Update: Bloons TD 6 v50.0 - Update Notes!

Available now!

Update Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0zbMwVaNu0

New Hero, Silas the Ice Shaper

• Ever wonder what happens when you teach an Ice Monkey magic? Well, if you needed an excuse to use a lot more Ice Monkeys, Silas’ all-in-one frost enhancing package is just for you! Silas is a supportive crowd control hero with a heavy focus on supporting, and being supported by, other Ice Monkeys & slowing the progress of Bloons
• At his base level, he both freezes nearby water & slows all Bloons in his large radius. His basic attack will slow Bloons by 50%, then freeze these slowed Bloons, and trigger an icy explosion when hitting any already Frozen targets 
• As Silas levels up he buffs Ice Monkeys to create orbiting Ice Fragments when they attack, creates Ice Walls on the track that freeze any Bloons to come into contact with them, reduces the cold resistance of White Bloons, gains increased experience with more Ice Monkeys placed, allows for an extra Tier 5 Ice Monkey to be placed and more!
• Silas has 3 abilities
  • Lv3 Frostbite: For a short time upon activation attacks will detonate any freezes on the target, dealing increased damage the more freeze time was remaining
  • Lv7 Frozen Cascade: Creates a chain reaction of small icy explosions centered around the hero and up to 10 of the closest Ice Monkeys, freezing and dealing extra damage to any already Frozen targets
  • Lv10 Frozen Burial: Freezes all Bloons and deals extra damage to any already Frozen targets. Then fills the tracks with slowing Ice Walls
• That’s all we have to share for now, we wish you many fun icecapades and a brrr-illiant time strategizing with the new ICESHAPER

New Powers & Powers Pro

• Powers Pro System: 
  • At long last they are here! One of our favorite elements from Bloons TD 5 finally had enough design and discussion to evolve to the right extent to merit inclusion in BTD6.
  • Pro Powers are a little more expensive than their basic counterparts, however, after being placed they can be further upgraded by picking one of three mini-paths for in-game cash. Pro Powers are completely separate entities from the standard versions and do not replace them - you can still collect and use your regular Powers.
  • As the new paths are a significant amount of work, we are not adding all Pro versions at the same time and are instead starting with two of the most used Powers.
• Super Monkey Beacon: This Beacon comes with a full-game duration Super Monkey Storm ability, and can be used as many times as you desire for free on cooldown.
  • Top path stores multiple ability charges, secondary and tertiary triggers, and ability charges can be immediately restored for Monkey Money
  • On Middle path the ability deals less damage but has a much faster cooldown, gains a permanent Super Monkey turret, and grants a free Super Monkey after several rounds
  • Bottom path deals much more damage, stuns surviving MOABs, soaks through MOAB layers, and damage increases after every ability activation, so the more you use it in a game, the stronger it gets
• Banana Farmer Pro: Baseline Farmer Pro has increased radius & collection speed
  • Top path gains full map range and much faster collection speed, while leaving banana peels on the track that trip up passing Bloons
  • Middle path can collect increased cash by spotting Camo Bananas, and targeting Farms to produce Regrow Bananas
  • Bottom path has stacking benefits from multiple Farmers, which increase the sell value of Banana Farms in radius, increase Bank income & automatically collect from Banks, & along with the Bank Deposits knowledge will automatically deposit a small amount of money into empty Banks
• That’s not all: You now have access to a ‘new’ Power. From out of the frozen depths, the beloved Monkeysicle, with enough dedication, emerges!

New Awesome

• New Intermediate Map, Lost Crevasse
  • Just one of many secret areas discovered by Silas on his nomadic journeys. The Bloons move slower in this frozen underground fissure, but don’t think that makes it easy!
• New Quests
  • First Time Tutorial - Tutorial rebuilt as an improved & replayable quest
  • Bloon Hackers - The Bloons are hacking! Help Benjamin stop them
  • Regular Income - Earn $10 every second, but not from Bloon pops
• New Achievements
  • First Steps: Complete the First Time Tutorial quest
  • ???: ???
• New Trophy Store Items
  • Monkeys: Wizard Sheepie pet
  • Bloons: Ancient ZOMG skin
  • Game & UI: Super Duper Monkey avatar, Dream Sheep banner
• Competition Winning items
  • Nothing this update! But, if you missed it the 7th Anniversary Map Competition Winners can be found here https://www.reddit.com/r/btd6/comments/1m2rjc3/

Game Changes / Additions

• Improved flashier UI for all Rewards & Purchases received 
• Tutorial remade using the Quests system & talking heads, even Tu Torialer!
• Mailbox System, taking in all events we spam in front of your face when you reach the Main Menu (event rewards, support gifts, update notes, community messages)
• To assist in confusion for co-op leaderboards the bottom of Leaderboards will now display the text ‘End of Leaderboard’ if there are more than 0 but less than 100 scores, or ‘Top 100 Players Listed’ if there are more than 100 submitted scores.
• Added Gamecenter Achievements for iOS and Arcade builds

General Changes

• A number of localization fixes
• Resolved an issue where sound could be forcibly un-muted by unlocking Desperado
• Resolved an issue with the Snap of your Fingers achievement not correctly awarding
• Resolved an issue where some players saw a lower number tally for total hero skins
• Passive abilities can no longer be activated via the selected tower ability hotkey
• Resolved a crash when repeatedly backing in and out of the events menu
• Efforts made to prevent softlocking on load when save files are corrupted
• Some Co-op optimizations for multi-part network messages
• Resolved a ghost notification pip on Play Social

Event changes

• [CT] Relics can now be viewed from the in-game pause menu
• [Boss] Resolved a niche case where Boss Shadow would not display on main menu

Map Specific changes

• [Polyphemous] Now works correctly when set to ‘Free’ removal rate in Challenge Editor
• [One, Two, Tree] Range buff locations should no longer cause 014 Bloontrap to ignore player Bloontrap target location
• [Balance] Phayze will no longer teleport backwards every 10th kill in Boss Rush

Legends changes

• [Rogue] Super Ceramics will now start appearing from round 31 rather than 81
• [Rogue] Should no longer start to display negative Bloon modifier values in late freeplay
• [Rogue] Legendary Tiles spawning next to Minigames should no longer override reward
• [Rogue] Resolved issue issue with ‘Gold Tier Achieved’ displaying multiple times

Tower Specific Fixes

Bomb Shooter

• Corrected Bomb Shooter fireworks projectile swap for 'non recursive' clusters (Glorious)

Ice Monkey

• xx4 Icicles performance optimization pass made for the Icicles mutator

Desperado

• x3x Deadeye should no longer fail to hit targets next to a wall
• x3x Deadeye should no longer be able to ignore Boss immunity windows
• xx2 Nomad passive ability cooldown rate can now be influenced

Monkey Sub

• 5xx Energizer should not improve Ice Monkey cooldown by 50% unless placed in water

Wizard Monkey

• 031 Dragon’s Breath no longer has bonus pierce over 041 Summon Phoenix

Alchemist

• Brews should no longer be able to land on towers they were not targeted towards

Mermonkey

• 5xx Lord of the Abyss when chinooked should correctly remove inky water

Engineer

• 420 Engineer Sentry MOAB damage bonus crosspath should now work correctly
• Engineer Paragon can no longer be targeted with another Engineer’s Overclock

Beast Handler

• 3xx Great White’s thrash cooldown is now calculated correctly

Hero Specific Fixes

Obyn Greenfoot

• Resolved an issue with Obyn’sNature's Ward Totem spawn animation not displaying

Etienne

• Should no longer visually range buff himself during Chinook redeployment
• Should no longer create multiple UCAVs when rate buffed excessively

Geraldo

• Round based buff items should expire correctly in Sandbox mode

Rosalia

• Lv10 Kinetic Charge visual should correctly display on Bosses

Balance Changes

We had less time for balance this update, but as we know many fans look forward to the balance changes we’ve still taken time to include a number of touch-ups we hope you can enjoy!

Dart Monkey

Crossbow’s pierce is being increased to more effectively match the number of Child Bloons that spawn when targets are popped open, the pierce crosspath is being improved even further as this change does effectively nerf the crosspath. 

• xx3 Crossbow pierce increased 3 > 4
• 203 Crossbow pierce increased 9 > 12
• xx5 Crossbow Master unchanged

Tack Shooter

To match the base tacks fired by Tack Shooters the Tack Paragon’s tack nova count is increasing, which along with lower projectile lifespan should tighten up the effective single target damage close to the tower. Eruption ability’s lifespan bonus is also being increased to keep the tower’s long-range buff very similar to how it was before even with the lower starting lifespan.

• 555 Tack Shooter blade tack nova projectile count increased 6 > 8
• 555 Tack Shooter blade projectiles lifespan reduced 42 > 35
• 555 Tack Shooter tack nova projectiles lifespan reduced 24 > 18
• 555 Tack Shooter Eruption ability lifespan bonus increased 200% > 250%

Ice Monkey

Well it seems we made Absolute Zero kinda good finally… With the powerful synergies that have now come out here, along with Silas arriving this update bringing even more Ice Monkey synergies, we are reducing some of the constancy here.

• x5x Absolute Zero main attack global freeze duration reduced 0.75s > 0.6s
• x5x Absolute Zero cooldown 20s > 25s

Desperado

You knew it was coming, so settle in pardner. Many touchups are being made for our newest tower, so we will break this down path by path.

Top Path: Standoff’s bonus with fewer targets in radius will now improve at T3, carrying all the way up to T5. Twin Sixes damage is increasing along with the cost reducing to make it start easier and stay effective longer. The Blazing Sun’s DoT area of effect is being improved in radius, pierce & damage to cover more targets easier and deal more damage to them.

• 1xx Quickdraw price reduced $250 > 200
• 3xx Big Iron maximum Standoff bonus increased 60% > 120%
• 3xx Big Iron maximum Standoff loss per bloon increased 0.15 > 0.3
• 4xx Twin Sixes damage increased 5 > 6
• 4xx Twin Sixes price reduced $5800 > 4800
• 5xx The Blazing Sun fire aoe pierce increased 5 > 8
• 5xx The Blazing Sun fire aoe radius increased 6 > 12
• 5xx The Blazing Sun fire aoe damage over time increased 50 > 75

Middle Path: Crosspath price is lowering for early value, while the rest of the higher tiers in this path see a number of stat improvements to balance out their unique use cases. The T5’s Bounty Mark application is improving with faster passive Marks and the pistol now also applying a Mark to the first Bloon hit by each attack.

• x2x Bullseye price reduced $500 > 350
• x3x Deadeye rifle pierce increased 3 > 4
• x4x Bounty Hunter price reduced $8000 > $6500
• x4x Bounty Hunter pistol damage increased 12 > 16
• x5x Golden Justice Rifle damage increased 210 > 280
• x5x Golden Justice Rifle Fort bonus increased 210 > 280
• x5x Golden Justice Passive Bloon Mark rate reduced 9s > 3s
• x5x Golden Justice Pistol applies Bounty Mark to main target hit
• x5x Golden Justice Pistol area pierce increased 5 > 8

Bottom Path: After some help & advice from their ride-or-die partner, Enforcer is moving down some attack speed from the Shotgun attack into T1 & T2 crosspath bonuses to improve the crosspath value while keeping T3 roughly similar. At higher tiers Pistol damage has increased for better long-range Single Target performance.

• xx1 Wanderer max rate bonus increased 30% > 45%
• xx1 Wanderer bonus loss per tower increased 10% > 15%
• xx2 Nomad max rate buff increased 25% > 50%
• xx2 Nomad rate buff per bloon increased 1% > 2%
• xx3 Enforcer shotgun attack cooldown increased 1.56 > 1.97
• xx4 Avenger pistol damage increased 12 > 18
• xx5 Desert phantom pistol damage increased 20 > 50
• xx5 Desert phantom pistol Ceramic Bonus increased 20 > 50

Sniper Monkey

Cripple MOAB’s shrapnel piercing has been improved to assist in support purposes. Elite Sniper has fallen in use so price is being reduced, and a small price shift has been made for bottom path to bring Semi-Auto Rifle online sooner.

• 520 Cripple MOAB shrapnel pierce increased 3 > 6
• 520 Cripple MOAB shrapnel lifespan distance increased 32 > 80
• 520 Cripple MOAB shrapnel projectile speed increased 160 > 320
• x5x Elite Sniper price reduced $14,000 > $12,000
• xx3 Semi-Auto Rifle price reduced $2900 > $2700
• xx5 Elite Defender price increased $14700 > $14900

Monkey Buccaneer

Favoured Trades sellback bonus has been moved back to a stacking bonus, requiring more setup investment in the area to receive the higher value.

• xx4 Favoured Trades sellback bonus reduced 0.1 > 0.04
• xx4 Favoured Trades sellback benefit max stacks increased 1 > 3

Monkey Ace

As Spy Plane crosspath doesn’t see much love we’ve gone all-in on the Camo crosspath making it a double damage bonus, which is especially good news for Ground Zero vs. Fortified DDTs. Since Spectre works best at the edge of the map far from the entrance the radial attack can expire too early, so projectile distance has been increased.

Spectre likes to be placed close to the edges of the map

• x2x Spy Plane bonus damage to Camo increased +1 > x2
• xx4 Spectre radial projectile distance increased 600 > 900

Heli Pilot

For quality of life the ‘Drag to Redeploy' textbox now disappears earlier during tower redeployment. Door Gunner is now allowed to be used between rounds to reduce that start of round stress.

• x4x Support Chinook 'Drag to redeploy' textbox now hides once a tower is selected to be moved instead of after the tower is finished being moved by the Chinook
• x5x Door Gunner MK Ability can be used between rounds

Mortar Monkey

Mortar Monkey’s base price has been reduced to make it a possible starting tower, if you really want to try that. While it’s still not intended to be a great starter we hope that having the extra option will be fun. Most of the reduced price from this change has been moved into Signal Flare, though left out of the other T3 crosspaths since we feel they are fine receiving the small buff.

• 000 Mortar Monkey price reduced 750 > 600
• xx3 Signal Flare price increased 900 > 1000

Dartling Gunner

While Buckshot is powerful, the high effort requirement pushes favour to the middle crosspath to make up attack speed, so the harder to use crosspath is improving for better payoff. M.A.D has always had powerful single target but doesn’t see widespread use in standard gameplay so we have raised pierce to bump up its versatility without impacting single target performance

• 203 Buckshot Laser Shock damage increased 2 > 3
• 204 Bloon Area Denial System unchanged
• x5x M.A.D projectile pierce increased 12 > 20

Druid

Superstorm gets a fresh coat of paint, including a new name! The Superstorm Tornadoes last far longer and rebound off of map borders, all while still spewing out additional Ball Lightning projectiles the entire time to fill the screen!

• 5xx Superstorm epicness reinforced by renaming to Monarch of the Storms
• 5xx Monarch of the Storms projectile bounces off Map Borders
• 5xx Monarch of the Storms projectile can hit BADs to deal damage
• 5xx Monarch of the Storms projectile distance increased 150 > 450
• 5xx Monarch of the Storms Lightning attack damage increased 10 > 30

Mermonkey

Abyssal Warrior will now have a slight startup cooldown to limit certain exploity tactics. Middle crosspath trident gains extra projectile pierce to improve early game value. Recent changes to Symphonic Resonance caused its pierce usage to increase for far too much of a nerf, so we have increased the pierce to offset this.

• 3xx Tentacle attack starts on cooldown 0.5s
• x1x Trident pierce increased 2 > 3
• xx4 Symphonic Resonance trance pierce increased 4 > 8

Spike Factory

Spike Factory’s paragon damage is being moved from mini spike storms back into the main attack to nerf this while reducing the impact of expiring projectiles upon Bosses spawning. 

• Main Spike bonus damage to MOABs increased 140 > 240
• Mini Spike Storm bonus damage to MOABs reduced 180 > 80

Regarding Permaspike, this update we decided to take an in depth dive into its inner workings and we decided the following changes would be good to make

• xx5 Permaspike range set to 42
• xx5 Permaspike attack cooldown set to 6.0625s
• xx5 Permaspike pierce set to 50
• xx5 Permaspike damage set to 10
• xx5 Permaspike damage type set to Sharp
• xx5 Permaspike projectile radius set to 6
• xx5 Permaspike projectile age set to 300s
• Lastly we decided to look at spike duration. As it happened, buffing the duration of permaspike has created a rift in space time, and according to a time scientist who exited from this rift, what we had done was so unfathomably stupid that the fabric of the universe was unfolding. In order to save the multiverse as well as tonight's dinner we had to send a team of highly specialised space ninjas into the rift in order to defeat the evil demon king who was the true culprit behind this rift, and sadly in the process of defeating the demon king we were interrupted by time cops who forced us to revert the change in order to restore the space time continuum. Needless to say, this reset in the space time continuum also reverted recent balance changes and so xx5 Permaspike remains unchanged.

Engineer

Overclock’s Village range bonus always felt like an odd special case, and now that there is a proper dedicated range bonus ability the combined range this grants for villages ended up being overpowered, after consideration we didn’t want to jump straight to deleting the ultraboost stacking tech here but have lowered the range bonuses from Overclock. 

• x4x Overclock Village range bonus reduced 25% > 10%
• x5x Ultraboost Village range bonus per stack reduced 2.5% > 1.5%

Beast Handler

As it is still overperforming in event cases, Megalodon damage is being reduced. On the other hand Giganotosaurus’ ability damage is increasing to feel more worthy of a T5 ability.

• 5xx Megalodon damage reduced 700 > 600
• 5xx Megalodon damage scale reduced 1400 > 1200
• x5x Giganotosaurus ability damage increased 150 > 300

Hero Balance

Captain Churchill

Captain Churchill has a significant DDT weakness, particularly of the fortified variety, so to provide light assistance against these his Lv15 damage bonuses may now stack together when multiple properties are met, and it will also grant a bonus to Camo Bloons. Overall this adds up to a +12 damage bonus when damaging a Fortified DDT.

• Lv15 Cannon damage Bonuses increased 3 > 4
• Lv15 Fortified/Lead bonus damage also applies for Camo
• Lv15 Damage bonuses can now stack for each property on the target

Adora

Adora’s recent nerf impacted her freeplay value too much, with limited options for heroes that scale well into freeplay we have agreed it would be best to change back her sacrifice stacks.

• Lv20 Blood Sacrifice max buff stacks increased 30 > 40

Rosalia

Rosalia is overperforming as a consistent lategame fullscreen stall, so her BFB knockback and Lv18 Flight Boost uptime are both being reduced.

• Lv13 laser BFB knockback reduced 5 > 2.5
• Lv18 flight boost cooldown increased 25s > 35s

New Rogue Artifacts

Bargaining Chip

• In-game Boost reroll costs are reduced by (20,30,50)%
• When sold to Merchants this artifact has (2,2,3)x the listed value

Power Nexus

• Powers also count as Support Category towers
• Powers attack delays are reduced by (10,15,25)%
• Powers deal increased damage (50,100,200)%

Looking Forward

We so enjoyed and appreciated the hugely positive feedback on the Desperado, and in keeping to our pledge to focus more on the Monkeys, we hope you’ll enjoy remaking your builds and tier lists now with Silas in the mix. We pushed ourselves to make Powers Pro as strong a new system as possible, but also manageable for the addition of new base Powers and new Pros. We’re keen to get feedback on how you find the Powers Pro system, grind amounts, and which Pros you’d like to see next. We’re in strong shape for the last 2 updates of the year, but we have made a few changes, so check those out here:

• Update v51
  • Based on community feedback and team enthusiasm, we’ll continue noodling on Boss ideas and are instead bringing forward the Bomb Shooter Paragon. We haven’t locked down the name yet, but the concept art is amazing and does justice to the working name—Supreme Missile Platform.
  • Obyn Skeletor Skin - art and abilities are looking super cool, and a few of us had a great time with the VO script, so we’re looking forward to this one.
  • Social Goals system has a heap of components including more accessible Team Trophy ownership, improvements for Teams with dormant Mayors, the framework for many types of shared Goals, and a range of Boost Rewards that will continue to benefit Teams even after the Social Goals Event has ended. We may not get all of that done for v51 so we’ll focus on the most important and fun bits.
  • Game Editor was delayed by the substantial rework to the BTD6 Tutorial, which we felt was critical to getting new players into the game more effectively. Game Editor continues to be a huge passion of ours and something that we intend to be transformative for the game. It may not make v52 either, based on the amount of testing it will need at the same time as Frontier Legends.
• Console
  • We know our console community has been extremely patient as we work on getting PlayStation and Xbox up to date, and we can’t thank you enough. It continues to be a bit of an uphill battle, but we’ve made good strides and brought on more help to speed it up! 
  • We now have another programmer dedicated to Switch and to assist in bringing all consoles to the main branch, along with the up-to-date content.. Some of the biggest screens (like Contested Territory and Quests) are nearly complete for controller support, and we are making a big push to have Switch launched and PlayStation and Xbox submitted for the Christmas holidays. We must set expectations that release windows are tight in December, even for updates, and may cause delays.
  • We are committed to being clear about in progress development, so our team will aim to do another dev diary before v51, with general and further console updates.
  
   
  
• Update v52
  • Frontier Legends is going brilliantly. We truly hope you’ll be blown away by the way we’ve transformed what’s possible inside BTD6, and we hope to show a sneak peek in the coming month.
  • Again, based on community feedback, we’re planning another Paragon rather than a Hero Skin. Not that we’re stuck on Primary Paragons, but we did think Ice would be a chill fit for the Northern Hemisphere holidays.

Enjoy the heck out of Silas, the new map, Powers Pro, the Monkeycicle, and all of the other awesome we could squeeze into v50. We’ll update our social pages as soon as we’re ready to share sneak peeks of what’s ahead. Happy more awesomer gaming!