Bloons TD 6 - Update Notes! Version 21.0

New Awesome

• New map Encrypted - Do you dare enter the ruins to discover the ancient secrets?
• At least 4 new spooooky Achievements
  • Oathbreakers - Summon a giant army of the undead!
  • Freaky Friday - Using Transforming Tonic
  • Living on the Edge - Win non-CHIMPS/Impoppable with 1 life left
  • Monkey Fan Club - Create or Login to your Ninja Kiwi account

• New Trophy Store Items
  • Monkeys: Super Monkey Bat pet, Ghost Upgrade FX, Sub Ducky Pet
  • Bloons: Skeleton BAD
  • Co-op: Scream emote!
  • Game & UI: Etienne Avatar, Mortar Avatar, Flamenco - Synthwave music track, Super Vampire Storm skin

• Limited Time Only during the Halloween event! Get these Trophy Store items while you can!
  • Bomb Shooter Pumpkin Bombs, Banana Farm Candy Corn 'Nanas, Monkey Ace Bone Darts, Bones Pop FX, Hatchet Bloons, Frankenmonkey Avatar, Wolf Monkey Avatar, Coffin Drop skin, Grim Farmer Skin

Key Features

• Stats summary now displays upon Game Over in freeplay
• A rather massive behind the scenes overhaul of the Buff Icons system, and they will also not clip out the edges of the map anymore.
• The Insta-monkey system in BTD6 has evolved a lot since launch, from a farmable mechanic to grant easier wins into more of a collection system. With this, we have found that while the initial intention was to give a nice beefy reward for any win, this has resulted in Tier 3 and 4 insta-monkeys being far too common while Tiers 0-2 are much more coveted with no farmable way to get them. We have decided to work on this by redefining the free reward earned on round 100, instead of being a random chance of Tier 3 or 4 rewards will now follow this logic
  • Beginner maps: Insta reward range Tier 0 to Tier 2
  • Intermediate maps: Insta reward range Tier 1 to Tier 3
  • Advanced maps: Insta reward range Tier 2 to Tier 4
  • Expert maps: Insta reward range Tier 3 to Tier 4
  • Round 200 and higher remains at the past Tier 3 to Tier 4 regardless of difficulty

Big Changes / Additions

• Following up on the changes in 20.0 in relation to making for smaller and faster updates, additional changes have been made to more efficiently and correctly clean up old bundles when updating before downloading new & changed files
• Added Hover/Tap and hold state to all medals on the stats screen
• Odyssey Menu now supports the display of a seasonal theme
• Added in a ‘Loop’ option to the Jukebox for current song
• After having had a name set at least once before, Monkey Names can now be edited from the Player profile page
• Added Search Functionality to the Achievements menu
• Hidden Achievements now appear in the Achievements menu and display progress before being completely unlocked. Description & title will remain hidden until the achievement is earned. You can find these by searching for ‘???’
• Added a new ‘More Money Pack’ offering 20 Cash Drops, 5 Monkey Farmers & 5 Thrive boosters at a discounted price

Bug Fixes & General Changes

• Co-op Purchasing multiple continues in a row should no longer end in situations where the game is stuck losing even though no Bloons are leaking for some players
• Resolved an issue with Co-op Black Medal not being properly displayed if you did not already possess the singleplayer Black Medal for that track
• Dad of Quincy pet should now be visible again & will be re-enabled for purchase in the Trophy store on 21.0
• Pets now have shadows
• Using a restart before beating round 100 in any game will no longer lock off the round 100 insta from being awarded
• Necro Bloons Reanimated & Transforming Tonics used now record to player stats
• Added support to prevent the game crashing at launch under some situations where Player files were corrupted
• Resolved an issue causing Advanced Challenge to sometimes not give any rewards at random
• Gears on ‘Geared’ map should now rotate at a rate that will cause the teeth of the gears to not fall out of sync
• Double tapping checkmark to place towers should no longer cause a crash
• Decimals have been cut off from displaying in challenge editor
• Jukebox should no longer scroll to the bottom of the song list when opened
• Etienne, Adora, Heli Pilot and Engineer should correctly play placement sounds
• Resolved some issues with selling towers crashing the game simulation
• Resolved a Race issue with the ‘Last’ set round in a race being completed before the final Bloon of a previous round is popped caused the timer to continue for a second before victory being recorded
• Updated Spring Spring map icon to match the actual map
• Fixed some layering issues with Top Hats and Glue
• Hitting ‘back’ from a monkey in the monkey menu no longer takes you all the way back to the primary menu
• Monkey Knowledge respec option should no longer sometimes open twice when pressed
• Odyssey stats correctly reset on replay
• Resolved an issue where in the challenge editor less ‘slots’ were displayed than actual towers there are in the game
• Current Race Rank will no longer disappear after opening rewards and exiting back out
• Resolved a co-op crash related to players attempting to reconnect to a lobby that has already launched when on a bad internet connection
• Co-op should correctly match all upgrades again after a resync
• Added polish to some UI which was clipping under certain resolutions
• Resolved some issues with a slight delay on the pause menu
• Adjusted size of Odyssey description box to allow for more detail
• Challenge Editor can again apply camo/regrow properties to apopalypse
• Resolved an issue where starting an apopalypse game & restarting immediately would cause it to not begin

Boomerang Monkey

• 204 Kylie Boomerang no longer loses the ability to hit 1 Bloon multiple times with regular attack

Ice Monkey

• 4xx Embrittlement once again allows ‘Sharp’ damage to penetrate any Bloons frozen in the Embrittled state
• x3x Placing an Arctic Wind on top of a flagship will no longer create an ice platform on top of the buccaneer
• x3x Arctic Wind no longer inconsistently slows one of two Zebra children after popping a rainbow

Bomb Shooter

• 024 Recursive Clusters now have an alternate missile projectile for recursive shots

Monkey Sub

• Corrected a typo for Pre-emptive Strike’s description

Heli Pilot

• x3x Downdraft Blowback effects can no longer push Bloons out of bounds
• x5x Resolved an issue with Door Gunner allowing deployment on invalid terrain

Mortar Monkey

• Resolved an issue with selling mortars leaving target circles on screen

Alchemist

• Resolved an issue where Alchemist’s 320 increased number of shots for Berserker Brew would read the number it should give from the wrong upgrade & give a lower number
• x4x Cookie Monster range buff from Strong Tonic knowledge lasts the entire duration

Super Monkey

• 4xx Temple can no longer receive ‘water tower’ buffs unless it is placed in water
• x3x Resolved an issue with Robo Monkey arm targeting which allowed same target or crashed on some devices.

Druid

• 3xx Druid of the Storm Blowback effects can no longer push Bloons out of bounds
• 5xx Superstorm no longer creates an additional cloud platform every time it is crosspathed
• x5x Spirit of the Forest no longer deal damage inconsistently on different numbers of child spawns that come out of any Parent it destroys
• xx5 Avatar of Wrath once again upgrades asset of projectiles

Banana Farm

• x4x Abilities will no longer block others from being used while they are still in debt

Striker Jones

• Zebra Children no longer have a chance to become immune to Jones’ immunity removal

Obyn Greenfoot

• Level 11 Pierce buff applies in the correct order
• Savegames now load totems with the correct skin applied

Benjamin

• Level 16 description updated to reflect 2x Trojan cash

Pat Fusty

• Level 10 ability no longer freezes the pause button until animation is done
• Should no longer create invincible MOAB Class Bloons after grabbing a MOAB hooked by Buccaneer
• Can no longer receive ‘water tower’ buffs unless it is placed in water

Adora

• Reworked how Adora’s sacrifice functions in Extreme Odyssey events, so that it only consumes following the same rules as if you were to sell the towers

Desktop Version

• Added a new options toggle to disable the precision ‘Nudge Mode’. With this disabled towers will always snap to where you click during placement
• Your ‘Placement Mode’ is now saved locally per device rather than in your player save
• In addition to ESC acting as a general hybrid back/pause button, the Tilde/Backquote key (~) will now act as an instant uninterruptible pause (unless you lose) that will only open the pause menu, not close it. As with all hotkeys this can be remapped from the options in the main menu.
• Scrolling with the mouse wheel will now move at the correct speed on scroll-able menus that go from side-to-side
• Uninstallation on steam will now open an additional prompt to remove all login information from your machine as well

Balance Changes

Boomerang Monkey:

Glaive Lord’s 502 gives no use over 520 with how the main attack currently works, so now 502 will additionally apply damage to the secondary revolving attack to target a different niche. MOAB Press spam is overperforming with a high 024 preference, so we are moving pierce from the base 004 into a 204 buff to give this choice some more high density round value.

• 502 Glaive Lord Boomerang gains increased Orbital Glaives damage 2 -> 3
• 004 MOAB Press pierce reduced from 300 -> 200
• 104 MOAB Press pierce reduced from 350 -> 300
• 204 MOAB Press pierce increased from 410 -> 420

Tack Shooter:

The Ring of Fire & Inferno Ring upgrades recently received a crosspath functional rework, as we’re happy with the x2x range/pierce combo now this small follow-up is just to bring a bit more impact to the short-range 402 variant.

• 401 Ring of Fire crosspath now increases damage from 3 -> 4
• 402 Ring of Fire crosspath now increases damage from 4 -> 5
• 501 Inferno Ring crosspath now increases damage from 4 -> 5
• 502 Inferno Ring crosspath now increases damage from 5 -> 6

Ice Monkey:

While Icicles is quite fun for midgame cleanup, we acknowledge points raised on Cryo Cannon trading off it’s freeze prowess too quickly when the smaller freeze area even with such a fast rate increase still overall makes it struggle to slow as effectively. To counter this a little we have doubled the freeze radius of Cryo Cannon, but also increased damage of both the Ice Balls & Icicles to highlight more the intention of this path swapping to a damage hybrid earlier.

• xx3 Cryo Cannon Blast Radius increased 10 -> 20
• xx3 Cryo Cannon ice ball damage increased 1 -> 2
• xx4 Icicles 'shard' damage increased 1 -> 2

Glue Gunner:

The Bloon Solver recently received a small functional rework buff, this follow-up buff will make the stepping stones to it a little easier on saving.

• 4xx Bloon Liquifier price reduced from $6500 -> $5500

Sniper Monkey:

To retain value in more Lead-heavy situations including against DDTs, this upgrade that has always allowed Lead popping to main attack will now also grant this to the Shrapnel from any shrapnel shot snipers mixing in this upgrade

• 120 Shrapnel now gains Normal type damage from Full Metal Jacket

Monkey Buccaneer

Aircraft carriers have ongoing trouble with missing targets, these changes can hopefully offer a few extra ways of supporting the weakness internally while we keep investigating this.

• 4xx Aircraft Carrier's forward dart projectile radius increased by 2
• 5xx Carrier Flagship Missiles damage type changed from Explosive -> Normal
• xx1 Long Range increases projectile speed of all attacks by +25%

Monkey Ace:

Tsar Bomba currently holds low value compared to multiple Ground Zero purchases aside from the stun, this greatly requested change should hopefully add more niche benefit .

• x5x Tsar Bomba bombs damage type changes from Explosive -> Normal
• x5x Tsar Bomba cooldown reduced from 45 -> 40

Heli Pilot

Heli Pilot manages on pursuit far too easily without any need to consider Bigger Jets unless camo or downdraft is required. For more crosspath variety than just ‘camo’ we moved more of the base Heli speed out and back into Bigger Jets with an overall buff to Bigger Jets. This should allow Bigger Jets to scale a little better than other helis through early speed ramping. Due to overall comparisons between Downdraft’s blowback & MOAB Shove we have also slashed MOAB Shove’s price by 30% to give it & Comanche more of a kickstart

• Heli base speed reduced from 45 -> 40
• x1x Bigger Jets speed increased from 67.5 to 70
• xx4 Heli MOAB Shove price reduced from $5000 -> 3500

Mortar Monkey:

Mortar’s Faster Reload feels like a ‘required’ as a crosspath with Burny Stuff never scaling well on any path but it’s own. We like choices not requirements so to counter this we have made Burny Stuff scale with top-path damage & shifted a small amount of the speed from Faster Reload onto the base mortar and reduced base accuracy considerably.

• Base Mortar random spread area increased in size from 18 -> 30
• xx1 Increased Accuracy random spread area stays the same as it currently is (8)
• Mortar base rate of fire increased from 2.2 -> 2
• x1x Faster Reload rate buff reduced from 30% -> 25%
• x2x Rapid Reload rate buff reduced from 30% -> 28%
• 302 Shell Shock, Burny Stuff damage increased from 1 -> 2
• 402 The Big One, Burny Stuff damage increased from 1 -> 3
• 502 The Biggest One, Burny Stuff damage increased from 1 -> 25

Wizard Monkey:

Though it was never a goal for the base tower to be great, given the additional purple weakness since BTD5 and how poorly it currently performs we feel it deserves to take rank as the cheapest magic tower along with a small buff. Dragon’s Breath crosspathing has also been finished up along with a considerable boost to scale Dragon’s Breath up against Ceramics. Finally, Unpopped Army changes are also here! We wanted to cover all of the usability issues with this upgrade while also powering it up and expanding more on the mechanic that makes it so unique. We hope this will be enough to make Wizard very useful in a number of ways, but will be keeping a watchful eye on how it plays out.

• 000 Wizard Monkey price reduced from $450 -> 400
• 000 Wizard Monkey pierce increased from 2 -> 3
• 030 Dragon's Breath, breath attack gains bonus damage to ceramic +1
• 130 Dragon's Breath increases lifespan of Dragon Breath 0.4 -> 0.8
• 040 Summon Phoenix projectile radius increased from 5 -> 6
• 040 Summon Phoenix damage increased from 3 -> 4
• 040 Summon Phoenix pierce increased from 5 -> 6
• 040 Summon Phoenix projectile speed increased from 300 -> 350
• xx4 Unpopped Army now gains a bonus to graveyard after round 81 to make up for the total decrease in child Bloons that are created from Super Ceramics (About 10 per pop)
• xx4 Unpopped Army targeting has been reworked to function in a smarter way, summoning Zombie Bloons further back to avoid them spawning behind Bloons, and also on multi-lane tracks targeting the lanes that are likely to leak sooner
• xx4 Unpopped Army now enhances the power of all of it’s attacks by 1 for every 200 souls in it’s Graveyard. This can stack up to 10 times for Prince of Darkness
• xx5 Prince of Darkness max Graveyard capacity increased from 2000 -> 3000

Ninja Monkey:

While Sticky Bomb still has issues we are investigating, this damage buff allows Sticky Bombs to destroy all regular MOABs from round 81 to 100 in a single bomb in standard games whether they are fortified or not. In addition since this damage runs off a timed function, somewhat similar to Alchemist’s Unstable Concoction, we felt that adding a range increase to the Sticky attack similar to Concoction should give a better chance to actually explode before the target MOAB is destroyed by other towers.

• xx4 Sticky Bomb damage increased from 400 to 500
• xx4 Sticky Bomb 'sticky attack' range increased to Ninja's range * 1.5

Alchemist:

Follow up steps in overall balancing use of the 420 and 402 alchemist upgrades, this brings both combinations more in-line for total cost and allows us to think about Acid Pools as its own upgrade in future rather than worrying about the impact of changing 402.

• xx1 Acid Pools & xx2 Faster Throwing upgrades have been swapped
• 4xx Stronger Stimulant price increased from $2500 -> 3000
• xx1 Faster Throwing price increased from 500 -> 650
• xx2 Acid Pools price reduced from 600 -> 450

Druid:

We’ve wanted to work on this upgrade for a while but first had to deal with an issue causing it to perform far differently to intended. Unfortunately while we expected improvement from this fix, it ended up being an overall nerf. We have cut the price by a large amount to counter this and will revisit the upgrade again after this settles.

• x5x Druid Spirit of the Forest price reduced from 50,000 -> 35,000

Spike Factory

Since launch xx2 has never brought enough to the table as a crosspath. Working into the long life trend of the bottom path we felt that introducing longer life at a ‘cross-pathable stage’ may work in some new niche. Along with this we made a couple small tweaks buffing what should be the ‘strength areas’ of a few of the more underperforming high tier Spike upgrades

• xx1 Long Reach -> lifespan increased 70 -> 100
• xx4 Deadly Spikes last for 1 more round before expiring
• 041 Spike Storm lifespan will increase by 50% with this change
• (No changes here carry over to xx3 Long Life Spikes or xx5 permaspike)
• x5x Carpet of Spikes passive cooldown reduced 20s -> 15
• 4xx Spiked Mines blast radius increased from 15 to 19

Engineer:

Engineer is quite poor in terms of crosspathing, so we’ve added crosspath benefits to Cleansing Foam as well as an overall price buff to the middle crosspathing upgrades. We’ve been somewhat unhappy with how Overclock sits in the game for a while and especially how the interaction with tower cost causes levelling heroes naturally to be far advantageous over purchasing upgrades when this is already underused. We have made an attempt to rework these issues by moving it to a tier-based system rather than price.

• 5xx Sentry Paragon explosion damage increased from 85 -> 100
• 010 Larger Service Area price reduced from $550 -> 250
• 020 Deconstruction price increased from $200 -> 350
• 230 Faster Engineering increases Cleansing Foam rate 2 -> 1.2
• 031 Oversize Nails increases Cleansing Foam pierce 10 -> 15
• x4x Overclock duration formula has been reworked to apply on a tier by tier basis rather than just lasting for a shorter duration based on the cost of the tower.
  • Based on the current “100% duration” of 60seconds
  • Overclock used on T5 duration reduced to 50%
  • Overclock used on T4 duration reduced to 75%
  • Overclock used on T3 duration remains at 100%
  • Overclock used on T2 duration increased by 25%
  • Overclock used on T1 duration increased by 50%
  • Overclock used on T0 duration increased by 75%

• x4x Overclock for purpose of this duration, Hero tier is equivalent to 'Hero level / 4' (starting at level 0 rather than 1)

Captain Churchill:

Churchill is a chunky, expensive & slow levelling powerful hero, when he was launched he fit well in this spot but his synergies have not aged well. We have started with a small XP adjustment and greatly improved the power of his MOAB Barrage

• XP Requirement for all levels reduced by 5%
• Churchill level 10 MOAB Barrage damage increased 100 -> 200
• Churchill level 20 MOAB Barrage damage increased 250 -> 500

Ezili:

It felt fitting for so many reasons right now, but in addition to Unpopped Army buffs Ezili will now offer them a large pierce boost who then in turn offer up an improved cleanup tower to assist Ezili in dealing with with her main weakness

• Lv 11 Ezili also increases pierce of ALL Zombie Bloons you summon by +50%

Pat Fusty:

We feel that applying the entire recent Roar nerf right away from level 3 was a mistake. To alleviate the impact here we have increased the level 3 duration to a little more than it was

• Lv 3 Rallying Roar buff duration increased from 5s -> 8
• Lv 14 Rallying Roar buff duration remains the same

Adora:

Keeping in line with our “Slow” hero XP curve, Adora’s XP requirement will be reduced to match the new curve applied on Churchill

• XP Requirement for all levels reduced by 5%

Etienne:

While he has been highly underrated, we wanted to fit in a few quality of life tweaks to add overall nicety and smoothen progression.

• Lv3 Drone Swarm ability duration increased from 15 -> 17
• Lv3 Drone Swarm ability lasts +0.5s longer for every level of Etienne
• Lv16 Drone Swarm no longer increases ability duration
• Lv20 'Ability' UCAV duration increased from 15 -> 20
• Lv20 'Ability' UCAV deals normal damage for buff duration