New Features
- Arena Leagues - A complete overhaul of the ranked play experience. - Enter weekly, 30 person leagues and compete to earn trophies. - Each week, the top players in each league will earn Monkey Money and be promoted to the league above, while the bottom players will be demoted to the league below. - Players in Hall of Masters leagues will also be ranked on a global leaderboard. - Each season, you earn a medal based on the highest arena league you competed in during the season or your final position in the Hall of Masters leaderboard. - Arena leagues use the same progression and theming as the current ranked system (Yellow Stadium, White Wasteland, etc). - Existing players will start in an arena league determined by the arena they are in when Season 18 ends (e.g. if you finish Season 18 in Ceramic Crucible, you will begin in a Ceramic Crucible arena league). - Players in Red Bloon Camp will enter a continuous, rolling league that does not reset. They are promoted to Yellow Stadium and enter weekly leagues when they earn 30 trophies.
- New Hero: Etienne - Remote flying drones attack all bloons that enter Etienne’s range. - Advanced scouting techniques reveal your opponent’s bloon queue and cash reserves to help you predict their next move. - Etienne’s UAV upgrades to give all your monkeys camo detection and allows them to bypass the damage immunities of special bloons like lead and purple. - Etienne can be purchased from the Hero screen for 3000 Monkey Money.
- New Bling Season - 6 awesome new cosmetics including Lighting Up Spike Factory trail and Puzzle Bloons decals. - Lock eyes with Fateweaver Adora and her Eye of Misfortune Showcase. - Unlock a special animated avatar for completing the entire season. - This season lasts for 4 weeks (see General Changes below).
General Changes
- New Season Length - Seasons now last 4 weeks instead of 8 weeks. - This means that medals are awarded, and the Hall of Masters leaderboard is reset, twice as often as before. - The Bling Season has also changed to every 4 weeks to line up with the ranked season. - Each Bling season now contains 12 items: 6 generic cosmetics and a 6 item Hero Showcase. - The cost in Golden Bananas of each Bling item has been altered to reflect this new timescale. - There is now a bonus animated avatar or banner each season that can be earned by completing the entire Bling Season. These are exclusive and will not be available again once the season ends.
- Ranked / League Game Rewards - The trophies awarded for ranked games are changing with the addition of Arena Leagues. - Winning a ranked (league) game now awards 3 trophies and 50 Monkey Money. - You earn an additional 1 trophy if you are on a 3+ win streak. - You earn an additional 1 trophy and 20 Monkey Money if you win and your opponent was on a 3+ win streak (you break their streak). - You earn 20 Monkey Money for losing a game. If it was before round 30, you earn 0 trophies. If it was later, you earn 1 trophy. - You earn 10 Monkey Money if you achieve First Blood. - There are no longer any special rewards for winning with No Lives Lost. - It is not possible to lose trophies, only gain them. Trophies reset to 0 each week at the end of the Arena League.
- RIP Casual Mode - Casual mode was necessary under the old ranked system to allow place for consequence free games where players could experiment with new strategies without risking their trophies. - Since you cannot lose trophies in league games, there is no consequence for failure (except a lack of progress). This means casual mode is no longer needed and so is being removed in this update. - This should allow for a larger pool of players in League games and thus faster matchmaking times, as well as freeing up space on the main menu for Clan Wars.
- New Daily Offer Items: The following cosmetic items from Season 16 will now appear in the Daily Offers in the store. - Shark MOAB Skin - Tasty Topping Bloons Decal - Lofi Monkey Avatar - Solar Trails Supermonkey trail - Time's Ticking Emote - Football ZOMG Skin - Late Game? Emote - Bit-nanas Banana Farm Weapon Skin - Monkey Marathon Banner - Mixed Up Alchemist Placement animation - I'm OK! Emote - Starlight Bloon Boost - Adora’s Sunbeam showcase items. - Star Captain Jericho’s Space Armoury showcase items.
Balance Changes
- Bloon Sends - Round 12: Spaced rainbows give $3 -> $2.8 income - Round 25: Tight MOABs $3,500 -> $4,000, quantity 20 -> 15 and spacing 0.05s -> 0.067s (total duration remains unchanged at 1s) - For the most part, we are pleased with the impact of the new tight rushes - noticeably shaking up the meta and leading to more exciting games. However, admittedly they are on the strong side, which has greatly diminished the viability of some towers that can’t deal with them. Tight MOABs is the main rush that stands out, so we have made quite a big nerf to this one. Additionally, Spaced Rainbows have been nerfed because they have always stood out as a top tier early game bloon send, providing high eco efficiency as well as decent pressure on your opponent
- Monkey Buccaneer - 4xx Aircraft Carrier: Aircraft darts pierce 9 -> 13 - 5xx Carrier Flagship: Aircraft darts pierce 14 -> 18 - 4xx Aircraft Carrier: Aircraft darts deal 0 -> 3 bonus damage to ceramics - 5xx Carrier Flagship: Aircraft darts deal 3 -> 6 bonus damage to ceramics - 5xx Carrier Flagship: now also buffs Etienne’s UCAV with -15% attack rate - Top path Buccaneer does not see a lot of use and Buccaneer in general does not have a good answer to the new tight sends, so we’ve added some decent pierce and cleanup buffs to Aircraft Carrier and Carrier Flagship.
- Heli Pilot - xx4 Comanche Defense & xx5 Comanche Commander: Missile blast radius 18 -> 25 - The mini comanche’s missiles have incredibly high pierce (100) but it would very rarely make use of it all due to such a small blast radius. This minor change should help it out a little bit, not increasing its DPS potential but allowing it to perform slightly better in a lot of scenarios.
- Mortar Monkey - x4x Artillery Battery: Deals +4 -> +3 damage to BADs - x5x Pop & Awe: Buffs all x4x Mortars with +4 -> +3 damage to BADs - Mortar has still kept its spot at the top of the meta, dominating in all stages of the game. We’ve decided to limit its late game damage so that it still remains a strong tower early on but is now easier to kill in the late game.
- Super Monkey - 2xx Plasma Blasts: $3,000 -> $2,500 - 3xx Sun Avatar: $11,000 -> $11,500 - xx3 Dark Knight: $4,000 -> $4,500 - 4xx Sun Temple: Main weapon base damage 9 -> 11 - Plasma Blasts in an upgrade that rarely gets used on its own (usually just used as a crosspath), so we’ve lowered its cost while adjusting 3xx and xx3 so that their total cost remains unchanged. Additionally, Super Monkey has struggled quite a bit since we fixed/nerfed Sun Temple a few updates ago, so we’re giving it a much needed damage buff.
- Alchemist - xx5 Bloon Master Alchemist: MOABs use up 20 -> 10 pierce and BFBs use up 50 -> 30. Total pierce remains at 200. - Just a small buff for Bloon Master Alchemist, letting it pop more MOABs and BFBs which gives it more potential to be a reliable option against the new tight rushes.
- Spike Factory - 4xx Spiked Mines: explosion pierce 40 -> 60 and explosion blast radius 19 -> 28 - We’d love to see Spiked Mines get some more use, and hopefully this sizeable pierce and radius buff with help with that.
- Engineer Monkey - x5x Ultraboost: The temporary Overclock buff now lasts twice as long (30s -> 60s on a tier 5 tower) - We’re giving small boost to Ultraboost to help justify its incredibly high price tag.
- Gwendolin - Level 3: Cocktail cooldown 40s -> 45s - Gwendolin is considered one of the strongest heroes with good early game damage and solid late game support. We’re just making a minor Cocktail cooldown change for now, allowing for more opportunities to effectively rush her early on.
- Obyn - Level 12: Now gives all Druids in range +1 damage to fortified bloons - Level 17: Hero range increased 43 -> 65 - We wanted to give Druids some attention and chose to do this by providing Obyn with another Druid-specific buff. This buff primarily targets Poplust Druids since Avatar of Rush already deals high damage. Obyn’s range increase is also aimed at Druids, with the larger range allowing for more Druids to be buffed.
- Ocean Obyn - Level 17: Hero range increased 43 -> 65 - Like with Obyn, this Ocean Obyn change is being implemented to make his buff capable of buffing a much greater number of towers now. In particular, this change is aimed at Ninja
- Benjamin - Level 5: Earns $200 -> $250 income per round - Level 20: Syphon Funding cooldown 65s -> 45s - We’re buffing Benjamin’s early game cash slightly because he is still overshadowed by the Jerichos. Additionally, previously his level 20 did not provide much compared to other heroes, so that now has another benefit.
- DJ Ben Jammin’ - Level 5: Earns $150 -> $187.5 income per round - Level 10: Can downgrade 10 -> 12 bloons in total, and can downgrade 3 -> 4 BFBs - Level 20: Can downgrade 2 -> 4 ZOMGs - Similar changes as Benjamin for the same reasons, with an added buff to DJ Ben’s level 10 ability so that he can deal with the new tight rushes a little bit more effectively.
- Smudge Catt - Level 7: Scratching Post cooldown 30s -> 40s - While Smudge Catt is not an incredibly popular hero, this is a strong ability with a quick cooldown. Most hero ability cooldowns have been increased to give more rushing opportunities, but Smudge Catt never received this same treatment.
- Pat Fusty - Level 3: Rallying Roar buffing range 30 -> 35 - Level 14: Rallying Roar buffing range 40 -> 50 - Pat Fusty has has been out of the limelight for a while now so we wanted to provide him with some buffs. For now we’ve increased his buffing range, since it was quite limiting before.
- Agent Jericho - Level 3: Seize Assets initial cooldown 17.5s -> 28s
- Star Captain Jericho - Level 3: In It For The Money initial cooldown 17.5s -> 35s - Highwayman Jericho’s usage rate has dropped off significantly ever since his last nerf, however we believe that this is simply due to the other Jerichos being the clear favorites now, rather than Highwayman being too weak relative to all the other heroes. Therefore, we have left Highwayman as is and targeted the other two Jerichos instead.
- Fateweaver Adora - Level 10: Chains of Fate now has a pierce limit of 500 bloons (previously infinite). MOAB class bloons use up more pierce: MOABs = 10, BFBs = 20, ZOMGs/DDTs = 40, BADs = 60. - Fateweaver Adora has retained her spot as the top hero in the highest arenas, with the new tight rushes not hindering her viability since Chains of Fate counters them exceptionally well. Given this, it seemed appropriate to limit the pierce on Chains of Fate, since infinite pierce was unnecessarily excessive for such a powerful ability.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed default hero upgrade animations not playing
- Fixed issue where daily clan reward text would show even if your clan day was complete
- Fixed effects on the xx4 and xx5 Alchemist not appearing or appearing incorrectly.
- Fixed Clan Wars daily game reward not sparkling on tablet devices.
- Fixed loading an empty clan island if opening a join link to a disbanded clan.
- Fixed bloons frozen by Ice Monkey’s ability retaining their immunity to sharp damage for the full freeze duration even if they are unfrozen early.
- Fixed Fusty the Snowman’s frozen popping effect not working on bloons frozen by the xx3 and x4x Ice Monkey.
- Fixed x3x Monkey Sub not receiving range buffs to its missile attack.
Update Video: https://youtu.be/zIFEQl0nE6I
Let us know your feedback in the comments and happy gaming!