Bloons TD 6 - Update Notes! Version 22.0 - Long live the Dartling Gunner!

Bloons TD 6 v22.0 - New Awesome Features

• Dartling Gunner! After a long time in design and development, we are delighted to present the BTD6 version of this multipurpose beast tower!
  • BTD5 and Battles players will notice a few key differences in the BTD6 version, most importantly not being able to detect camo without middle path and pushing Depleted Bloontonium style popping power into the second path 3rd tier
  • Swivel speed added to all Dartlings, which was important for co-op sync
  • Locking rotation added as a targeting option to the base tower for ease of use (and a related monkey knowledge ability that allows you to panic unlock all Dartlings - see Emergency Unlock)
  • Variety of range and placement strengths and weaknesses across all 3 paths, with attention to crosspathing variety and tier 5 specialization
  • How do you get access to Dartling? Check the gift box on the main menu - it’ll tell you how many pops you need to unlock it and start blasting Bloons!

• Obyn Redfoot, Mountain Guardian skin and VO added
• New Maps
  • Beginner map - Skates
  • Advanced map - X Factor

• New Monkey Knowledges & One Edit
  • Emergency Unlock (Dartling Knowledge; note this can’t be "tech-botted")
  • Cross the Streams (Dartling Knowledge)
  • Gorgon Storm (Dartling Knowledge)
  • Grand Prix Spree
  • First Last Line of Defense
  • Monkeys Together Strong
  • Flanking Maneuvers
  • Ambidextrous ‘Rangs changed to Recurring ‘Rangs, and all Boomerang Monkeys have now become Ambidextrous by default; if you had Ambidextrous ‘Rangs already, it will switch automatically to Recurring ‘Rangs

• Challenge Browser with Win %, Ratings, and Favorites
  • New browser-system to allow for easier searching of player-made challenges
  • Many changes made to the storage and setup of custom player-made challenges
  • Player-made challenges now record a soft clear-rate percentage
  • Player-made challenges can be added to Favorites and will now allow others to ‘Like’ a challenge after an attempt
  • Browser-system will support a few different methods of sorting through challenges; Trending, Newest, Most Liked, Casual & Expert as well
  • Additional browsing based on your interactions: Favorites, Your Challenges, Played Challenges, and Saved Games (up to 10)
  • New Challenge Editor option: Regrow Rate

• 10 new Achievements
  • Ready Player One?
  • Crash of the Titans
  • A La Code
  • Regifted
  • Coupon Crazy
  • Instant Gratification
  • Insta Century
  • Limited Run
  • Tools to Darwin
  • Plus one more to find!

• New Trophy Store Items
  • Heroes: Dread Pirate Brickell - Parrot Pet
  • Monkeys: 3 items in the limited time list below
  • Bloons: Frozen Glacier MOAB, Snowflakes Pop FX
  • Co-op: Ezili Facepalm emote, Celebration emote
  • Game & UI: Music Track - Jingle Bloons, Iceberg Pontoon, Monkey Ace Avatar, Dartling Gunner Avatar
  • Limited Time only: Fusty the Snowman - Penguin Pet, Presents Upgrade Fx, Candy Cane ‘Rangs, Monkey Village - Elf Pet, Red Nose MOAB-Class decal, Santa Hats Bloon Decal, Retro Techbot, Bauble Mine, Happy Holidays emote, Ninja Avatar, Patch Avatar

Noteworthy Changes / Additions

• Hero Skin Bundles have been added to the game. Now that quite a few heroes have a lot of alternate cosmetics, we’ve bundled some of these into new IAP store items for any players that want to fast track their unlocks
• Updated achievements system to consume less memory, this will mean that external-platform achievement may now not reflect until returning to menu or collecting the achievement
• Odysseys now support tower path restrictions for more variety in Crew setups

Bug Fixes & General Changes

• Updated placement circle color to have a more frame-perfect display of when a tower can be placed, and when it cannot. Previously there was a frame-difference on the color updating which could be noticed on slower devices
• Resolve some issues with displayed game over stats when loading saved games
• Link to these detailed update notes from the in-game top-level notes has been updated
• Heroes with Placement Animation trophy store items will now play animations on upgrades as well
• Resolved an issue where the search feature under achievements section lost functionality when using it after collecting rewards from a completed achievement
• Empty 'named monkeys' bar will now link to the trophy store if the item is not purchased
• Resolved an issue with a certain achievement tracking easy wins even though restricted to medium and hard only
• Resolved a number of stats that were not counting correctly in co-op
• Resolved an inconsistency with flooding the valley on Flooded Valley
• Firing Range map had ‘bounceable blocker’ support added for path 1 dart monkey bouncetasticness
• Bonus Rewards during collection event correctly translated
• Resolved a rare load game crash
• Resolved a soft lock that could occur in co-op when levelling up with the tower upgrades menu covering the screen
• Resolved a crash that could occur when a save conflict appeared while playing co-op
• Reloading a save on Workshop should no longer occasionally double up on increasing price of the reverse motor
• Trophy Store, Top Hats item icon has been updated
• Bloon Skins should no longer be removed in co-op when removing camo/regrow from the target

Ice Monkey

• xx4 Icicles now correctly inherits the radius of xx3 instead of shrinking

Monkey Sub

• Resolved some issues with xx5 Sub Commander not always correctly buffing the damage of x5x Pre-emptive Strike

Monkey Ace

• x5x Tsar Bomba resolved an issue with crosspath stacking

Heli Pilot

• x4x Support Chinook now records Cash Earned separately from pops

Mortar Monkey

• x4x Artillery Battery issues resolved with ejection point
• x4x Artillery Battery issues resolved with crosspath application
• x5x Pop and Awe active ability now lasts between rounds

Wizard Monkey

• x2x Wall of Fire should no longer occasionally ‘be eaten’ by nearby walls if the tower is placed next to a blocker
• x5x Wizard Lord Phoenix correctly hits all Bloon Types with radial balls

Super Monkey

• xx3 Dark Knight resolved an issue with placement when Darkshifting

Ninja Monkey

• xx4 Sticky Bomb should now detonate correctly even when other bloon mutations (like glue) are applied to the same target

Druid

• x4x Jungle’s Bounty now records Cash Earned separately from pops
• x2x Heart of Oak should no longer remove regrow from Bloons that it cannot damage

Monkey Village

• x1x Regrow Blocker should work more reliably

Captain Churchill

• Resolved some issues with Churchill aiming and spinning like he’s chasing his own tail

Ezili

• Swapping Ezili’s skins should no longer cause her to apply the wrong DoT Fx

Pat Fusty

• Resolved an issue with Pat’s footprint being an incorrect size

Adora

• Adora vengeful portraits now use the correct portraits again

Desktop Version

• Resolved an issue where ability hotkeys were not correctly working as multi-key-hotkeys. This should now allow you to separately have hotkeys setup for ‘shift+2’ and ‘2’ set up at the same time and work without triggering each other.

Balance Changes

Dart Monkey

We’re happy enough with most of Dart Monkey’s bottom path, but the T4 stepping stone has always felt pretty undesirable for the price point compared to T3 so we have just increased the attack rate slightly at tier 4

• xx4 Sharpshooter reload time reduced from 0.95 to 0.85s
• xx5 Crossbow Master reload time remains unchanged

Boomerang Monkey

MOAB Press still feels dominant but not wildly outpacing other options so a small price increase has been made

• xx4 MOAB Press price increased from 2000 to 2200

Bomb Shooter

Some low tier Bomb pierce has been shifted further up into the 2xx Heavy Bombs upgrade to effectively nerf 130 Mauler meta in price, but the price of these upgrades and MOAB Damage of T4 Maulers have both been buffed to benefit other variations of bomb better. Bloon Impact’s price was increased as it didn’t need to benefit from this buff, and a buff was made to 502’s Bloon Impact’s frags to alter this underused crosspath.

• 000 base pierce reduced from 18 to 14
• 1xx Bigger Bombs pierce bonus reduced from 10 to 6
• 1xx Bigger Bombs price reduced from 400 to 350
• 2xx Heavy Bombs now increases pierce by a further +10
• 2xx Heavy Bombs price reduced from 800 to 650
• 4xx Bloon Impact price increased from 3200 to 3600
• x4x MOAB Assassin MOAB damage bonus increased from 25 to 30
• 502 Bloon Crush frag damage increased from 3 -> 12
• 502 Bloon Crush frag pierce increased from 2 -> 3

Tack Shooter

Ring of Fire doesn’t perform well for the price as a low-range AoE tower with no single target advantage. Since we value the original design intent as low range AoE, we’ve lowered the price to remain a viable choice.

• 4xx Ring of Fire price reduced from 4500 to 3500

Glue Gunner

Glue Strike currently allows for 240 crosspath to hit MOABs with 042 being more Ceramic focused but losing the Glue Soak from top path hurts against lower layers, so we’ve increased the base amount of layers glued by Strike & Storm so that it won’t expire on non-MOABs so quickly. Additional changes are a follow up reduction to The Bloon Solver’s price and a small increase to MOAB Glue’s price due to dominance in conjunction with MOAB Press.

• 5xx The Bloon Solver price reduced from 24000 to 22000
• 040 Glue Strike ability layers glued increased from 3 to 6
• 050 Glue Storm ability layers glued increased from 3 to 9
• xx3 MOAB Glue price increased from 3200 to 3400

Sniper Monkey

Trading off rate of fire for shrapnel crosspath doesn’t work well for Maim MOAB as it’s all about being a stall tower, so instead of focussing on a damage increase here the shrapnel will now apply the benefits of the sniper’s stun & debuff to turn this crosspath choice into a question of preference in grouping vs single target. Bouncing Bullet has also had its shrapnel pierce increased as it was the only T3 sniper that did not have 3 pierce shrapnel.

• 420 Maim MOAB shrapnel fragments now also benefit from stun
• 520 Cripple MOAB shrapnel fragments now also benefit from stun and debuff
• 030 Shrapnel pierce increased from 2 to 3

Monkey Sub

Ballistic Missile previously had far too much attack speed added into the crosspath and was rebalanced for parity, but the overall performance loss from this was too much. Better balance will come from the base rate of Ballistic Missile itself.

• x3x Ballistic Missile missile reload time reduced from 1.5 to 1.3s

Monkey Buccaneer

Most of the early Buccaneer’s strength comes from grapes, so to make it a little easier to start we’ve moved some cost from the base tower into Grape Shot. On that same note, we’ve piled on a bunch of bonus power to T5 Grape Shot to give it a boost against super ceramics.

• Buccaneer base cost reduced from 550 to 500
• x1x Grape Shot price increased from 500 to 550
• x5x Pirate Lord grape shot damage increased to 5
• x5x Pirate Lord grape shot ceramic damage bonus of +5 added

Monkey Ace

While Pineapples are never the star of the show, the amount of pierce they have is completely unnecessary for their usage window and has only led to balance problems for Bombing Run, specifically in races. This high amount of pierce has been more evenly spread through higher tiers & crosspath. Flying Fortress has also been reduced in price because, while achievable, it doesn’t match well with freeplay progress.

• x1x Exploding Pineapple bomb pierce reduced from 40 to 20
• x11 Exploding Pineapple bomb pierce increased from 20 to 32
• Exploding Pineapple pierce change carries up to x3x Bombing Run
• x4x Ground Zero pierce remains at current pierce value of 40
• x41 Ground Zero pierce increased from 40 to 52
• xx5 Flying Fortress price reduced from 120,000 to 105,000

Heli Pilot

A little more buffing of underused crosspath

• 013 Bigger Jets now allows MOAB Shove to push back faster
  • MOAB speed reduced further from -0.33 -> -0.44
  • BFB speed reduced further from 0 -> -0.11
  • ZOMG speed reduced further from 0.33 -> 0.22

Mortar Monkey

We felt like we set up the math quite well with Mortar changes last update, but regardless of this missed shots due to inaccuracy vs. attack speed turned out to be unpopular and impacted the middle path too severely. Fortunately this change led to the community finding some critical bugs in the middle path upgrades there since Mortar’s release! That said, since low tier Mortars were never powerful we chose to leave the speed buff from last update but revert the accuracy nerf. Additionally mid-path T5 mortar has had all of its T3 damage bonuses increased to better reflect its position as a Tier 5.

• 000 Base accuracy increased from 30 back to 18
• x5x Pop and Awe ceramic damage bonus increased from 3 to 12
• x5x Pop and Awe Lead damage bonus increased from 1 to 4
• x5x Pop and Awe Fortified damage bonus increased from 1 to 4
• x5x Pop and Awe MOAB damage bonus increased from 1 to 4

Wizard Monkey

Some changes have been made to wall of fire to improve race balance in particular

• x2x Wall of Fire attack begins on cooldown when the upgrade is purchase
• x2x Wall of Fire now saves the time remaining on it’s attack cooldown
• x2x Wall of Fire attack projectiles are removed when the tower is sold

Super Monkey

The projectile count of the current multitudes of mini avatars spawned by boosted temples in freeplay contributes to performance decay, so we’ve capped the spawn rate of these mini avatars. Additionally middle path has received some basic buffs with Robo-Monkey feeling unbalanced for the high price and difficult crosspathing, and Tech Terror not keeping up with other towers that perform a similar role.

• 4xx and 5xx mini avatar spawn rate is no longer increased by attack rate buffs
• x3x Robo Monkey price reduced from 9000 to 7000
• x4x Tech Terror ability cooldown reduced from 60 to 45s

Alchemist

While the middle path T5 gets some use, T4 Transforming Tonic does not perform well for the low pierce amount so pierce has been increased.

• x4x Transforming Tonic transformed monster pierce increased from 4 to 6

Druid

Superstorm has been adjusted with a new feature to grant it a method of dealing continuous damage to the targets that it blows backwards. We know many of you will feel this needs much more work but please be patient as we will come back to it.

• 5xx Superstorm’s Storm now spawns Ball Lightnings in a 180 degree arc in front of it every second until the storm expires

Spike Factory

We quite liked how the lifespan changes for xx1 spikes went previously, though this still wasn’t enough to make the path competitive and increasing this number further wouldn’t have much of an impact since most earlier rounds aren’t long enough. Spiked Balls strats have also felt too strong compared to higher tiers on top path, so touching on all of these issues slightly the base lifespan of spikes has been reduced, ceramic bonus increased on 4xx, and a new bonus added to 5xx. We have also made changes to give more purpose to 042 Spike Storm and allowed x5x Carpet of Spikes to save its cooldown so it is no longer required to avoid saving to be used in reliable strategies.

• 000 Base projectile lifespan reduced from 70 to 50s
• xx1 Long Reach lifespan remains at 100s
• 1xx Bigger Stacks price increased from 600 to 800
• 2xx White Hot Spikes price reduced from 800 to 600
• 4xx Spiked Mines ceramic damage increased from 3 to 6
• 5xx Super Mines each spike of each mine now triggers a smaller explosion
  • Radius 20
  • Pierce 10
  • Damage 10

• 042 Spike Storm targets only active paths (ie. on Bloody Puddles)
• x5x Carpet of Spikes save cooldown of passive ability when saving

Monkey Village

Call to Arms has never had enough uptime for the small amount of space that it benefits.

• x4x Call to Arms ability cooldown reduced from 60 to 45s

Engineer

Bloon Trap can now be used more effectively

• xx4 Bloon Trap now has a cooldown of 20s instead of 1 per round
• xx4 Bloon Trap is still limited to 1 at a time per Engineer
• 2x4 Faster Engineering reduces Bloon Trap cooldown from 20s -> 16
• xx5 XXXL Trap will cooldown at 1/6th of the rate of the standard Bloon Trap
• Note: Bloon Trap’s minimum deploy time of 2.8s will override 205 Trap’s 2.7s cooldown

Gwendolin

Gwendolin’s Heat it Up! attack/buff has been sitting in a weird spot where it would benefit from attack speed but does not because of the cooldown which prevents it ever having full uptime. This rework makes her have a roughly similar uptime at all levels without being buffed, however she will now benefit properly with increased uptime depending on any rate modifiers applied to her. A fully juiced Gwendolin around level 15 or 18 should now be capable of achieving 100% buff uptime

• Level 4 Heat it up! cooldown reduced from 15s to 4.5s
• Level 4 Heat it up! Shots required to trigger has been scaled up to her match her innate attack rate at all levels

Ezili

Targeting priorities set to manual instead of hard coded to allow more possibilities & precise player control

• Level 10 MOAB Hex initial target will now follow Ezili’s priority instead of Strong
• Level 10 MOAB Hex jump target will now follow Ezili’s priority instead of Close

Adora

Adora’s level 7 ability served little purpose once she reached level 20, to solve this and also give her a small overall buff we have applied an extra bonus when sacrifice is used.

• Level 7 for 10 seconds Blood Sacrifice now also increases radius of Adora & all Sun Avatars in radius by 10%
• Level 7 for 10 seconds Blood Sacrifice now also increases attack speed of Adora & all Sun Avatars in radius by 10%

Monkey Knowledge - Ability Mastery

It should still be pretty crazy, but the previous state of complete 100% uptime of some level 3 buffs without any additionally applied cooldown buffs required was a little much

• Amount of reduced cooldown for hero level 3 ability reduced from 40% -> 30%