animating Accolades that will follow their map or challenge wherever they are seen in game.
The initial 12 Accolades express a variety of positive reactions to inspiring content, such as Smart, Tricky, Beautiful, Fun, Masterpiece, and more!
At launch and for the foreseeable future we’ll be sharing 35% of the Accolade purchase price with the player creator, which means 50% if they are also a content creator and you are using their Creator Code. This is an industry leading share amount, which we aim to maintain; after the platform fees, Ninja Kiwi and Nexus.gg have the smallest shares of these purchases, as they truly are meant for the player creators.
Revenue share is available on platforms with IAP systems. We’ve tried to make Accolades receivable wherever possible, but we must restrict this to players who register with Nexus according to their terms and to players on non-subscription platforms. We are looking for solutions for subscription players but this will take significant time.
New Awesome
New Hero Skin, the Gentlemonkey Gadgeteer Geraldo! Geraldo was a challenge to find the time for a skin with so much more custom art required compared to our normal hero roster but he’s finally, fancily here
New Map, Castle Revenge! Longstanding fans of BTD will notice something familiar here. We love bringing our classic content forward and not just because we are nostalgic saps but because they have great play value. This one hails from both BTD5 and BTD Battles, but with a dynamic flourish that we hope gears you up to earn all of the badges!
New Quests
Multi-stage story based Bloonarius quest - prepare to be slimed!
Royal Tank Academy trial: discover Captain Churchill’s strengths and abilities
One Stop Pop Shop trial: discover Geraldo’s strengths and abilities
Phayze One Experiment Quest: if you enjoyed the Party Bloon Quest we have another infinite scaling Quest Boss to challenge you. This version includes unique round mechanics tied to the Boss.
New Trophy Store Items
Heroes: Corvus Owl pet - darkly adorbs!
Monkeys: Engineer Palbot pet - mechanically adorbs!
Bloons: Nightcap Bloons decal
Game & UI: CatEzili avatar, Boss Phayze avatar, Super Chill Banner
New CT Team Store items
Base Props: Junk Tower
Big Map Editor Additions!
Implemented a Removable/Interactable state for props through the props UI; this can be done by linking together the new Interactable Area to different special props, available from the Areas Menu (at the bottom) and the new Interactable prop menu with the Hammer icon
Added new category for Interactable props (look for the Hammer icon tab); these add animating flavor when Interactable layers are removed, but they can also be used as props (but with only limited animation)
New items: Responding to the many requests for cityscape elements, we took existing assets from maps like high finance alongside some new stuff to make building the city of your dreams a possibility! The construction supervisor just radioed in saying there are over 60 new construction props with which to build, plus new Paths, Stamps, and Terrain to match!
Game Changes / Additions
Map search is now also available for co-op lobby map selection
Map ‘Gizmos’ are now influenced by Challenge Editor 'removable cost rate'
This includes items such as: Workshop Conveyor Belt / Track Extensions, Dark Dungeons Statue & the Polyphemus Eye mechanic.
While we like giving players lots to choose from as early as possible, we’ve seen feedback that the current hero unlock flow can feel overwhelming with all Monkey Money unlockable heroes becoming available immediately at account level 10. To address this, we are spacing this period out with a few different groupings of Hero unlocks and holding back some of the more complex Heroes until account level 35.
Level 15 heroes: Churchill, Benjamin, Pat Fusty
Level 25 heroes: Sauda, Ezili, Etienne, Adora
Level 35 heroes: Psi, Brickell, Geraldo, Corvus
Added 'cash spent' to the Victory Screen summary
PC players request to have many niche things hotkeyed, but unfortunately these are often too niche for us to take up valuable real estate with limited keyboard space. To enable players to take this into their own hands we have added a new advanced section of default unbound hotkeys to cover more heavily situational use cases. None of these hotkeys will work by default, but if you find any to sound useful they can be manually bound in order to enable them. We are interested in hearing your feedback on more things that make sense to fit in this list.
Cycling upgrades menu in challenges now skips past towers that are banned (yay!)
Individual stages of Quests can now be replayed without resetting the entire Quest
Bug Fixes & General Changes
[Map Editor] Duplicate prop button no longer allows users to exceed the prop limit
[Map Editor] In progress maps at prop limit no longer allow +1 prop after loading saves
[Map Editor] Erasing stamps now correctly restores the ‘prop limit’ spent on them
[Map Editor] Resolved small graphical errors with asphalt path
Ranked boss and Battlemode boss challenge should now have the same starting cash
Resolved audio being triggered the background screens in some other places in the UI
Resolved an issue in co-op sometimes visually displaying other player towers as upgradable to you
Resolved some overlay display issues that occurs in some resolutions
Paragon cost slider no longer exceeds limits in least cash challenges
‘Retry Last Round’ should no longer be available on the first round of quests
When users ‘Confirm’ entry of a Creator Code, the game should now keep the dialog open until server communications have either confirmed or rejected the creator code
Resolved a number of softlocks that could occur
Resolved a number of UI issues
Swapped some frame based timings to real world timings so the game can run smoother on specific refresh rates that were not easily divisible by 20. Our lead coder assured me this sentence made sense.
Event bug fixes
Players should not be able to modify Odyssey crew after sharing to the Content Browser
Fixed inconsistency in the ‘Upgrade Restricted’ red stripe through tower upgrades
Map Specific Fixes
Resolved an issue where Blons could be played through co-op
Resolved a crash that could occur loading some saves on Glacial Trail
Lych should no longer drain the Frozen status on Glacial Trail - sheesh!
Tower Specific Fixes
Dart Monkey
4xx Juggernaut’s bonus damage to fortified targets now works across crosspaths
Ice Monkey
Resolved another arctic wind crash (polyphemus style)
Sniper Monkey
Resolved a case in which the Supply Drop ability could fail to trigger other Supply Drops
Monkey Sub
Resolved an issue where Retry Last Round removed the submerge option from Sub
Flanking Maneuvers MK now applies to the Sub Paragon
Submerge toggle now has cooldown art
Heli Pilot
MOAB Shove no longer ignores the children of the target it is shoving
Ninja Monkey
xx3 Flash Bomb should no longer fail to stun targets if damage is externally buffed
Druid
x5x Spirit of the Forest Track Vines now do not display over invincible/covered track sections (like Dark Castle trees, or on the new Castles Revenge map)
Hero Specific Fixes
Quincy
Resolved an issue with the Quincy Spec Ops Drop In placement animation
Geraldo
Resolved an issue where Geraldo’s subtowers would be immune to freeze on Glacial Trail after Geraldo is sold
Geraldo’s Lv16 Nail Mine should now save correctly
Geraldo should now restock inventory correctly when leveled immediately from 18 to 20
Corvus
Corvus - Optimisation Pass improving general performance
Platform Specific fixes
[Android] - Resolved a game freeze occurring on devices with a Exynos Chipset - this was affecting a number of players, so hope you are now back up and popping!
[PC] Alternate send round hotkey (Race Hotkey) now sends round in Sandbox
[PC] Mentioned in more detail above; new advanced hotkeys section
[Vision Pro] Resolved a number of various crash fixes around different parts of the game
Balance Changes
Tower Balance
Many towers in the game still have low tier Damage Over Time mechanics that have not been scaled at all or particularly well, so this update we went over some of these cases to bring forward more Damage Over Time use.
Dart Monkey
Players have found Spike-o-pult’s lower range to sometimes cause issues leading into Juggernaut due to very specific placement being required to aim the attack on this path and how that aiming changes along with increased range, while quite a niche problem we feel it’s fair enough to match the range across these upgrades to address this concern.
3xx Spike-o-pult range increased from 32 > 36.8
4xx Juggernaut range remains unchanged at 36.8
Bomb Shooter
In efforts to bring more player control the MOAB Assassin ability will now follow tower target priority to determine its targets, although note it will still never target non-moabs. As a mainly AoE path Fortification will always be a powerful weakness unless the bonus was to be far more than double effectiveness, we feel in hindsight it was never a good idea to try and counter that weakness on this path, instead we’re going to lean more into the raw cheap AoE damage output that this path specializes in and players can deal with fortification on their own with the leftover cash from this price reduction.
x4x MOAB Assassin ability follows target priority instead of Strong
xx5 Bomb Blitz price reduced from $35,000 > $28,000
xx5 Bomb Blitz attack cooldown reduced from 1.5s > 1
xx5 Bomb Blitz damage reduced from 6 > 3
xx5 Bomb Blitz no longer deals bonus damage to Fortified
Ice Monkey
Embrittlement is cheap and balanced by its limited range and rate making it difficult to apply to very many targets with reliable frequency, however Super Brittle is far more expensive but still faces these same struggles. Feels fair for the cost to increase its attack rate further.
5xx Super Brittle attack cooldown reduced from 2.16s > 1.8s
Sniper Monkey
Bouncing Bullets still feels decent enough at some points, however we feel it’s too difficult to save up into to justify the current power level. We’re shuffling prices to allow this upgrade to come online sooner while keeping the path at the same value for higher tiers as these still offer additional income support that they are balanced around. Additionally we think the T5 sniper changes for improving sniper farming QoL was a step in the right direction, however we want to take it further and work this way directly from the T4 Supply Drop.
x3x Bouncing Bullet price reduced from $2,800 > $2,400
x4x Supply Drop price increased from $7,200 > $7,600
x4x Supply Drop now triggers other supply drops when one is used
Monkey Sub
As currently nothing else ever happens with the main attack beyond T2 on the top path we want to give Energizer a little more power here to promote reason to un-submerge, although knowing how well this attack scales in terms of buffability we’re starting off with a careful amount to not take this too far.
5xx Energizer main dart attack damage increased from 1 > 5
502 Energizer airburst attack damage increased from 1 > 5
Monkey Buccaneer
General improvements made to higher tier DoT applications for Buccaneer. The pierce from bottom crosspath seems to be better after destroyer currently, so this also acts as some crosspath balancing for Flagship. Middle path buccaneer continues to attack with its initial 1 damage projectile that never gets upgraded but the Cannons are very much intended to be a ‘replacement’ upgrade to this main attack, so we are finally disabling that dart along with improving the damage of grapes for the T3 & T4 on this path so the lower tiers can save into Pirate Lord better.
420 Aircraft Carrier damage over time increased from 2 > 4
520 Carrier Flagship damage over time increased from 2 > 9
x3x Cannon Ship main dart attack disabled
x3x Cannon Ship Grape damage increased from 1 > 2
x4x Monkey Pirates Grape damage increased from 2 > 3
x4x Monkey Pirates damage over time increased from 2 > 4
024 Flavoured Trades damage over time increased from 2 > 4
025 Trade Empire damage over time increased from 2 > 9
Heli Pilot
The blowback rate of Special Poperations is being increased to reflect the previous changes upgrading downdraft to support chinook and bring up more lategame value in the support capabilities of this path. Comanche Commander’s value soared recently with buffs along with the recent Geraldo subtowers bugfix which solidified it as a strong lategame dps, and given the powerful synergies right now the current price feels far too low for what is now a solid pick for any map; we feel this may not be enough of a nerf but wish to hold off until v43 for further changes to be considered with this synergy.
x5x Special Poperations downdraft attack cooldown reduced from 0.15 > 0.075
xx5 Comanche Commander price increased from $32,000 > $35,000
Mortar Monkey
We’re feeling quite happy about the overall state of mortar compared to how it has fared in the past, however the Burny Stuff crosspath is still very hard to justify on middle mortar so along with other DoT attacks in this update we’re trying out a slight increase to damage over time across this path.
032 Heavy Shells burn damage over time increased from 1 > 2
042 Artillery Battery burn damage over time increased from 1 > 3
052 Pop & Awe burn damage over time increased from 1 > 5
Wizard Monkey
Wizard is feeling effective across the board with nice use cases across each path so there was hesitation about making changes. Nevertheless we felt there were important changes here with DoT in mind, so there’s now new scaling on the Dragon’s Breath attack improving damage over time on higher upgrades and a for-fun change to the projectile count assisting in spreading flames to many targets. We understand we are affecting current balance but it’s done in the name of fun and for Wizard fans.
x4x Dragon’s breath damage over time increased from 1 > 2
x4x Dragon’s breath attack now ‘fires’ (hehe) 2 projectiles
x4x Dragon’s breath attack pierce reduced from 4 > 3
We lowered the price of Tech Terrors to keep them ‘unchanged’ with Robo’s recent balancing, however in hindsight Robo is still too powerful and Tech Terrors themselves were already good enough that they really should’ve taken the hit along with Robo. Instead as they have risen in power even more, both of these upgrades are being properly nerfed now with a compensatory price buff to Anti-Bloon instead (hopefully not groundhogging to where Anti-Bloon becomes far too powerful and more changes are needed in v43)
x3x Robo Monkey price increased from $7,000 > $7,500
x4x Tech Terror no longer slightly increases attack speed
x4x Tech Terror price increased from $18,000 > $25,000
x5x Anti Bloon price reduced $90,000 > $80,000
Ninja Monkey
Bottom path Ninja never does anything with the main shuriken projectile past the xx1 upgrade leaving it inconsequential on higher tiers. Given that Flash Bombs can feel lacking without heavy support, we’re trying out a change that makes Flash Bomb Ninja scale better with attack speed and pierce as something of a combo-attacker. Overall, this feels pretty ‘right’ for ninjas and more importantly it’s cool and sometimes that’s what matters most.
xx3 Flash Bomb main Shuriken attack deals more to stunned Bloons +3
xx4 Sticky Bomb main Shuriken attack deals more to stickied targets +3
xx4 Sticky Bomb damage reduced from 500 > 450
xx5 Master Bomber main Shuriken attack deals more to stunned Bloons +9
xx5 Master Bomber main Shuriken attack deals more to stickied targets +9
Paragon main Shuriken attack deals more to stunned Bloons +15
Paragon main Shuriken attack deals more to stickied targets +15
Alchemist
As groups of Berserker Brew seem proportionally too good compared to upgrading to Stronger Stimulant in some cases, we are slightly shifting price down into T3, keeping the total price of Stronger Stimulant the same but adding up more if choosing to spam T3 Brews. Back to improving damage over time, Lead to Gold currently deals a large damage increase to Leads but only on the main impact of the attack. I’m sure you can see where we’re going with this.
3xx Berserker Brew price increased from $1,250 > $1,300
4xx Stronger Stimulant price reduced from $3,000 > $2,950
xx3 main attack damage over time now also deals bonus to Leads +9
Druid
Same as the sniper, group triggering these spam abilities that require no timing other than ‘as soon as possible once off cooldown’ feels like a good quality of life change for those wishing to play alternate farming methods.
x4x Jungle’s Bounty now triggers all available Jungle’s Bounty abilities when one is used
Banana Farm
Banana Central’s current level of buffability for a single tower makes it quite exceptional of a cash producer right now so it is increasing in cost. Players have made it clear that for Boss Events the current cooldown on IMF Loan regularly puts it into a position where timing is frustratingly tight in order to maximize profits when farming with banks, so we’ve agreed to loosen up on this cooldown to help with this issue. Finally, the Banana Salvage crosspath is also being increased in cost to reflect the current huge value granted to it with sellback metas where it is used.
5xx Banana Central price increased from $100,000 > $115,000
x4x IMF Loan cooldown reduced from 90 > 85s
xx2 Banana Salvage cost increased $200 > $400
xx3 Marketplace cost reduced from $2,900 > $2,700
Beast Handler
When first creating Beast Handler we balanced the T1-3 upgrade costs with a goal of creating a decision point between spending free playable space to save on cash or spending more cash to save on playable space. However in practice though some people have come on board with spending their playable space as a resource for more power; actual interest is much more divided between maximizing cost efficiency of these merges or simply using different towers. Given that spam of lower tier handlers already comes with the advantage of allowing them to be repositioned over a larger area, we’re changing our approach with a full cost rebalance across most T1-3 upgrades for exactly equal cost per point of merged beast power, instead leaving the nuance around understanding higher value merges & footprint advantage to depend more on discounts.
1xx Piranha price increased from $160 > $170
2xx Barracuda price reduced from $875 > $850
3xx Great White Shark price reduced from $2,950 > $2,075
x2x Adasaurus price reduced from $945 > $890
x3x Velociraptor price reduced from $2,600 > $2,170
xx1 Gyrfalcon price increased from $190 > $210
xx2 Horned Owl price reduced from $960 > $940
xx3 Golden Eagle moab penalty increased from 29 > 44
xx3 Golden Eagle damage reduced 2 > 1
xx3 Golden Eagle damage range reduced 4 > 2
xx4 Condor damage remains 2
xx4 Condor damage range remains 4
Hero Balance
Quincy
Quincy’s Storm of Arrows feels a little more like a downpour of wet pool noodles once Super Ceramics & especially their Fortified variants come around. However instead of making a drowning Quincy skin to pair with Lifegurd Brickell we are granting a large bonus to Ceramic Damage for the ability around the point you’ll need to deal with these.
Lv18 Storm of Arrows deals bonus damage to Ceramics +18
Lv20 Storm of Arrows deals bonus damage to Ceramics +24
Gwendolin
Looking back over her kit, we noticed that we’ve never improved the actual attack itself for Gwen’s Heat it Up. Allowing her to be juiced up with high attack speed in order to spam these supercharged bursts of damage sounds fun and cool, so while noting that this will also increase the uptime of her buff we’re removing the limiter on her Heat it Up rate and pumping up its damage tenfold.
Lv4 Heat it Up now has pierce of 100
Gwen’s attack rate levels (Lv12, 15, 18) no longer reduce Heat it Up frequency
Lv12 Heat it Up damage increased from 3 > 10
Lv15 Heat it Up damage increased from 3 > 20
Lv18 Heat it Up damage increased from 3 > 30
Obyn Greenfoot
Playing on ‘growth’ with his nature theme we’re allowing Obyn to sustain a long-lasting army of Brambles across multiple rounds, and we are doubling Obyn’s buff to Jungle Druid range to hopefully make it significant enough to enable druids much more power for a mid-late farming setup.
Lv3 Brambles cooldown reduced from 35 > 30
Lv3 Brambles round duration increased from 1 > 5
Lv5 Range buff for x3x druids increased from 20% > 40%
Benjamin
Benjamin’s value as a farming hero is majorly tied to how much more efficient he is at Lv1 than base farms and at a lower cost, whereas his higher levels of cash generation are quite inconsequential. Given this along with his early game snowball being a general balance concern, we're lowering the base cash generation to not be so overwhelming but also pumping up cash generation into his higher levels so he brings a lot more to the table later.
Lv1 cash generation reduced from $100 > $80
Lv2 cash generation reduced from $150 > $120
Lv8 cash generation remains unchanged at $250
Lv11 cash generation increased from $300 > $1,000
Lv15 cash generation increased from $500 > $2,500
Lv17 cash generation increased from $800 > $5,000
Ezili
Ezili has a good anti-camo build, however as her totem cant be used in CHIMPS and her main attack never upgrades to de-camo DDTs this means she is never able to de-camo DDTs when playing in CHIMPS even though her totem easily counters them in the base game. While we don’t have any concerns with some heroes being relegated more as ‘non-chimps’ heroes, we felt no reason not to solve this simple issue by allowing her main attack to upgrade to counter DDTs as well.
Lv16 Main attack can now de-camo DDTs
Corvus
Haste is a combo-only spell with little value on its own without buffing other spells - so we’re making it much cheaper to realistically combo more often without being such a large mana drain. Storm is a little too effective both at AoE cleanup and also single target, so the rate is being reduced slightly
Lv3 Haste cost reduced from 75 > 50
Lv8 Storm attack cooldown increased from 0.1 > 0.12
Higher levels of Corvus feel they have far too much mana which leads to difficult to maintain and less interesting spam of spells, so we’re lowering the range in which Spiritual Balance grants bonus mana recovery
Lv8 Corvus mana gain curve decay start point 40% > 25%
Lv8 Corvus mana gain curve decay end point 80% > 65%
The cycle of Recovery into Nourishment over and over to maximize XP earnings while never having corvus attack ruins the fun of actually playing this hero, so we’re ending this.
Recovery spell no longer applies cooldown reduction to Nourishment
We wanted to avoid passive stall mana gain with Corvus initially, however in order to grant a little bit more leeway for co-op splits or general bad placement, we are allowing Corvus to passively generate a little mana over time while Bloons are spawning but reducing the mana gain from popping Haunted Bloons
Lv1 Haunt mana gain per layer reduced from 8 > 5
Lv1 Corvus passively recovers 1mana /s so long as Bloons are spawning
Relic Knowledge Balance
We’ve included slight tweaks for a few relic knowledge. Many of these relics are having slight number increases as they seem to have low value across all tile types (relics with low usage only on some tile types have not received changes as they still have value in niche cases), Restoration maximum barrier size is being reduced slightly as it too effectively acts as a complete camo counter in many cases while also providing benefits against non-camo Bloons.
Hero Boost: Hero XP multiplier increased from 15% > 20%
Broken Heart: Bonus damage to Regrow increased from 1 > 2
Going the Distance: Range bonus increased from 20% > 30%
Fortifried: Bonus damage to fortified increased from 1 > 2
Restoration: Maximum barrier reduced from 200 > 150
We want to do more with relics in the future, though these can be trickier to do much balance with without adding additional functionality as most of them only modify a single variable, but feedback here is appreciated.
If you’ve made it this far we just wanted to mention that the issues mentioned at the top of the bug fixes allowing players to exceed the prop limit didn’t actually allow you to submit the map afterwards, so hope no one read through that then tried to submit some crazy map before updating!
Looking Forward
We’ve deepened team discussions about all of the topics raised in the Update 41 notes, and we’re so pleased to make player revenue sharing a reality this early in the year. As always, we’ll be looking for your feedback on the player creator system, and we’ll be thinking about improvements in platform coverage and any specific additions needed to better support the Game Editor and mods system later in the year. We continue to enjoy the experimental and story-related elements of the Quests system, and it’s generating more room for great ideas all across the team to quickly turn into live gameplay. We have one surprise that will happen before Update 43, so we’ll talk about that once live, and until then here is the latest news on key content that we’ve already mentioned.
PlayStation: We were on track for early April launch but did have issues to fix from our submission, so we are back in the pipe and very close to launch. Stay tuned to Ninja Kiwi social feeds, where we’ll post the date as soon as that is locked in.
Console Updates: We are shifting our priorities as stated in Update 41, as we have heard loud and clear from Xbox players that they are frustrated to be so far behind the other platforms. Once PlayStation is out, our next priority will be a content update for Xbox and PlayStation, focusing on maps, Heroes, and other content that can come forward without substantial input reworks (meaning substantially different UI and controls like Contested Territory, Corvus’ spellbook, and more complicated interactive maps like Polyphemus). We are going to try to bring as much forward as possible, but we will err on the side of leaving a few more complicated elements out of the update in favor of getting a huge chunk of content in the hands of very patient Console supporters. We are still keen to get Switch into development after this content update.
Jetpack Hero is planned for Update 43 and Mermonkey Tower for Update 44. These are both in progress and looking to add super fun play mechanics - fitting well with the other Monkeys but also standing out as quite unique.
Boss Rush Team Event is in development for Update 43 but there is a heap of backend to all multiplayer and Team related systems, so we will shift this back if needed.
Game Editor: Not much to report on this other than we are further defining the core architecture of the system to be future proof, and we’ve had initial conversations with existing BTD6 modders and we’re further defining the scope of the initial launch this month, so stay tuned on this.
Enjoy the update and thanks as always for your reactions, thoughts, and feedback. We’re always looking to blend our instincts and ideas with the fantastic feedback we’ve come to expect (and massively respect) from our more awesomer community.
Starting the new year with a Paragon was a push for the team, especially alongside the launch of BTD6+ on Vision Pro, but we’re really happy with how the versatility has turned out, as the Monkey Sub Paragon provides assistance in different ways depending on its current form.
Unsubmerged the Sub utilizes powerful missile attacks, launching powerful pre-emptive AoE missiles at every target to spawn, while unloading a barrage of airburst rockets at anything it, or any of your other towers, can see. Advanced Intel insanity is super fun.
While Submerged the sub attacks with a radiation aura that obliterates a huge number of smaller targets with ease, but the main uses in this form are the massive damage and pierce buffs to all Heroes & other Subs within radius. Really hoping to encourage some fun placement synergies here.
At all times Submerged or not, the Final Strike ability can be called on to unleash devastation. That really should be capital “D” Devastation.
New Map, Sulphur Springs
We’ve had fun roundabout maps in BTD5 and we harken to that around a different visual theme than usual and effort behind specific placement locations.
New Quests
Pat Fusty Hero Test
Psi Hero Test
MOAB Madness - still great and even better
New Trophy Store Items
Heroes: Benjamin pet - it’s a mouse of course! Yes, we couldn’t resist.
Bloons: MOAB Bee skin, because, well, bees
Game & UI: Dread Rising avatar (Dreadbloon), Year of the Wood Dragon profile banner
Limited Time only
Powers: Pontoon Chocolate Bar
Avatar: Flower Friends Corvus
New CT Team Store items
Base Props: Wizard Apprentice prop
Team Banners: Monkey Squad banner
Icons: Year of the Dragon icon, Cheeping Chick icon
Frames: Year of the Dragon frame, Bees N’ Flowers frame
Game Changes / Additions
Much requested, Apopalypse Mode now grants end of round cash. We’ve agreed that start strategies feel too limited, especially on harder maps, so this is intended to bring more variety back to the mode.
As always intended, Boss Challenge mode now allows for co-op, with separate score tracking for all player counts
Looking back and reviewing CHIMPS in the game in general over the past few years we feel that there are 2 main standout problems. The first is that CHIMPS is unapproachable for new players and a very difficult gameplay loop to initially get excited about and break into, and the second is that the majority of the people who are invested in this gameplay loop already don’t play it within the base game most of the time since the Challenge Editor makes it more approachable. Given this we have made the following changes:
CHIMPS mode now allows for a 'Retry Last Round' option, upon defeat allowing players to reload the previous round before the defeat occurred
This is essentially a ‘home + reload save’ rather than a ‘Continue’ and so choosing to retry at any point will invalidate the run for any Black Medal purposes, but still grants the Red Medal on completion.
It is important to us that CHIMPS remains a completely fair free to play pinnacle endgame experience, so this option will remain free to use just like in custom challenge creation
Maps Menu Search Functionality
Players can now search within the maps menu to more easily track down the ones they are looking for, map names are also localized to the current language the player has set
Along with this a number of QoL terms can be used for filtering this search
Commands start with ‘/’, and return results both in English and the language currently set if different from English
Searching by map name does not require a full exact match but commands do
/Events shows all maps with any events (Teams, Golden Bloon, Collection)
/ShowIncomplete or /NoMedals shows maps that are not Gold/Black Bordered
/Show /AllMedals shows maps with all medals (Gold or Black Border)
/Black, /Gold, /Silver, /Bronze shows maps with those borders
Map Editor
Candyfalls Pack containing extra special items, unlockable with Monkey Money or direct IAP
Various new free spring themed assets & additions
New asset tags for Candy (Biome), Spring (Biome), Easter (Seasonal)
Multi-stage quests now allow for any stage to be replayed without resetting the quest
Arabic Language
By popular request and with any number of technical and display issues for right to left reading script, Arabic is finally in the game!
Looking Forward
So happy to be starting the year with a new Paragon, with our launch ready version of BTD6+ on Vision Pro, and with our PlayStation version ready to submit! January has been incredibly busy and tactical, but we did take important time out for planning the year ahead. We can’t talk about everything quite yet, as we need to make sure the full team has reviewed the calendar first but here are a few of the things that we’re super excited to bring to the game! Cheers to an awesome 2024 ahead, and thanks in advance for your feedback!
Console: PlayStation is heading into submission very soon. We don’t have a release date to announce yet so keep an eye on our official socials for news. PlayStation will launch as a PS4 game so it will be playable on both PS4 and PS5. Switch development will start immediately and we’ll keep you updated on status and timeline. Once Switch is in submission we’ll dig into the content updates that we all want to see on all 3 console platforms.
Player Creator Systems: As mentioned in December, we have been working on systems to help highlight the incredible content players are creating for Maps, Challenges, and Odysseys. We are framing this around Accolades - visual tags that other players can purchase as IAPs to express their praise for any given curation. There will be ~10 of these at launch, each of them expressing support for the visuals, hard work, intelligence, fun, and challenge of player creations. The IAP structure is central to the revenue share back to the player creators, as a portion of that IAP will be paid out via their Nexus.gg account. Along with the Accolades and rev share, we’ll also be featuring player creations in new ways to try to share the spotlight as broadly as possible amongst creations the community is enjoying. We’re intending this for update 42, so wish us luck as there is a lot of backend and UI to these systems!
New Hero: We’re not ready to reveal the name just yet, but still in the first half of the year we’re planning a Jet Pack Hero. Think multiple mobility upgrades, switching between two weapon types, more bouncy projectiles because they are such fun, and cool build synergies with other flying Monkeys.
New Monkey Tower: By northern hemisphere mid summer we’re hoping to add an all new Monkey Tower to the game! New Towers with all of their crosspaths and combinations with other Towers takes significant iteration, so we’ve been working with this concept for a non-military water unit for a long time. Every time we’d see fan art in this direction, we’d bite our tongues, but, yes, from the depths of Monklantis…
Teams Event: Bosses are tough, and many players haven’t successfully taken them on or even tried. Teaming up is the classic way to take down bosses, but in co-op the extra hands are balanced by the split of XP. As a proper Teams event, we’re planning a Boss Rush event where aggregate play against the Boss is the way to succeed.
Game Editor: Building from the framework of the Map Editor and working with existing modders of BTD6, we hope to deliver in the last quarter of the year a full functional Game Editor with the ability on all platforms to changes stats, damage types, and projectiles of Monkeys, have more choice with roundsets, and have sandbox tools that allow the creation of new game modes like progressive gun-game or rogue-like upgrade choices to allow for completely new game types. We’re hoping to have further mod support enabled for PC with Steam Workshop integration, and to keep building from there!
More more!: Heaps more we want to do and have penciled in, so that’s where more planning is needed and we don’t want to share that whole list and disappoint ourselves and you. But rest assured we are working on Bosses and Paragons, new Quests with more experiments and lore, Hero Skins, new Maps, hoping to get the Bloonspedia in to help new players, and framing out periodic Legends content drops for players looking for even more challenge.
In addition to this being the first update of the year, this is technically our 40th update, since we started out with version 1 at launch! To celebrate this milestone, we have a few fun things planned for the community and wanted to let you all know to keep an eye out. Firstly, we will be planning to run a poll over the next few weeks to pick what tower plushie you would like to see from three options and there may be a chance for some giveaways over on our Twitter/X account but we will have more to share once the poll is up. Secondly, we will be doing a collection event with increased rewards which will be live with the update so get to collecting!
We hope some or most of that excites you about what adventures the Monkeys will get up to and we hope this update 41 starts your BTD year off well! Thanks so much for playing and we look forward to your feedback on our socials.
Bloons TD 6 - Update Notes! Version 40.0
Update: Bloons TD 6 v40.0 - Update Notes!
Available now for iOS, Android & Steam please restart your storefront or be patient if it does not appear for you, these updates can take some time to be rolled out to every region due to how the storefronts are set up.
Key New Features
Events Menu Overhaul
Our events menu was getting longer and longer, and perhaps a little too reminiscent of our Flash gaming roots. We’ve moved everything over to a new and improved events menu with all active items visible at a glance and estimated countdowns for upcoming events.
Co-op daily challenges will now last multiple days up until the next challenge cycles around for more time to complete and less downtime between them.
Boss Challenge
With more Bosses came more downtime between each Boss appearance. To remedy that and to massively extend the ability to practice different strats and maps, we’re opening up a persistent Boss Challenge system!
Any Boss Bloons not currently in an active event can now be challenged at any time on a map of your choice, even tougher maps where we won’t generally run Events.
Boss Challenge can be accessed from the new Events menu, or via the Boss Menu.
Along with this, we’ve ensured that every map now has a designated Boss Spawn track so that there is no randomness to where they will come from.
New Awesome
New Hero: Corvus the Spirit Walker
After months of work developing the complicated balance and technical aspects of a Hero with so many combinable elements, we are so happy to confirm that Corvus will indeed be in Update 40! We’ve seen the community speculation about whether we’d get Corvus released this year, and while it wasn’t easy, not only did the team rally but we’ve had significant time to balance and bugfix. We hope you enjoy playing this very unique Hero!
Corvus fights alongside his lovable Spirit companion, which will attack Bloons anywhere on the map following his target priority. Corvus harvests Mana from Bloons and uses this to channel powerful energies through his Spirit companion to perform many powerful attacks from his spellbook (which we think isn’t in any way cursed or possibly sentient)
Corvus himself is able to debuff a single Bloon at a time with his Haunt, which removes regrow and purple properties and enables increased energy damage. When destroyed, Haunted targets are absorbed as Mana and then explode, dealing strong area damage.
Because much of Corvus’ power comes from Spells, proximity to Bloons for Haunting and Mana generation is essential, and we think it suits Corvus’ personality to be near the frontline, too. At Level 7, Corvus gains the ability to Spirit Walk mapwide, which allows repositioning if other Monkeys start pop stealing too much.
Corvus can be unlocked for 7000 Monkey Money. To date he is the most complicated and in-depth Hero in BTD6 and as noted has taken months of work and revision. Given this and the high level of strategic understanding involved in playing with him, we feel the higher price both reflects this additional development effort and will defer the unlock until players have additional experience to better understand how and when to use his powers.
This same price point reasoning also applies to Geraldo, and we plan to raise Geraldo up to this 7000 Monkey Money unlock as well. We don’t want to blindside anyone with this change, however, and won’t be changing the unlock price until Update 41. Anyone who doesn’t have Geraldo unlocked, you have the Holiday season to unlock him at the current rate.
We also want to note after the last few fairly complicated towers between Geraldo, Beast Handler, Magus & now Corvus we don’t intend to continue a trend of more and more complex designs. We aim to have a healthy mix of simple and complicated new content, and our next planned Hero (who will drop in midway through next year) will step back to a ‘less is more’ design aimed to be unique in its own way but simpler to pick up and with the lower 5000 Monkey Money unlock.
New Expert Map: Glacial Trail
We hope you will find this map to be a unique play experience compared to other Expert maps, as Glacial Trail was designed with the goal of bringing in another fun single lane track to the Expert category.
Glacial Trail features very limited space near to the track, so be very careful and prepare your Mortars and Helis! Warning: May be a little too cold for many Monkeys, so dress warmly!
New Quests
We put a lot of work into Quests to give lots to play over the holidays, some instructional and some quite challenging. Please don’t expect this many new Quests every update - this is our Christmas gift!
Striker Instruction: Discover Striker Jones’ strengths and abilities
New Dart Just Dropped: Multi-stage tale of two Dartling Gunners
A Guide to the Book of Spirits: Discover Corvus’ strengths and abilities
Under a new ‘Experiments’ tab in the Quests section, we have some special feeling missions to play around with
Fast Upgrades: Very special quest returning from BTD5; survive 6 special action packed rounds on Dark Path with all towers upgrading once for free after each round!
Intense Bloon Rounds: 30 rounds of concentrated Bloon attack
New Achievements
Also a good bunch of new Achievements to chase over the holidays!
Heavy Investment: Invest EXACTLY $401,626 extra when creating any paragon (or more, that’s also fine)
25 to Life: Defeat 5 unique bosses at Tier 5 (in either Boss Events or Boss Challenge mode) - unlocks the hilarious 'Tiny Boss Bloons' Extras option, which can be toggled via the Main Menu Settings
Community Connoisseur: Win 100 different community submissions
Life Experience: Earn 5,368,709 experience for any tower
New Trophy Store Items
Monkeys: Druid Capybara pet, awwwww!
Bloons: Pirate Turtle ZOMG skin
Game & UI: Pinata cash drop skin, Sushi Ben avatar, Mortar Shot avatar, Cyberdart Graffiti banner, Winter is Coming Tonk Mix track
New Team Store items
Share a bit of Christmas cheer as your Team ruthlessly dominates all tiles!
Flying Props: Christmas Cardinal flying prop
Team Banners: Hero Christmas banner
Icons: Holly Bell emblem
Frames: Christmas Bow frame
Game Changes / Additions
Map Editor
Over 80 more items available for use in the Map Editor, including a new Dark Terrain/Area (so you don’t have to spam quite so many shadows now) and an entire Winter collection featuring tons of new winter Terrain, Areas, Effects, Paths, Stamps, and Props available for everyone to use!
New Xmas Pack containing 12 extra special seasonal items that can be unlocked with Monkey Money or via direct IAP
Added New prop tags for Christmas & Interactable
Sandbox sending Bloons and placing towers features can now be accessed during map editing
Enabled more base game props for use in map editor
Added a ‘Sharp Corners’ toggle for all Areas (so those nice circles you pull out will swap to a square if you wish)
New tag for interactable props to distinguish them (e.g. Bat, Pigeons)
Added desktop hotkey support for ‘Sell’ hotkey to delete selected props and CTRL+C to duplicate a selected prop
Implemented a slider to raise/lower props. Fair warning, due to how 3D renders in the game this may not appear exactly how you would expect, but we believe people will find good uses for this.
Co-op hosts will now be able to invite friends directly from the co-op lobby. So much better, thanks for continuing to ask for this!
Pasting entire share code URLs into search fields should now smartly trim the URL and search only for the code
Game icon changing back to the OG Dart Monkey. Thank you for holding down most of 2023, Beast Handler icon!
Bug Fixes & General Changes
Hero quests are no longer accessible from the coop, bosses, races or CT menus
Resolved a number of cases in which the game would display black backgrounds
Resolved an issue that could prevent Bloons Leaked stat from recording
Resolved a crash that could occur on loading on networks with limited internet access
Resolved an issue where towers when obtaining new abilities would not consistently order them correctly in the UI
Polyphemus no longer spawns extra Pre-game Prep spikes
Event bug fixes
Phayze’s Camo Debuff Icon should no longer scale in size with effects setting scale
CT Resolved an issue with the El Dorado relic displaying incorrect reward bonuses
Map Editor fixes
Resolved a case in which Pat Fusty would not correctly submerge in custom map water terrain
Opening a map share code should correctly launch the game & navigate to the map
Dropdown menus in map editor should no longer display on top of 'pause' menu
Added more Helper Popups to Map Editor
Entering eraser mode will now un-hide stamps layer
All custom maps will now follow ‘Intermediate’ difficulty
Players can no longer still search up and find their own deleted maps for a short time after deleting them
Tower Specific Fixes
Monkey Buccaneer
Resolved a build order bug that could prevent flagship from applying it’s buff to waterbound Sun Temples
Engineer
Engineer 410 should no longer 'Pin' Bloons after loading a save
Beast Handler
Movement icons now match other Tower Special buttons
Hero Specific Fixes
Benjamin
Benjamin's voice lines for MOAB-Class Bloons being destroyed should play again
Pat Fusty
Resolved an issue with Pat Fusty's Level 10 grab targeting when it shouldn't be able to
Geraldo
Lv15 Sharpening Stone should no longer last forever after loading a save
Spirit Walker
Resolved
Platform Specific fixes
Android: Resolved an error occurring for players trying to log in with Google Play.
Balance Changes
Tower Balance
Dart Monkey
We bumped up the ceramic a lot along with the paragon rework to highlight Juggernaut path and keep something of a Dreadbloon niche due to the multiple tower category requirement, upon review of this in practice we want to start off bumping that amount up even more.
Paragon bonus damage to ceramic increased from 75 > 90
Bomb Shooter
Slight price reduction to Really Big Bombs, it is meant to be a stepping stone upgrade into Bloon Impact but neither of these upgrades are standout right now. A while ago Frag Bombs was reworked to give Bomb normal type damage however we were not happy with the results of that change in the end, we didn’t want to go back and remove that again without giving back something nice in return so it has taken a while but now we have decided to go ahead with changing that back along with swapping out Recursive fortified damage for raw damage which we hope also improves crosspathing as the damage crosspath isn’t such a large increase over the base damage anymore.
3xx Really Big Bombs price reduced from $1200 > $1100
xx2 Frag Bombs no longer changes damage type of explosions
5xx Bloon Crush remains damage type Normal
xx4 Recursive Cluster Fortified Damage reduced from 1 > 0
xx4 Recursive Cluster Damage increased from 1 > 2
xx5 Bomb Blitz damage increased from 5 > 6
Ice Monkey
We want to try out allowing the Ice Shards sub-projectile to benefit from all sources of damage buff, as currently this path gets nice support use sometimes but can’t do much on its own in the base game - along with this the T5 Ice Shards are also generally being improved. Arctic Wind it feels was heavily underrated before it’s large slow aura increase, with so many players now working out how good it is and how much better an upgrade it leads into than any similar options we feel this aura needs to be reduced again although it will remain the same at T5.
3xx Ice Shards shard damage is now uncapped allowing for buffs
5xx Super Brittle ice shards damage increased from 2 > 5
5xx Super Brittle number of ice shards increased from 3 > 6
Full auto sniper's 024 crosspath sees a lot of fun/meme use, but not so much more than that. We’re hoping that applying the MOAB bonus that it gains to the shrapnel as well will help improve non-meme use here. (And looking over my notes, it seems this was meant to be included a while ago…But better late than never!)
024 Full Auto Rifle shrapnel gains bonus damage against MOABs 0 > 1
Monkey Buccaneer
Aircraft Carrier is just a little expensive for what it offers over staying at T3, and Flagship high-end strategic value recently became a little harder due to synergies being price nerfed, so we’re doing some small cost cutting between the two of these upgrades mainly to relieve that loss for the T5 slightly but also help T4.
4xx Aircraft Carrier price reduced from $7200 > $6900
5xx Carrier Flagship price reduced from $25,000 > $24,500
Monkey Ace
The homing for Neva-miss darts can cause darts to expire just before they are able to loop around and hit their target, which is unsatisfying to see – we like the pattern this attacks with though so allowing a little extra distance before expiration should mostly solve this.
xx3 Neva-miss projectile distance increased from 450 > 600
Mortar Monkey
We’re ecstatic for all the Mortar love after the recent rework, however the two bonuses we left unchanged with the rework in order to leave a buff are… Probably a biiit much now and this has been far too significant an improvement, easily slotting Pop and Awe into an extremely high tier position over the past update. We don’t want to take this away, but are nipping those bonuses back slightly so it doesn't feel broken for our entire holiday break.
x5x Pop and Awe BAD/Boss damage bonus reduced from 10 > 6
x5x Pop and Awe damage bonus to stunned reduced from 10 > 8
Super Monkey
We missed this for a while, but it seems that Robo for how cheap and versatile it currently is just stands out a little much across many stages of gameplay. Shifting up a little pierce to tech terror here to tone it down slightly for now.
030 Robo Monkey pierce reduced from 7 > 6
040 Tech Terror pierce remains 9
Ninja Monkey
For an early game Distraction improvement the consistency of blowbacks is being averaged out more with increased minimum distance but reduced maximum, in many cases there would not actually be 250 units of track length in front of defenses to be blown back across anyway so the overall average distance is slightly lower. More at the mid to endgame we are also weakening distraction distance against Ceramics specifically as by this point Ninja have stacked so much speed and projectiles the consistency doesn’t matter anymore. Finally, distraction values for secondary projectiles are being modified, as Distraction chance as it has existed was never balanced around more than the main attack
010 Distraction blowback range normalized (all attacks): 10-250 units > 100-150 units
010 Distraction distance applies to Ceramics at 0.5x
011 Distraction chance of caltrops reduced from 15% > 10%
013 Flash Bomb distraction chance of flash bomb increased from 15% > 30%
Alchemist
Currently 031 is the only crosspath that realistically does anything for Unstable Concoction.
We enjoyed this change a lot, but it unfortunately seems that to a lot of players this added more frustration than intended. We will look for a better way of accomplishing what we wanted to do here, but until then it doesn't really feel worth keeping the automatic targeting swap when players who do want it could also just change targeting themselves before or after buying the upgrade, and those who don’t want it have no workaround.
x3x Druid of the Jungle no longer swaps to Strong target prio automatically
Banana Farm
The current power of xx5 Village combined with previous nerfs to Middle Farm have it currently feeling underappreciated for farm profits, some slight price adjustment.
x3x Monkey Bank cost reduced from 3800 > 3650
x4x IMF Loan cost reduced from $7500 > 7200
Spike Factory
Small spike pierce reduction for the Spiked Mines as it’s finally coming into a strong spot on its own. Similar to Mortar it’s great to see the fresh love for middle path Spike Factory, however as they are feeling exceptionally good now for the intended pure MOAB damage role we want to cut it back very slightly so it doesn’t stay quite so crazy over our holiday break.
4xx Spiked Mines spikes pierce reduced from 20 > 18
x5x Carpet of Spikes main attack damage reduced from 4 > 3
x5x Carpet of Spikes all is how it should be
Beast Handler
We feel Beast Handler balance is setting down nicely overall but it feels like the reposition cooldown increasing was far more impactful and unfun than intended, we still feel the initial delay was silly but are cutting it down again a little. Orca's knockback has the same duration as the T3 so although it does gain a little increased knockback amount already it's very random in what it hits much more expensive than the T3 so this knockback duration is being increased a little for base & merge. Max merged Golden Eagle gaining the ability to grab MOABs made sense at the time although the the pierce and penalties as they were at the time that meant it jumped up from grabbing no MOABs to suddenly 3 MOABs at a time which seemed too far, so the pierce penalty on MOABs is being increased at the T3 so that this reduces from 3 to 2 MOABs at a time.
Beast Handler reposition cooldown reduced from 5 > 3s
4xx Orca knockback duration increased from 0.2 > 0.3
4xx Orca knockback merge bonus increased from 0.2 > 0.3
xx3 Golden Eඞgle MOAB pierce penalty increased from 14 > 29
xx4 Giant Condor MOAB pierce penalty unchanged
Hero Balance
Ezili
We like Ezili as she is and don’t want to mess with her too much, but currently her level 19 does effectively nothing so we thought it would be nice at this level to shift a little of that MOAB bonus damage on the main attack into raw damage instead.
Ezili Lv19 main attack DoT increased from 3 > 6
Ezili Lv19 main attack DoT MOAB bonus reduced from 28 > 25
Admiral Brickell
We still want a little more out of Brickell’s single target Revolver attack as it’s the least exciting per of her arsenal so are decreasing the attack cooldown, however her mega mine ability also performs exceptionally well throughout all moab rounds so we want to slightly increase its final cooldown instead
Admiral Brickell Lv18 Mega Mine cooldown 40s > 45s
Geraldo
Gerry’s Fire functions in a unique way where it can inherit some self-buffing bonuses of the towers that it’s applied to, although a lot of people have pointed out that since Ninja Monkey always has Camo this means it’s the only non-hero tower that gains a Camo Detection but can never pass it on to the Gerry’s Fire as this doesn’t come from an upgrade. We were hesitant to buff this interaction while Geraldo was much more powerful and his synergy with Ninja was already good, but he’s cooled off enough now that we’re happy to try this out. Additionally with Gerry’s Fire one of our programmers was having some fun with it, and we liked what we saw, so that will also be a thing now.
Gerry’s Fire now inherits innate camo detection (Including Ninja Monkey, Sauda, Psi)
Gerry’s Fire follows the actual heli/ace through the air rather than the landing pad
Looking Forward
2023 wraps up with a big update and a huge year for the BTD6 team! Six updates including some pretty epic content like Beast Handler, Wizard Paragon, Quests, Phayze Boss, Map Editor, and now the Corvus Hero. We’d like to thank this awesome community for the constant play, feedback, support, and suggestions for how to keep making BTD6 better, and we are ourselves full of ideas for next year and beyond. We remain incredibly motivated by the possibilities, and we’ll have more details to share about 2024 in the Update 41 Looking Forward notes, after we’ve had a chance as a team to refresh our brainstorming, reflect over the holiday, and set ambitious yet achievable plans for next year. Until then here are some updates that we can broadly share:
Console News: PlayStation has taken significant additional work but is now amazingly close to submission for launch approval. That means it won’t be ready to launch by the end of the year, but we will release it as early next year as possible, playable on PS4 and PS5. Thank you to all of the support for the Xbox launch; between a solid release there and the many requests for Switch, we confirm that we will bring BTD6 to Switch next year. We can’t detail timing for that, as we have to balance Switch release with updating the Xbox and PlayStation versions to be more current, and we have technical planning to do before setting those priorities - both are super important to us!
Player Content Creators: The Challenges and Odysseys that have been made over the years test our skills and push us in our own thinking about these modes. The maps made since the Map Editor launched last update have absolutely blown our minds. There is incredible talent in our community and we are so thankful for all of the players who share their creativity and time and impressive fence pointillism. But thanks isn’t really enough - to show and share the value of your creativity, we are moving forward with our great partners at Nexus.gg on the player revenue sharing that we have mentioned in the past. Our goal is to have this live in the front half of next year - for players who are signed up to the program, we will be sharing a portion of in-app-purchases made while playing your content, including a mechanism to split that revenue share if a map maker and a challenge maker are different players. In order to make this meaningful to all player creators, at the same time we will introduce “tipping” IAPs, basically a “small thank you” and a “big thank you,” as a way for players to share their thanks with the player creators for any reason. While some player content is challenging and gives a reason for players to spend Monkey Monkey IAP for Continues or Powers, many creations are beautiful, clever, funny, whimsical, and any number of awesome creative things, and we think there needs to be an IAP (and some tags that go with it) that celebrates all of those other creative impulses. We hope you agree with this approach, and we’ll share more details on this program next year
Content: So much we want to do - continue to broaden and strengthen the range of content and challenge in all existing areas of the game, bring out a new Hero and a new Monkey Tower, add new content for Teams, and expand our player content creation to include modding starting late next year and continuing to expand from there. We continue to believe in expanding BTD6 to be bigger and better than ever as opposed to shifting the team to work on “BTD7” - we’re bringing all of the energy and creativity that we would have for a new game into BTD6 every day, so maybe the next time that “when’s the next BTD” question comes up in reddit or Discord, we can all feel like we’re already playing it.
From all of us at Ninja Kiwi, we hope you can sense the care and dedication and fun that we as a game team put into each update and each community interaction. We’re doing what we love, and that’s our holiday wish for all of you - to have lives as full of care and dedication and fun as possible, and that BTD6 and all of our games can be at least a small part of that. Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for an amazing and awesomer 2024!
Nominate Bloons TD 6 for Labor of Love!
The 2023 Steam Awards are here and we'd LOVE for you to nominate Bloons TD 6 for the Labor of Love category. Click above to nominate Bloons TD 6!
2023 has been huge for Bloons TD 6.
It began with the first update of the year, bringing a brand new, Bloon chomping tower to the game. The Beast Handler commands and controls powerful beasts that crush, scratch, carry, and chew up and spit out Bloons.
Players can unlock the Beast Handler with a special Quest. Quests are also new this year, and we've got 13 in the game, with another batch coming in update 40 and huge plans for where we can go with Quests.
Then, as if a new tower wasn't enough, map creation came to BTD6 with the Map Editor.
The Map Editor allows you to create custom maps with a huge selection of tools at your disposal. The creativity of the community, from day 1, literally (figuratively) blew our minds. It's astounding to think that this is just the beginning of the potential of the map editor. Check out the Trending and Most Liked maps in-game and keep an eye out for more showcases of awesome maps players have created.
We've had new Hero skins for Pat Fusty, Sauda, Etienne and Admiral Brickell. The Magus Perfectus, Wizard Paragon. New maps. Competitive and Casual modes for Contested Territories. New Boss rules (least tiers, least cash). A new boss, Phayze, the Reality Warper. Tonnes of new cosmetics. Plenty of balance changes, bug fixes and quality of life improvements... There's probably even more stuff I'm forgetting.
Thank you for loving this game as much as we do.
Geraldo, ZOMG, and Alchemist plushies - Available Now!
We have once again teamed up with Makeship to bring Bloons TD 6 to life (in plush form, of course).
Geraldo. With a plushie Genie Bottle, Gerry's Fire Hot Sauce and Jar of Pickles, stored in his voluminous backpack.
Jumbo ZOMG. Huge, green, and ready to snuggle!
Alchemist. With protective eye-wear and signature potion, ready to buff your plushie collection.
Available now for most (Still processing on Epic, Netflix, Amazon and Arcade no ETA yet) please restart your storefront or be patient if it does not appear for you, these updates can take some time to be rolled out to every region due to how the storefronts are set up.
We are so excited to release the Map Editor, in planning for 2 years and in active development this whole year. Bloons has a long history of player created content and we are delighted to add Map creation and sharing to BTD6 in the most robust and in-game format ever available! We stretched to include as much capability as possible in this first release, and we already have a long wishlist for future updates, and we’ll temper that after seeing what incredible creations you come up with and the top features you’d like to see included in updates. Have fun and please share your creativity with your friends and the whole community!
Other player’s custom maps can be played right from level 20 when the Content Browser opens up
Find the Map Editor via the Edit Map button inside Play Social, or from the Create button in the Content Browser Maps tab
Don’t be surprised - there is an unlock gate for Map Editor. At player rank 50 Map Creation can be unlocked for 6000 Monkey Money (same ballpark as the top Hero skins and fully grindable), or directly via IAP (on platforms that have IAP), which we included in response to players looking for more ways to support the game and future updates. The rank unlock helps ensure that players have a reasonable understanding of the game and how map obstacles and difficulty work before they get to work creating their own.
Most importantly, Map Editor works on all platforms and devices. We’ve never been able to provide an editor this robust in-game and on all devices before, so we’re thrilled to offer this level of creative control on all devices including phones.
Please see more details about the Map Editor features and scope below!
New Awesome
New Hero Skin - Book Wyrm Etienne
Switching out drones for dragons seems like a pretty awesome thing to do. A favorite of the team, channeling many of our book-devouring nerdy pasts (and presents!), Book Wyrm celebrates the power of imagination that has led most of us to make and play games.
New (Revenge) Map - Dark Path
Continuing the BTD tradition of more challenging versions of favorite maps that started with Rink Revenge 10 years ago, Dark Path takes the pristine triple back park setting and flips both the Bloon path and the placeable areas on their heads. Revenge is most sweet when served dark!
New Quests!
Drone Flying 101 - discover Etienne’s strengths and weaknesses
Obyn’s Gardening School - discover Obyn’s strengths and weaknesses
Grow Less Than Galaxili! - least tiers challenge quest on Geared
New Monkey Knowledge
Paragon of Power, any paragon will gain a large boost to its attack speed so long as you have no T5s of the same tower type placed
Boss Event Penalty Timer reworked to be more mathematical
Boss Event default Penalty Time changed from: 10s > 10 + round number * 0.25
While Penalty time is counting in Boss Events cash generating abilities will stop cooling down
Extra Contested Territory logic added to support newer content
Beast Handler now enabled for CT
Phayze & Dreadbloon now enabled for CT
Custom Challenges will now display the version they were verified in rather than the version they are uploaded in.
Map Editor Feature List
Terrain
First tab on the toolbar sets the terrain texture and type for your map
Select the different terrain texture options to choose the main background color and feel for your map
Note there are two water based terrain options if you want to favor water towers; please review the Areas section below if you want to add islands!
There is also a second header tab for map effects that can add ambience (e.g. Rain/Fog/Leaves), but only one of these can be active at a time
Paths
Second tab allows you to place one or multiple paths and choose their texture
Drag one of the path images from the toolbar to the map. This will place the start of your track, and you can pick up this green cone to move where it starts.
Draw the map you want by selecting other points on the map and this will place “nodes” that you can move individually
End your path by placing a node into the shadowed perimeter. For now, tracks must end at the perimeter of the map and no paths can end in the interior of the map. If you don’t like where the blue end-path node is placed, you can select it and move it.
To add multiple paths, drag another path on the map from the panel (maximum of 5)
To edit the texture of any path, select it in the path list within the toolbar, and select another texture type. You may also delete paths from this list.
The Path Width arrows allow you to customize how the path looks
Props
Third tab has a selection of Props. From grass to rocks, wooden barrels to a fountain of sparks. These will be the big objects, sight blockers, decorations and awesomeness that will make your map pop!
Use the drop down menu to filter the selection of Props. So you can see all the trees, or all the Props that would be at home on a meadow (monkey or otherwise)
Drag a Prop onto your map and the Prop adjustment panel will come up, allowing you to fine tune the Prop’s scale, rotation, tilt and position. You can enable/disable “Blocking” and “Animation” for certain Props.
Tap/click on a Prop to enable multi-place mode. When you place a Prop In multi-place mode, another Prop will be automatically selected ready to be placed somewhere else. (Available for stamps too)
Some Props are platforms that allow you to place towers on them. These can be used to give towers sight above smaller props, add a small area for land placement in water, or water placement on land.
Props that block Line-of-Sight can have “Blocking” disabled so that towers will be able to see past them. You can use this for Props you move into crazy and wacky positions or in case the blocking doesn’t make sense for your map. (Use sight or tower blocking Areas to make this work how you want)
Stamps
Fourth tab is home to all sorts of decorations!
These are 2D options that can be placed onto the map to add a bit of detail (like flowers and leaves)
Other stamps are semi-opaque to provide additional effects, like shadow stamps to add more depth to the scene, or river rocks that give the effect of a stream bed if placed in water
You can also remove specific stamps using the erase tool.
Areas
The fifth (last) tab on the toolbar and the main tool for creating a combination of terrains or for mixtures of land and water
Drag an area of the type desired into the map. It will start with a default of 4 nodes, but you can add nodes to make more refined shapes.
While an area layer is selected, you can change the area background type by selecting another area background type
When done select the green tick mark
To add multiple areas, drag another area out onto the map (maximum of 10 layers). To edit an individual area, select the “Area 1….10” from the scrolling list of areas inside the toolbar, where you can also choose to delete or hide that area.
Note that some Areas are tagged as water, shot blocking, and placement blocking; shot blocking and placement blocking areas are not visible on the final map
Layering
With so much happening on a map, we have included a layer reorder panel (visually 3 stacked diamond shaped layers). This allows certain things to be raised to the top of the stack and lets them be placed “above” other things or below them. You can also toggle on/off all props from here if you want to edit things that are under them like stamps/paths/areas!
Tips & Tricks
The Randomizer option - You will see a checkbox labeled Randomize, if selected, props and stamps will have their rotation randomized on each placement.
Getting the right rotation on a stamp will be improved, but for now, place them in a blank space somewhere on your map until you get the rotation you need. Then erase the pile of stamps when you’re done. We will add a way to do this more easily in a future update.
Use different layers for making stamps. It's easier to manage if things go wrong
Try using props from the same theme set, this can give a more uniform look
When making paths/areas, the shorter the tangent the sharper the corner
Try rotating/scaling items and combining them with other items to make them appear as something new
Bug Fixes & General Changes
A number of localization updates and fixes
Resolved an issue sometimes incorrectly blocking abilities from being used
Resolved an issue with hero portrait updates not correctly displaying when viewing upgrades within the Heroes menu
Resolved a rare case which could prevent abilities from being activated when they should be ready
Resolved an issue that could cause Team Search to break and display no results when there should be results
Resolved an issue where navigating to the trophy store via the Jukebox menu would not take you to the correct tab
Resolved a crash that could occur when a tower expires at the end of a round
Resolved an issue with some saves becoming corrupted
Overall audio polish throughout many parts of the UI
Resolved a bug that could allow players to enable multiple avatars
Interacting with an upgrade ready to unlock will now select that upgrade when opening the upgrade screen
Community button added to the Map Selection page
Challenge Editor & Quests
Quest progress is no longer set back down to 0/# after choosing to replay
‘No Powers’ challenge editor rule should now also ban Hero Boosters from purchase
Backing out of a Quest should take you back into the category you were previously viewing
Resolved an issue in Quests that could cause non-upgradable heroes to become upgradable
Resolved a case in which the Birthday Quest BAD could be destroyed
Resolved a case where the Birthday Quest BAD would not save current Health correctly
Event & Co-op changes
Paragon limit removed from current CT tiles to reduce unnecessarily bloating rules
Resolved an issue with very specific Boss HP values in 3 player co-op causing bosses to become invincible
Updated Boss Rules panel to reflect design changes
Resolved some issues with save loading not always correctly loading back on Lych
Damage counters should count again for attacks against Bloonarius spawns & Lych Zombie Bloons
Flint Tip Darts should no longer be able to skip its final damage tic
Resolved an issue where subtowers did not correctly track damage done to Dreadbloon/Phayze shields
Resolved an issue where Phayze could trigger additional skull events on loading a save
Resolved a daily challenge title display bug that could occur
Probably resolved some unknown boss co-op crash
Resolved an issue with low damage numbers not performing calculations correctly against exceptionally healthy targets (Bosses)
Resolved a softlock when accepting an invite to a co-op game while in an Odyssey
Entering a co-op lobby will now show a ‘loading map’ instead of defaulting to displaying Monkey Money when the actual selected map has not loaded yet
Behind the scenes updates to Co-op Area Division data
Added commas to co-op cash panel
Tower UI when it can't fetch the correct value of an upgrade will no longer display unreasonably high numbers
Resolved a bug preventing Golden Bloons working correctly for all players in co-op
Bigger Bloon Sabotage CT Relic should now correctly reduce MOAB Speed
Map Specific Fixes
Changed up some of the maps displayed on the first page of Beginner Difficulty for some different colors
Fixed splash animation not lining up correctly for Penguins on Skates
Resolve some issues with Aircraft Carrier planes being blocked from spawning on Water Park
Resolved a number of issues with track items clipping on Water Park
Resolved placement inconsistencies on Midnight Mansion
Resolved some cases where merging paths could incorrectly see Bloons on the last segment before swapping path as untargetable (Notably on Workshop)
Resolved a crash that someone had on Dark Dungeons
Tower Specific Fixes
Dart Monkey
Resolved an inconsistency with Master Double Cross contributing far more to Paragon Degrees than it should be worth.
Sniper Monkey
Resolved an issue preventing Elite Targeting target prio from saving in some cases
Monkey Buccaneer
xx4 Should no longer be able to buff Paragon upgrades
Monkey Ace
No longer shows a Paragon Pip at 505 upgrades
xx4 Spectre can no longer ignore Phayze’s camo immunity when under Radar Scanner
Mortar Monkey
Lead/Mortar/Fortified bonuses should all stack their bonuses on single targets
Wizard Monkey
Magus’s Phoenix should no longer be immune to Vortex stun
Resolved an issue where Phoenix data could be saved incorrectly and brick game saves
Changing Necromancer target location in co-op should no longer cause a desync
Super Monkey
4xx Super Monkey can no longer increase cash value of Bloons in CHIMPS
041 Tech Terror’s ability can no longer knock Bloons forward in some cases
Alchemist
Permabrew applications are no longer globally removed in co-op when another player builds and sells a new Permabrew
x5x Transforming Tonic ability end animation lines up correctly with the act end again when the duration is increased
Solved quantum entanglement
Druid
x5x Spirit of the Forest should correctly pop Frozen Bloons with Hot Magic knowledge
Spike Factory
Using the x5x active ability just before the passive ability triggers will no longer cause Carpet of Spikes to skip a passive ability activation
Resolved a bug that allowed Spike Piles to be collidable for 1 frame before moving to their track position
Monkey Village
4xx Primary Mentoring cooldown buff no longer remains behind when tower is sold while under the range of an Energizer
xx5 Crash resolved when creating game saves with a Monkeyopolis that has decimal point crate values
Engineer
Should no longer show cash generated from Bloontrap on the CHIMPS Victory Panel
Resolved inconsistency in the display of the Ultraboost buff icons
Beast Handler
x4x Tyrannosaurus Rex should no longer record damage incorrectly when max merged
x4x Tyrannosaurus Rex should no longer double cooldown buffs from Energizer sub
Resolved some missing animations with 3xx beasts
Players should no longer be able to merge T5 beasts into other T5 beasts no matter how nicely they ask
Hero Specific Fixes
Obyn Greenfoot
Should no longer show cash generated from Wall of Trees on the CHIMPS Victory Panel
Benjamin
Resolved an issue with Biohacks downtime icon persisting for too long after expiring
Sushi Benjamin skin now correctly displays downtime visual on towers affected by Biohack
Ezili
Lv10 MOAB Hex should no longer be able to skip its final damage tic
Adora
Resolved an issue with voice lines playing on the wrong skins
Resolved issues with Sunbeam Placement not loading in correctly
Geraldo
Lv5 & Lv15 Sharpening Stones can no longer stack their benefits
Lv7 Blade Trap can now benefit from Camo granted to Geraldo
Geraldo’s level should now correctly update within the shop inventory
Platform Specific fixes
PC: Holding a tower hotkey to place multiples will now cancel placement when you can no longer afford to place another
PC: Resolved a game crash when making the game full screen after the monitor is turned off with the game open.
PC: Resolved a rare crash that could occur when using certain hotkeys immediately after loading a save game
Android Netflix/Amazon: Resolved incorrect achievement icon showing on main menu
Netflix: Resolved a game crash that could occur when switching from default language to another language and then to Monklish even while not standing on your head
As some of you have asked about via the Preview Notes, we did have to make some schedule and content adjustments from the Update 37 Notes based on the massive size of Update 39. So here’s the latest!
Spirit Walker: We have moved the Spirit Walker to Update 40, due out before the end of the year. This hero has complex stacking abilities which are already being tested and balanced, so aside from the focus on Map Editor, we needed to make sure that Corvus had ample focus to lock in this signature play mechanic.
Monkey Sub Paragon: We have moved the Monkey Sub Paragon to next year in order to give it ample space as well, partly to give it the space it needs but also let the new Paragon balance changes settle and make any adjustments through update 40 before releasing a new Paragon. This does not necessarily mean Update 41 either, as the first update of the year is intentionally smaller to allow the Auckland team to recharge over the southern hemisphere summer holiday break.
Boss Challenge: We have more design, UI, and server work to do to make Boss Rush meet the new Team event goals we have, so this will develop further in the new year, but we do have a stretch goal to get more flexible individual Boss play in for Update 40.
Bloons TD 6 - Update Notes! Version 38.0
Bloons TD 6 v38.0 - Update Notes!
Rolling out now, please restart your storefront or be patient if it does not appear for you, these updates can take some time to be rolled out to every region due to how the storefronts are set up.
As existing Bosses continue to be tuned and refined, designing new Bosses becomes increasingly complex to find both visual and functional differences that truly mix up play styles, approach to eco, and Monkeys used. We knew camo would be a focus but the movement and entry migration proved to be essential as Phayze’s design took shape. We hope you enjoy the challenge!
Phayze has the Camo property and spawns with a Reality Shield that increases its movement speed while the Shield is active. Monkeys can destroy this shield to reduce Phayze’s movement speed back to normal again
Phayze triggers a Radar Jam every 24 seconds - this restores its Camo property if this has been lost & for 12 seconds grants Phayze immunity to any form of camo removal as well as disabling all shared Camo-granting buffs from towers
When Radar Jam occurs Phayze also pulls all Bloons forward to Phayze’s Location and grants them the Camo property
When each skull is reached, Phayze rebuilds the Reality Shield and warps forward, while opening a tear in the fabric of reality that allows for all Bloons to spawn further along the track. Note that the warp is proportional to track length, so shorter warps on short tracks and prepare for startling warps on longer tracks!
Skulls also trigger a stacking slow aura around Phayze, which reduces the attack speed of all Monkey Towers until the boss is defeated
Contested Territory Competitive Mode
We’ve heard the community feedback and have wanted ourselves to help Teams define themselves as Competitive or Casual, so we’ve developed a system that allows Teams to set their stance to attract players with the same mindset as well as sign up for each CT and lock those Team rosters in to acknowledge and help address some of the Team griefing that we’ve seen happening.
We’ve pushed the cadence for Contested Territory back one week to give time for Teams to review this new system and sign up for Competitive play.
Mayors can now set their team stance inside their Team settings. All existing Teams will default to Casual, so Mayors will need to set their stance to Competitive in order for the team to sign up for each CT’s competitive leaderboards. Team members can send canned chat requests to set stance to Competitive.
Teams that have been set to Competitive stance will appear in the Team search with a new shield icon indicating this Competitive stance and interest in recruiting competitive players.
We understand that some Teams have been playing competitively with dormant Mayors. If you are on a Team with a dormant Mayor and want to play competitively, you can consider leaving your Team and using the Team search to identify Teams with the Competitive shield icon.
Each CT event itself will now consist of two experiences: Competitive and Casual
CT events will start with a pre-register time period starting after the previous CT ends and lasting until 24 hours before the next event begins. For Competitive Stance Teams, once 5 players sign up for Competitive play from their team screen OR the Mayor or Assistant Mayor signs the team up, a team will be registered for Competitive Mode for that CT only. This sign up will need to be done for each individual CT.
Any teams that do not pre-register in time, or that are created after an event has already started will instead join the Casual event.
Rewards have similarly changed with Global rewards and badges of any kind only available for Competitive leaderboards. Casual Teams will not have global leaderboards or rewards; they will have local leaderboards and rewards but no badges.
Daily login reward remains regardless of Casual or Competitive modes
Ticket system remains unchanged for both Casual and Competitive - individual tickets are awarded daily, with unused Team tickets available to the rest of the Team on a periodic basis
Players who join a Competitive team after an event has already started will not be allowed to participate in CT until the next event starts. Players can freely join teams participating in Casual CT and immediately begin participating.
New Awesome
New Hero Skin: Lifeguard Brickell
While already a true master of water defense, this update Brickell is diving in head first to take charge of Monkey water safety over the summer. There will be no running in the Water Park on her watch, especially from the Bloons, as her safety buoys pack a punch!
New Intermediate Map: Water Park
Sometimes Bloons want to cool off a bit too, whether it be on the waterslide or floating down the lazy river. But this is a Monkey Water Park so we can’t simply let them play around on their own!
New Quests
Trial By Fire - discover Gwendolin’s strengths and abilities
Brickell Bootcamp - discover Brickell’s strengths and abilities
Scoop’s Tall Tale - Scoop tells a tale about three brave monkeys, and this challenging 3 part adventure comes with some goodies for those persistent enough to make it through
New Trophy Store Items
Monkeys: Bomb Shooter Tortoise pet, because - of course!
Bloons: Bloon Sunglasses decal and Boat MOAB skin to help celebrate summer
Added Bronze & Silver map borders for completing all Easy/Medium medals, making for an easier entry barrier to get into map border collecting and add a more scaled progression to this reward system.
Assigned more icons within the custom challenge creation UI making it easier to distinguish different game modifiers quickly
Similar to cash earnings, ‘Regrown’ Bloons will now no longer count towards increasing a tower’s damage stat when they are popped repeatedly.
Categorized and sorted Quests to organize Patch’s quest menu
Added further support to grant our events more flexibility in Boss starting and finishing rounds
Team search filter added to search for Competitive Teams
Bug Fixes & General Changes
Resolved a number of localization issues
Resolved some issues with font size showing too small in some areas in certain languages
‘Bought’ and ‘Purchased’ text in the trophy store has been replaced to read ‘Owned’
Resolved an issue causing different player callouts to appear in co-op
Top section of the Play Social menu now reads ‘Social’ instead of ‘Co-op’
Resolved an issue preventing the Polyphemus Eye from being re-opened after restarting a Chimps/Impoppable game
Resolved a number of cases with projectile trails not scaling correctly with the projectile size slider
Cleaned up some small excess pixels that were visible on friend portraits
Party Quest BAD should no longer change to match the icon for whatever skin is equipped
Resolved some issues with how ‘Wind’ knockback effects were applying to Bloons outside of the map / Blown back out of the entrance
Resolved a softlock that could occur when attempting to purchase IAP while offline
Loading a quest save no longer allows unsellable towers to be sold
Resolved Camo Trap Incorrect Animation State on Map Restart
Resolved a case in which Update Notes button would not be displayed in the options menu
Resolved an issue where Quests would not save player progress if the player wins and chooses ‘Play Again’
Account webview should now allow for text to be copied to clipboard
Resolved an issue where partying ninjas did not have hands - while perhaps a definition of ninjaness, was a bit creepy
Resolved an issue where loading quest saves could reset tower target locations
Resolved an issue with 1000’s separator not being consistent across every language
Resolved a bug where some profiles were showing shared profile stats of ‘8/7’
Added Retry last round to some quests
Pre-game prep spikes now use trophy store road spike cosmetics
Event fixes & changes
Behind the scenes maintenance on Boss leaderboard score processing
Added an event icon to display if a Paragon Limit is being applied to events
Resolved an issue with Bloonarius spawning too many bloons when health drops too far below 0 in a single frame
Resolved an issue with Defeat UI being closed when Bosses leak in co-op
Dealing damage to Dreadbloons armor now counts correctly towards tower damage
Resolved an issue where some 1 shot effects could destroy the Lych Soul
Tower Specific Fixes
Dart Monkey
‘4 and 4’ Monkey Knowledge should now apply to the Dart Monkey Paragon
Glue Gunner
Fixed a bug with 420 glue gunner not spawning puddles from the splat
Sniper Monkey
5xx Cripple MOAB can no longer debuff Dreadbloon during Military Immune Phase
Monkey Sub
5xx Energizer should now correctly show it’s buff icon on Heroes below level 3
Heli Pilot
Door gunner can no longer collect towers from the Polyphemus Eye as it closes
Dartling Gunner
2xx Dartling lock target no longer layers underneath Boss Bloons
Wizard Monkey
Wizard’s Phoenix should no longer show as overclock/door gunner targets
Resolved an issue creating a permanent magus flamethrower attack
Super Monkey
4xx Sun Temple should no longer sometimes disable the main beam attack after absorbing another mini sun avatar
Alchemist
Resolved an issue with transformed towers from Total Transformation showing broken UI if still selected when the effect expires
Druid
Upgrading a crosspathed Druid to x3x changes target prio to strong
x3x Druid can no longer grab frozen bloons without popping them
030 Druid vines now have green thorns until crosspathed to 130
Monkey Village
xx5 Monkeyopolis now gives the correct cash amount in Half Cash mode
xx5 Monkeyopolis resolved an issue with wrong purchase cost being shown until reselecting the tower
Engineer
Resolved a crash that could occur when trapping a fortified blimp with a 025 trap after upgrading the parent XXXL trap into a paragon
Engineer Paragon sentries are now correctly destroyed if their platform is removed
Engineer Paragon sentries no longer position incorrectly when placed as the round ends
Engineer Paragon no longer defaults to throwing out a Green Sentry after loading a save
Beast Handler
Beast Handler merge hitbox size increased
Resolved an issue with Beast Handler not showing path restriction UI in Challenge and Odyssey Editor
Pat Fusty
Placing towers in Pat’s radius will now show a grayed out Rallying Roar buff icon
Admiral Brickell
Resolved an issue with Brickell’s Mega Mine not switching cosmetic assets
Geraldo
Geraldo’s restock rates are no longer 1 round longer if used from full stock
Geraldo Rabbits placed on ice platforms no longer prevent them from merging
Geraldo’s rabbit should no longer despawn when attacking in vicinity of an ice platform
Geraldo’s Rabbits should no longer become extinct due to climate change on Erosion
Paragon Totems can no longer be overclocked
Geraldo’s action figure should no longer inherit the wrong sell value when reassigned in co op
Platform Specific fixes
Arcade & Netflix friends names now have a dynamic font resolving display issues
Balance Changes
Dart Monkey
Spike-o-pult not re-hitting targets after a rebound in the same way as Juggernaut isn’t as fun so we’re allowing this functionality to occur earlier now. Given the shift to more use in Boomerang Paragon with recent buffs making it more desirable we are again swapping the prices on these 2 paragons around.
3xx Spike-o-pult now allows re-hitting targets after bounces
Paragon price reduced $350,000 > 325,000
Boomerang Monkey
Long Range Rangs is increasing its benefit to be more meaningful of a crosspath choice for the range rather than purely the Red Hot Rangs. Permacharge as a very good T5 doesn’t feel like it needs to have a cooldown buff over the T3 given how small this benefit is. As mentioned above on the Dart Monkey, these Paragons are having their prices swapped around and Boomerang Paragon’s Orbit attack is having the fortification bonus damage removed as this number was so small it added no value to the tower anyway.
xx1 Long Range Rangs range bonus increased 15% > 33%
501 Glaive Lord radius increase from LRR increased 15% > 33%
050 Perma-Charge ability cooldown 40s -> 45s
Paragon orbit no longer deals +2 damage to fortified
Boomerang Paragon cost increased from $325,000 > 350,000
Bomb Shooter
We wanted to add something unique to Bloon Impact while also improving Really Big Bombs very slightly as a stepping stone into it, so now both of these upgrades will become capable of pushing back Bloons that they hit – even if they are stunned or frozen! This allows Bloon Impact to now catch groups of Bloons in a stun net and slowly push them back the way they came while keeping them stunned. Recursive Cluster is also having the pierce of the recursions increased a little again; while we felt it needed a nerf earlier, the amount cut from it last time was too high.
3xx Really Big Bombs now pushes back Bloons by 10 units
4xx Bloon Impact stun duration increased from 1 > 1.4
4xx Bloon Impact now also pushes Bloons back on every hit in addition to the Stun
5xx Bloon Crush pushes back MOAB class by half this amount
Tack Zone has so much base pierce the increase from 025 is rendered irrelevant no matter how large the upgrade bonus, so to fix this we must make the base pierce value low enough to actually struggle sometimes & we will give back extra attack rate to the base upgrade to compensate for this. Ring of Fire also generally has too high a pierce amount for how effective it is at utilizing its full pierce value. Maelstrom crosspathing? Why not, feels that this could be cool to try out, and more consistency on bottom crosspath may be able to make it the preferred ability crosspath while top path which already improves the base tower more will give back the massive pierce amount for times where the greater punch per use is required.
xx5 Tack Zone rate increase from previous tier 25% > 35%
xx5 Tack Zone pierce reduced from 4 > 2
400 Ring of Fire pierce reduced from 40 > 30
410 Ring of Fire pierce reduced from 50 > 30
420 Ring of Fire pierce reduced from 60 > 45
040 Blade Maelstrom pierce reduced from 200 > 120
140 Blade Maelstrom pierce reduced from 200 > 160
240 Blade Maelstrom pierce remains at 200
041 Blade Maelstrom changes rotation direction to counter-clockwise
041 Blade Maelstrom duration increased from 3s > 3.5s
042 Blade Maelstrom duration increased from 3s > 4s
Super Maelstrom pierce reduced from 500 > 300
150 Blade Maelstrom pierce reduced from 500 > 400
250 Blade Maelstrom pierce remains at 500
051 Blade Maelstrom duration increased from 9s > 10.5s
052 Blade Maelstrom duration increased from 9s > 12s
Ice Monkey
Plenty of attention has been drawn to the high power of Ice, so we’re continuing to work on slowly dialing this back in fair ways.
030 Arctic Wind pierce 100 -> 40
050 Absolute Zero pierce remains 100
003 Cryo Cannon has 20% shorter freeze lifespan from 1.5s > 1.2
Glue Gunner
This is not intended to be a significant nerf to the tower’s base game performance so we plan to keep an eye on the change; however the recent top path Glue Gunner changes where duplicating every high level glued Bloon into magnitudes more puddles due to the recurring children multiplication of pre-r80 Bloons. This caused performance issues and effectively broke the game in certain situations so we have limited these puddles to spawn from the first child of glued targets to keep the lategame performance unchanged but hopefully solve the root of this issue in the early game where the main attack is mostly enough to easily deal with all cleanup anyway. Also adding a little extra bonus for Relentless glue, allowing the stun splats to work on smaller MOABs & DDTs.
4xx & 5xx Glue Gunners will only drop puddles from the first child in the split
4xx & 5xx Glue puddles no longer hit Camo Bloons innately
xx4 Relentless Glue stun on pop now stuns DDTs & Blue MOABs for 0.25s
Sniper Monkey
Sniper farming gets a bit, er, very tedious in lategame when you reach large numbers of x4xs.
x5x Elite Sniper Elite Supply Drop will now also trigger all other Supply Drop Abilities
x5x Elite Sniper’s Elite Supply Drop no longer shares button space in the ability quickbar with other Supply Drop abilities.
Monkey Buccaneer
Small tweaks to Buccaneer’s Long Range upgrade to improve its additional pierce benefit for a number of attacks.
101 Long Range more pierce to Main projectile +1 > +2
031 Cannonship cannonball pierce 28 -> 35
031 Cannonball frags pierce 1 -> 2
Monkey Ace
As the price of Ground Zero has been considerably increased in the base game since then, the nerf to 1000 pierce set for races a long time ago now feels restrictive for the price.
040 Ground Zero ability pierce increased from 1000 > 2000
Heli Pilot
Given Downdraft has competed as one of the most debated best towers in the game basically for its entire life for both early and late game we are reducing some of the extreme effectiveness against late game Super Ceramics by reworking it to have an overall increased effect of blowing back multiple smaller children at a time but now requiring 2 pierce to blow back ceramics. At the same time, the T4 Support Chinook is also having a large increase to make it now a more powerful real end-game choice for a lategame version of Downdraft that can quickly deal with large groups of Super Ceramics.
x3x Downdraft rate 0.15 > 0.225
x3x Downdraft pierce 1 > 2
x3x Downdraft ceramic pierce penalty 0 > 1
x4x Support Chinook downdraft pierce 1 > 4
x4x Support Chinook downdraft rate remains 0.15
x4x Support Chinook downdraft no longer increases blowback distance
Dartling Gunner
We weren’t quite ever able to take Laser Shock in the direction we initially hoped to, and due to this the 203 crosspath has fallen behind in value and overall use, so we are improving some crosspath values here to fix up damage with bottom path Buckshocks
203 Buckshot shock bonus damage increased from 1 > 2
204 BADs shock bonus damage increased from 1 > 3
205 BEZ shock bonus damage increased from 1 > 6
Wizard Monkey
Middle path T4 Phoenix continues carrying rounds quite well for a long period of the game, as a light nerf here we’re taking away the free camo detection that Phoenix used to get, given the tower has a camo crosspath it could go for to properly inherit this onto the phoenix anyway. When the Wizard Paragon released it unintentionally drained mana from every target the main attack came into contact with, which caused the passive mana drain to scale much faster with degrees than intended. At a base level it was balanced around this factor though so the passive mana drain values have been properly reworked to trigger from attacks being performed with amounts keeping it roughly similar but not scaling up to such crazy fast drains with the high degrees.
x3x Dragon’s Breath price increased from $3000 > 3300
x4x Summon Phoenix now requires the 042 crosspath for Phoenix ability to see Camo
x4x Summon Phoenix beloved phoenix micro has been restored
xx4 Necromancer targeted spawn point can now be reset back to default by activating the target option, then canceling without selecting a point
Wizard Paragon no longer drains 100 mana for every single Bloon hit by the main attack, instead;
Each main attack fired drains mana 50
Each Phoenix firebomb attack fired drains mana 50
Zombie Bloon spawn mana cost increased from 100 > 250
Zombie Bloons travel range increased from 175 > 400
Super Monkey
We’ve wanted to try out this idea for a while, and finally thought why not. It seemed fun to test with, so we hope people can find some fun use for it in challenges.
041 Tech Terror's Bloon Annihilation ability now knocks back any surviving targets by a large amount: Knockback MOAB Multiplier 25, lifespan 0.2
Ninja Monkey
We’re mindful that this has been in place since launch, but still think this change could lead to more balanced crosspath Ninja play for casual and for apex players. Ninja's 1xx feels like it does too much, granting both range and attack speed to all crosspaths, so these benefits are now being split apart. As Sticky feels like it’s doing a fair lot of work these days we’re somewhat reworking this path into a range path but taking away the free ‘bonus range’ that Sticky used to gain independent of the tower radius.
1xx Ninja Discipline no longer grants increased range
xx1 Seeking Shuriken now grants increased range +7
xx4 Sticky Bomb tower range increased from 40 > 55
xx4 Sticky Bomb bonus +50% of tower range removed, now matches base tower
xx5 Master Bomber still has full map range Stickies
Druid
Druid of the Storm is too inconsistent due to placement causing projectiles to intersect the path and spend very little time actually touching Bloons, it is gaining some homing to keep the nados running along the track over the top of Bloons to more consistently utilize their high pierce value. We love how this is working and hope you do, too. Middle path T4 isn't a very good improvement over the T3 so is getting small improvements to both its offense and cash generation.
3xx Druid of the Storm tornado gains strong homing
3xx Druid of the Storm tornado travel distance increased from 80 > 100
5xx Superstorm price reduced from $65000 -> $60000
x4x Jungles Bounty cash bonus per farm in range from 120 > 130
Spike Factory
Further balance for 401 crosspath, while this does already see some niche use it made sense to include increased explosion radius with the larger tower range. A flat pierce increase is added on to middle T5’s base attack to reduce crosspath dependency & improve r100 strength. Finally, we enjoyed the hard hitting nerf to Permaspike’s early game, but admittedly this change didn’t really change much of anything for its endgame power while impacting pre r80 rounds far more, so we’re redoing the nerf into a pure attack speed nerf along with an increased benefit to the start of round rate buff to reduce the necessity in playing slowly with it
401 Spiked Mines explosion blast radius: 30 > 40
501 Super Mines large explosion blast radius 100 > 133
xx5 Permaspike start of round buff duration 2.5s > 10s
Monkey Village
As a 1 per player T5 we didn’t mind this being excessively powerful at a base level, however the base level became so powerful people stopped investing into the actual farm sacrificing aspect, so we’re dropping this base value down to not skip massively ahead of the normal farm curve.
xx5 Monkeyopolis base cash amount reduced $2500 > 1250
Beast Handler
Compared to other T4 Beast Handlers and given the high cost of merging multiple beasts we agreed that the Orca & Megalodon’s total prices were too much more expensive for their somewhat random nature. The lower tiers on middle path Microraptor and Velociraptor are seeing all-round reductions as both have too high a base power and benefit too much from merges, gaining an overall greater attack speed benefit percentage-wise from merges than Trex does. Pouakai’s base pierce value was far too high so this along with the merge amount is being taken down.
May as well be a general camo for Ben level given that Trojan gives camo at 18 too
Level 18 Syphon Funding affects DDTs
Adora
Adora is a unique hero in how she has a great deal more value in spending cash to level her up faster, however she outperforms other heroes by too much regardless of this added cost. As her ability uptime is so incredibly good to the point of being completely spammable we’re increasing that cooldown slightly and reducing her base pierce in the higher levels so more thought must be required to utilize the large pierce increase she gains from usage of that ability.
Lv3 Long Arm of Light cooldown increased from 35s > 40
Lvl13 Main attack pierce reduced from 13 > 11
Etienne
Because it didn’t really matter before, but guess it kinda does now.
Lv10 UCAV ability can now naturally see Camo Bloons
Vortex changes
As knowledge, power & variety of Paragons has developed they have turned out to be extremely powerful against vortex and we have reached a point with enough good paragon diversity we no longer feel like they need to resist Vortex’s stun for such a large advantage over other towers, instead of this we feel Vortex’s stun is just too long in general so is being reworked to an overall lower amount across the tiers without any paragon immunity.
Paragon’s no longer resist a percentage of stun duration
Stun duration reworked at all tiers for generally reduced durations
T2 16s > 19s
T3 20s > 21s
T4 25s > 24s
T5 30s > 27s
ET1 20s > 18s
ET2 25s > 21s
ET3 30s > 24s
ET4 36s > 27s
ET5 40s > 30s
Lych changes
Lych has some cheese strategy in pre-buffing before spawn to get around the draining mechanics, but boss functionality now makes it easy for us to try out a quick change to counteract some of this.
Lych now triggers the 'buff drain' attack immediately on spawn
Looking Forward
Like the Monkeys in Update 38, we hope the northern hemisphereans have been enjoying summer and are still looking forward to awesome weeks ahead, while our fellow southern hemisphereans are making good use of layers and counting the weeks until spring!
We covered the remaining planned 2023 updates with the 37.x Notes, so this time simply giving a status update on a couple of those key items.
Console
As this text is typed, we are working on our last Xbox bugs and should be submitting for that platform very soon. We’ve continued to make improvements in controls and display, and spent heaps of time testing the Xbox requirements but the submission process will take time.
We can’t call a release date for Xbox yet, but we are certainly hoping for late August, and as soon as we have a confirmed date we’ll let the community know through Ninja Kiwi social feeds and also share some videos before then of what it looks like.
We have decided on a price point of US$29.99, based on the massive amount of additional work done and ongoing, especially around couch-coop and updates, and the depth of gameplay available in BTD6 versus other games at similar and much higher price points. We hope you will find that price point fair when you make that comparison, and we hope we’ll have tons of fans support the console version when it launches, but please do know we will be participating in periodic sales so that players who can’t spend that much initially will still have a chance to own and play BTD6 on console.
It is also important to understand that BTD6 Console will not cross-play with mobile and PC. Console will launch with a content equivalent of Update 32, minus CT. It was simply not possible to make traction on console without freezing content updates. Our plan will be to update the console platforms to more current content after PlayStation has launched.
PlayStation has been developed in parallel but will need its own requirements QA sweep, so will come as soon after Xbox as we can.
Switch is not in development yet, as it requires even further additional work, and we’re keen to see what the response to Xbox and PlayStation will be, and the general demand for Switch - if you want BTD6 on Switch, please let us know!
Map Editor
Just relaying excitement here! We are getting close to sharing work-in-progress visuals but for now please accept words - it is looking so good! Client side and UI flow work is going very well, and we’re doing our best to frame what is actually achievable between now and early October when we’re hoping to release 39.0. We have heaps of server side work to do but the intent is to wrap up client side core features next week then spend the bulk of August on client polish, UI integration, curation, and server. September should be about further polish, testing, and hopefully some work-in-progress map building videos from our awesome Bloons-focused content creators! Thanks for reading!
BFB, Boomerang and Sauda Plushies - Available Now!
We've teamed up with Makeship to bring more famous Bloons TD 6 characters to life in plushie form!
Click the image or link below to go to the Makeship store and secure your limited edition plushies now!
Available now for all platforms / *iOS, Android, Steam, Apple Arcade, Amazon please restart your storefront or be patient if it does not appear for you, these updates can take some time to be rolled out to every region due to how the storefronts are set up.
New Paragon - The Magus Perfectus! (loves casting spells) Some of you know we teased this last year, but we needed more time to balance the art and design required to make this extra special, so we are very pleased to get this live! Wizard Monkey’s Paragon is designed to be a higher level strategic Paragon with powerful ability usage similar to the Doomship.
The core of the Magus is a toggle to and from a Draining Beam which deals very small single target damage but absorbs graveyard mana as it damages and destroys Bloons
While toggled off from the Drain Beam, Magus attacks with a powerful Arcane Spike that deals massive damage to MOABs and revives Bloons it slays, while a Dark Phoenix circles overhead attacking with Firebomb breath and a radial fireball attack
Phoenix Explosion Ability: can be cast to consume the Paragon’s entire graveyard to set all Bloons on screen on fire for 30 seconds and summon one Zombie ZOMG for every 9000 graveyard mana consumed
Arcane Metamorphosis Ability: can be used to consume all graveyard mana and transform the Magus briefly into an alternate form which decimates everything with a flame cascade attack; Metamorphosis lasts longer the more mana it consumes
Magus was designed for armchair play so it will fill and consume graveyard mana on its own, but our goal was to create more actively controlled Paragon for those who will enjoy microing between Beam on and off and choosing which awesome Ability to unleash and when
New Awesome
Happy Birthday BTD6 - On June 14th, BTD6 will celebrate 5 years of monkeytastic fun and strategy! We hope you’ll join us for the main menu changes, skinned Collection event, special Questing, and general celebration. Thank you for five amazing years and we’re looking forward to all the years ahead!
New Hero Skin - Jiangshi Sauda, a fun new cross-cultural look for Sauda brainstormed by the art team, mixing inspirations from a favorite show and Chinese folklore
New Map - Erosion
Community designed advanced map Erosion by “I am not an artist” ~ u/TheWiseTroll
TheWiseTroll’s original concept proposed land and water but when thinking about map colors and the little stories we think of behind each map, the concept of the polar bear walking back with the shrinking ice was too compelling to do anything else
New Quests
Birthday Party - Pop the Party Bloon as many times as you can before it escapes
Blade Sauda Nowhere - Try out Sauda and learn some of her skills
Patch’s Cheap Chimps Challenge - Beat Logs with as little cash spent as you can
Striken Bad - Defeat the BAD on round 100 using First Strike. The spelling hurts us, too, you’re not the only one - but we had to do it!
Least Cash and Least Tier Boss Events
We’ve heard feedback about and have been wanting to shake up Boss rules, so here we go!
Applying new victory conditions to Boss Events completely changes the focus while still needing the damage output and type to handle each Boss
Time still matters, as the secondary time score will break any ties
New Trophy Store Items
Heroes: Geraldo Pack Mule pet, Quincy Spec Ops Drop In placement
Monkeys: Sweden Village Flag
Bloons: Party Hat Bloons
Game & UI: Vortex Avatar, Sunset Samba 64 Mix music track, Quincy Arrows banner
Nexus.gg Creator Supporter Avatar - show your support for Content Creators by using the Creator Support button on the Settings screen and purchasing any IAP
Limited Time only {trophy items if there’s a seasonal}
5 Year Anniversary Avatar, 5 Year Anniversary Banner
New CT Team Store items
Base Props: Treasure Chest
Icons: Overclock icon, Archmage Staff icon
Frames: Bloon From The Dead frame, Mage Hat frame
New Slider
Everybody loves sliders, right?
After lots of discussion on the team and a fair few player requests, we’ve added a ‘Projectile and Effects Scaling’ accessibility option to main menu Settings
This is primarily for accessibility to minimize the size and brightness of projectiles and effects, especially when the screen is crowded with Monkeys and Bloons
This is not directly a performance improvement feature, so please do not expect the game to run noticeably better - just noticeably cleaner
We tried not to remove key game state indicators but this is ultimately in player control - if you adjust the slider and effects and projectiles make it harder to play the game, please reset the slider until the game is working the way you want
It’s also really fun for silly screengrabs, so please post your favorites!
News - Anniversary Giveaways!
We would also like to formally announce that we will be doing a week of giveaways on our Twitter starting next Monday NZT to celebrate the BTD6 5 year anniversary! 5 winners will be picked randomly each day for 5 days to win an awesome prize from our merch store. This will be exclusive to Twitter so make sure to follow us here to be involved!
Game Changes / Additions
New Party Time game theme event!
Refactored how leaderboard scores are stored so that we could add Least Cash/Tiers ranking options for Boss Events
Bosses on spawn will now clear the map of all existing projectiles
Highest Round profile stat renamed to Highest Round (All Time) & added in the new profile stat Highest Round (Current Version).
The 4 different Highest Round profile stats are now grouped together near the top of the profile stats page
Freeplay budget scaling reduced slightly (same speed/hp, but number of Bloons added per round will increase at a slower rate)
Added a new Roundset with Income curve to be used by our events team; this customized income curve allows us more flexibility to make this roundset than would otherwise have been possible with existing roundset tools
Translated game into Thai
Quest Changes
Added a ‘Play Again’ button to the victory screen for quests
Added a ‘Disable Dialogue’ checkmark for some quests after beating them
Game hints are now hidden during Quests
Story Quests now sort to the top of the quest list & completed Story Quests sort to the bottom
Bug Fixes & General Changes
A large number of localization fixes - thanks for the player feedback on your pet peeves!
Resolved a number of general crashes
Number of additions/changes to improve existing quests, highlight scores to beat & increase our possibilities for quest creation
Resolved an issue with abilities highlighted in quests remaining highlighted after restarting
Holding down on a tower should correctly hide the UI again
Quests no longer play placement effects for any pre-placed towers
Resolved an issue that could prevent Total Damage from counting correctly to profile
Resolved an issue where total insta monkeys profile stat would decrease if the instas were used
Resolved certain very specific freeplay seeds causing crashes on certain rounds
Bloons Leaked summary no longer gets cleared in co-op after reviewing map
Stairs in the top corners on Resort are now placement blockers
Resolved a crash that could occur when waiting on the events screen as events end
Resolved a crash that could occur when the Hero Booster popup was canceling via any map mechanics forcing the player to deselect the hero
Fixed some towers not targeting the test bloon when set to target type Strong
Fixed position of the full patch notes link on update popups on some resolutions
Midnight Mansion plays a fishie animation in the bloon exit on loading in
Resolved an issue where placed items on the map lose their cosmetic skins after a resync occurs during a co-op game.
Obtaining towers from redistribution on co-op that are still locked for you will now show messaging in the unlocks screen as to why you are not earning XP for it
Pressing back from the avatar/banner selection will now just back out of that selection
Changed Pop Count on summary screen to Damage Count and added actual Pop Count
Hero portraits no longer linger too long on the screen after exiting the upgrades menu in game
Paragon art state changes moved from 22/42/62/82 to 20/40/60/80
Resolved map-based buffs not inheriting to subtowers correctly
Resolved an issue where an external proxy could sometimes cause the game to hang on loading forever
Co-op red areas fade in more slowly when you cross the boundary
Resolved online/Invisible profile setting displaying text incorrectly
Audio polish when opening reward chests in the collection event
Updated wording on logout screen to address some confusion
Added a background to the rewards UI
Added confirmation pop-up for In App Purchases added from outside the game
Monklish font has been regenerated to include the Māori macrons
Tower Specific Fixes
Ice Monkey
Resolved a number of cases of the xx2 Refreeze crosspath not re-freezing bloons when dealing certain numbers of damage.
Monkey Buccaneer
xx5 Trade Empire should no longer buff too many merchants in co-op
Resolved tower moving from flagship to navarch displaying vfx at the wrong scale
Resolved "Paragon available" pip displaying for Buccaneer with only Flagship and Pirate Lord unlocked
Resolved an issue where Navarch’s attack rate buff would not apply to Doomship in some cases depending on build order
Monkey Ace
xx2 Centered Path ace no longer displays it’s placement target on screen initially when loading a save
Upgrading to 002 Ace no longer refreshes the cooldown on the special toggle
Resolved an issue with Monkey Ace jumping offscreen after a Retry Last Round
Banana Farm
5xx Banana Central no longer buffs other Banana Centrals in co-op
Engineer
1xx Engineers can now place their sentries correctly on One Two Tree
Overclocking a 5xx Engineer’s sentry just as it starts exploding no longer crashes the game
Engineer Paragon no longer crashes if created while a Bloontrap is being deployed
Engineer Paragon no longer crashes when selling the main tower while it has a sentry moving through the air that has not landed yet
Engineer Paragon should no longer throw sentries into the middle of the map due to techbots
Resolved an issue where the Paragon’s permanent speed boost per round would not load until the end of the first round played after loading a save
Beast Handler
3xx Great White projectiles can no longer hit bloons far out of range
3xx Great White rare crash that could occur at end of rounds has been resolved
3xx Great White’s slow applied to grabbed target now expires correctly
310 Beast Handler now has eyebrows, just like that one map suggestion
Corrected the splash asset for crosspathed 4xx & 5xx Beasts
Merging an Orca into a Megalodon while it's taking out a bad should no longer cause a 2nd Megalodon to briefly appear
x1x Microraptor no longer fails to attack in some cases when being moved to different heights
x4x Tyrannosaurus Rex ability now scales with Challenge Editor ability cooldown slider
Beast Handler's bird targeting no longer breaks when set to strong if bloons are leaving radius
Resolved a crash that could occur when moving a beast to the screen boundary
Hero Specific Fixes
Obyn Greenfoot
Resolved an issue where Obyn’s Wall of Trees when placed on an intersection looping back around on itself would not be able to hit the children of any targets that passed over it
Psi
Resolved a crash that could occur when attacking glued Bloons
Geraldo
Resolved an issue where selling Geraldo, and then re-buying him would show the description of the last-viewed store item from before selling him
Platform Specific fixes
PC: Beast Handler’s hotkey in the hotkeys menu has been moved up near the rest of the support towers
PC: Added a ‘ Monkey Special 2’ hotkey (for towers like Beast Handler, Necromancers & Ace Paragon). By default the Special 1 & Special 2 hotkeys have been assigned to PageUp & PageDown and ordered so that PageUp triggers the upper specialty, and PageDown triggers the lower one
Arcade: Resolved a strange one pixel wide black line that can appear above some text characters on the arcade font
Chromebook: Game no longer crashes if attempting to login via webview
Chromebook: Resolved an issue with bluetooth mice being unable to scroll
Balance Changes
Boomerang Monkey
This part has to be included along with the Lych Soul rework with Paragons which is finally making it in this update after necessary delays. As Boomerang Paragon’s knockback hits so many times so quickly, we need to make it more reasonable when applied to targets that aren’t immediately destroyed.
Boomerang Paragon knockback amount reduced 3 > 1
Bomb Shooter
MOAB Assassin fills a useful role of a pure long cooldown ‘single target assassination’ in the game, but when compared to something like First Strike it feels a little lacking that it is unable to carry damage through MOAB Layers
x4x MOAB Assassin ability passes through MOAB layers
x4x MOAB Assassin ability explosion centers around the impact target
Tack Shooter
Blade Shooter has always struggled to find much value without MK or as a step to Maelstrom, so to give it build value on its own we feel like this should be a part of the base value on the upgrade.
x3x Blade Shooter pierce increased from 6 > 8
Ice Monkey
Lowest tiers of ice monkey are far too effective for their cost against ceramics, with this scaling well all the way to round 100, we feel like ice duration against ceramics needs to be reduced to counter this but for now this reduction will only apply until T3.
000 Ice Monkey freeze duration reduced by 50% on ceramics
All T3 Ice Monkeys increase freeze duration on ceramics from 50 > 100%
203 Icicles crosspath now gains camo prio
Glue Gunner
The Bloon Solver’s rework has been very popular, however, we’d like to have a better lead up into the new mechanics by introducing this earlier at the tier 4 now.
4xx Bloon Dissolver now creates puddles on track leading up to Bloon Solver, puddles deal 1 damage, all other stats and crosspath benefits are the same.
Sniper Monkey
This will allow Cripple MOAB to take out regular MOAB layers in one shot until round 100; for such a slow attacking single target tower we feel this will help top path flex, even if mostly for show.
5xx Cripple MOAB damage increased from 80 > 280
Monkey Buccaneer
Reworking Grape Shot crosspathing as it gains far too much crosspath value by T2 but then is lacking in purpose at higher tiers, double shot will only work as one extra grape however Destroyer will now apply its full attack rate buff to the grapes and Flagship will equip aspects of Grape Shot on the mini planes.
210 Grape Shot total projectiles reduced from 10 -> 6
310 Destroyer also reduced from 10 > 6 grapes
310 Destroyer now increases grape attack rate twice as much, matching increase to the regular attack
410 Aircraft Carrier planes radial attack now fires an arc of grapes instead of darts
420 Aircraft Carrier planes radial damage type Sharp > Fire
400 Aircraft Carrier plane radials damage 1 > 2
4xx Aircraft Carrier missiles now follow tower target priority
Monkey Ace
Spectre is shifting a little of the ceramic bonus around into basic all damage at the cost of reduced pierce, which should make up for lack of single target damage while also making the pierce crosspath more necessary when being used for cleanup focus.
xx4 Spectre Dart damage increased 3 > 4
xx4 Spectre Dart ceramic bonus reduced 2 > 1
xx4 Spectre Dart pierce reduced 15 > 10
xx4 Spectre Bomb damage increased 2 > 3
xx4 Spectre Bomb ceramic bonus reduced 4 > 3
xx4 Spectre Bomb pierce reduced 30 > 20
Heli Pilot
Even with the map-range advantage, rotors are weak compared to any other constant AoE circle like this. Chinook feels like it’s near a place we are happy with now, however we want another tiny nudge on cost while keeping cash generation value the same. Pushing some higher values on the last Comanche Commander changes as the missile attack is effectively such a small portion of the tower’s total damage late game.
302 Razor Rotors will now benefit from the faster firing crosspath
3xx Razor Rotors cooldown rate 0.75 > 0.5
x4x Support Chinook price reduced from $10500 > 9500
As the Rapid Reload crosspath has actually fallen behind in value compared to Burny Stuff for top path Mortars we want to try a slight stun duration increase as this buffs the base path with a larger benefit to Rapid Reload mortars as a stalling option. Mortar consistency is lacking at x3x making it tough to spend on even though x4x is fairly good, so some of the T4 rate is shifting down to help out with this. As the camo property has grown quite weak and currently Signal Flare is considered the best decamo tool, we want to push back slightly on its cost and by reducing the blast radius of the decamo area while emphasizing crosspathing for effectiveness there.
4xx The Big One stun duration non-MOABs increased from 0.5s > 0.75
5xx The Biggest One stun duration MOAB increased from 0.3s > 0.5
5xx The Biggest One stun duration BFB increased from 0.2s > 0.3
5xx The Biggest One stun duration DDT increased from 0.2s > 0.3
x3x Heavy Shells attack delay reduced from 1.08 > 0.81
x4x Artillery Battery attack rate buff reduced from ¼ to ⅓ (remains the same rate: 0.27)
xx3 Signal flare cost increased $700 > 800
xx4 Shattering Shells price reduced from $11,000 > 10900
xx3 Signal Flare decamo radius reduced from 50 > 43
103 Signal Flare decamo pierce increased by 5 > 10
As Engineer sentries do this already, newly spawned Mini Avatars from temples will now by default match the target priority of the temple.
4xx Sun Temple's Magic Sacrifice mini Sun Avatars when placed will spawn with the same target prio as their parent tower
Ninja Monkey
We’re changing the Ninja Monkey Paragon’s focus as a fighter against camo, as we feel like a greater strength and tactical value against camo will be the full reveal of all camos rather than all camo removal.
Ascended Shadow now grants global camo detection for all your towers
Ascended Shadow no longer strips camo from Bloons with every attack
Ascended Shadow main attack gains bonus to camo +6
Ascended Shadow Flash Bomb Explosion gains bonus to camo +20
Ascended Shadow Flash Bomb Shurikens gains bonus to camo +16
Ascended Shadow Sticky Bomb Projectile gains bonus to camo +3200
Ascended Shadow Sticky Bomb Explosion gains bonus to camo +700
Ascended Shadow now deals 25% damage to all non-Boss MOABs that spawn
Alchemist
Alchemist Transforming Tonic is in a weird spot with the transformation unable to attack through walls when the base alchemist is able to. Also with this, including a QoL fix for the T5 that currently prevents transformed towers from functioning with target priority.
x4x Transforming Tonic transformed alchemist can now ignore line of sight
x5x Total Transformation towers transformed by the x5x will keep their Target Priority
Druid
While the tornado doesn't do anything to MOABs, it still spends itself on them which wastes a relatively long cooldown, so addressing this flaw. Avatar of wrath doubles the base attack speed before any scaling is applied, but this hasn’t ever applied to the 205 Lightning, so taking care of that as well. Housekeeping - even deep in the forest, it does actually make life better.
3xx Druid of the Storm’s Tornado no longer targets MOAB-class Bloons
x3x Druid of the Jungle no longer pops Lead Bloons without 130 crosspath
x3x Jungle Vine follows target prio of tower instead of strong
x3x Jungle Vine defaults tower to strong priority when purchased
205 Avatar of Wrath base Heart of Thunder attack rate increased 2.3s > 1.15
Spike Factory
We’ve heard the feedback, so Spiked Mines get a tweak to get more mines exploding but with less pierce on each, to overall increase quality of life in more frequent use but less wasted pierce. This will help out with some of the problems it has scaling into late game super ceramics.
4xx Spiked Mines pierce increased from 12 > 20
4xx Spiked Mines explosion pierce reduced from 40 > 30
4xx Spiked Mines DoT damage increased from 1 > 10
5xx Super Mines explosion pierce remains at 60
5xx Super Mines DoT damage increased from 1000 > 2500
Monkey Village
A minor QoL for cheap Monkeyopolis creation, we included a small base amount of cash production to the generation formula.
xx5 Monkeyopolis income formula now includes a base +$2500 minimum
Engineer
The 005 crosspath fix in the last update left XXXL Trap slower than previously even if crosspathed to 205, so we are increasing that base 005 slightly to match up the 205 crosspath again so that it isn’t any slower than before.
xx5 XXXL Trap attack cooldown reduced from 5.8s > 4.6
Beast Handler
As our newest tower to be added to BTD6, we went over feedback for every path and made a large number of adjustments addressing a variety of points.
3xx Great White thrash rate benefits from speed buffs
3xx Great White damage increased 4 > 8
3xx Great White max extra damage from merge increased 8 > 16
3xx Great White max attack rate buff from merge increased 0.20634 > 0.38
3xx Great White extra thrash knockback duration from merge increased 0.1 > 0.2
4xx Orca thrash damage increased 20 > 30
4xx Orca thrash max extra damage from merge increased 40 > 60
4xx Orca max attack rate buff from merge increased 0.37829 > 0.38
4xx Orca thrash radius increased 20 > 24
5xx Megalodon price reduced from 55,000 > 45,000
5xx Megalodon thrash radius increased 30 > 36
5xx & x5x Beast handler paths are now overclockable
x4x and x5x Max Merge Bonus: Overkill damage on MOABs now distributes to the children of that target
xx1 Gyrfalcon path deals +1 damage to Regrows to stop accidental infinite regrow farms
xx3 Golden Eagle pierce increased 12 > 15
xx3 Golden Eagle pierce range increased 24 > 30
xx3 Golden Eagle ceramic pierce penalty reduced from +3 > 1
xx3 Golden Eagle Max Merge Bonus: Now grabs MOABs with pierce penalty +14
Gwendolin
Removing the stacking aspect of Gwendolin’s burn damage over time, but increasing the damage as she levels up so that it actually scales up in power now.
Lv6 Gwendonlin main attack DoT stack count 0 > 1
Lv6 Gwendonlin main attack DoT damage increased from 1 > 2
Lv9 Gwendonlin main attack DoT damage increased from 1 > 4
Lv10 Gwendonlin main attack DoT damage now increases by 1 per additional level
Adora
While they are complicated individuals, Adora can now fully appreciate the sacrifice of the newest Monkeys in the struggle against the Bloons.
Lv7 Blood Sacrifice can now be used on Beast Handlers
Admiral Brickell
We aren’t happy with strats that start looking like exploits with frequent sell-replace loops.
Upon Selling Brickell - all of her placed Mines are now expired along with her as well
Psi
Psi’s stalling out of the end of round is an odd mix of useful / annoying / out of control, so we are for now capping this to a 3 seconds of overtime stalling. Psi’s Psychic Blast ability also has weirdly low pierce for a long cooldown ability with no damage, we are increasing the base pierce greatly but it no longer increases in pierce at Lv7 since the extra pulse brings more pierce anyway.
If no Bloons are left unpopped on screen aside from ones Psi is currently holding & destroying, these Bloons will be destroyed after a maximum of 3 seconds
Lv3 Psychic Blast pierce increased from 50 > 200
Lv7 Psychic Blast pierce increased from 100 > 200
Event / Boss / Relic / Knowledge
All Lych Soul variations can now be stunned/slowed by paragon tier upgrades
Looking Forward
Five months of 2023 done and dusted, which feels to us like it has zoomed by, perhaps because the Auckland office where the BTD6 team is based has only just reopened after the severe flooding at the end of January. All of Update 36 and the majority of Update 37 were completed while again working from home, but we’re very excited to have the office repairs done, the flood wall almost finished, and the ability to work shoulder to shoulder again on fun new things for the monkeyverse! Here’s the latest gaze into the crystal ball:
Update 38 Key Content
New Boss - Phayze: another all new Boss concept and play style, not giving any other hints apart from the name itself
Summer fun: a new Brickell hero skin and a waterpark map aimed toward Intermediate to help keep northern hemisphere summer cool
Quests: continuing to build new quest system features and adding a few new Quests to the list
Update 39 Key Content
Map Editor: under construction since last year with internal systems testing happening during 38.0 development, we are super excited to put map creation tools in player hands on as many platforms as possible when it goes live
New Hero - Spirit Walker: another unique design that we’re sandboxing already to make sure it has as much balance and art iteration as possible, again no hints other than the name
Update 40 Key Content
New Paragon - Monkey Sub: we’ve tagged sub as the next Paragon, so tell the Navarch to stop hoarding all of the Portable Lakes!
Stretch Goals - Boss Rush Team Event and CT Themes: lots of unknowns 3 updates out but we have strong plans for a new Team event and new parameters for Contested Territory that will make each CT more dynamic - anything that we don’t get done by end of year will have strong groundwork for next year
Console
Getting closer to submission on Xbox and PlayStation but this has been slow going. We’ve added another programmer and are working even more closely with platform partners to get through our last issues and launch as soon as possible, but that’s likely at least another 2 months. Switch is still a consideration depending on response to Xbox and PlayStation, as it will require additional bespoke development.