Bloons TD 6/Balance changes/Version 42.x (2024)

42.0 - Update Notes!

Available now for iOS, Android, Steam and Windows 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.

Update Video

Key New Features

• Accolades and Player Revenue Share
  • 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
• x4x Summon Phoenix ability projectile speed increased from 350 > 450
• x5x WLP’s Dragon’s Breath attack damage over time increased 1 > 10
• x5x WLP’s Dragon’s Breath attack now fires 3 projectiles
• x5x WLP’s Dragon’s Breath attack damage reduced from 6 > 2
• x5x WLP’s Dragon’s Breath attack pierce reduced from 50 > 15

Super Monkey

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.