Update history:Bloons TD 6/Version 31.0

Version 31.0
Artwork representing version 31.0
Release dates
Steam13 April 2022[1]

Version 31.0 is the second major update to Bloons TD 6 of 2022. This update introduced the new hero Geraldo, the Boss Bloon Vortex, and the new map Scrapyard.

Additions

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Cosmetics

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General changes

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We added these special conditions for victory as we thought they would be fun on their own, but we also have them in mind for the Contested Territory update coming later this year, as a variety of victory conditions will make the team dynamics needed to capture and hold a range of territory more interesting
— Update notes
  • New Special Conditions for Custom Challenge victory
    • Least Cash
      • has no limits on earning cash & allows all forms of income generation, but rewards victory only if a player remains below a chosen cash spent threshold
    • Least Tiers
      • limits victory to staying under a chosen value of tiers which increments for every tower/ upgrades/ hero/ level purchased

Updated Heroes Screen

  • We’ve been wanting to update the Heroes screen for awhile, so with the addition of our 14th Hero, Geraldo, we made that happen
  • Hopefully you will enjoy the full rework - making it easier to see all Heroes, allowing side by side comparisons of Heroes’ powers, and surfacing the visual changes that accompany various upgrades
  • Structural and performance reworks to Bloons and the Bloon overlay system. All in the interest of tighter code and more flexibility for future updates.
  • Added commas to Cash, Damage Numbers, & Income for increased visibility and slightly delayed visits to your respective optometrists
  • Large changes to backend co-op game communication between clients for increased stability
  • Facebook friends’ scores has been replaced with LiNK Friends scores so that we have more reliable control of score sharing; please note your Facebook friends will not autopopulate into your LiNK Friends - you will have to reestablish any Friend connections manually
  • Due to demand over the years, we have added a Logout option to our in game webview. Since we recommend players using another account for their modded games, it’s nice to support doing that a little better.
To prevent event games running past the final cutoff on score submission time for ranked events, there will now be a short break in the final moments of competitive events in which the event is still active but no further games can be started. Note this will only be in place for ranked events, meaning that Boss events will allow you to create games still so long as you swap back to non-ranked mode
— Update notes
  • Added a 1 hour cutoff where no new ranked games can be created and existing ranked games cannot be entered
    • If the player is already in a ranked game during this cutoff the score can still be submitted to the leaderboard as long as the player does not exit out of the game

Hotkeys

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  • If you have already placed your hero, your ‘Hero hotkey’ (U by default) will now swap to instead ‘select your hero’ wherever it is. If you have more than one hero this will cycle through them
  • Resolved an issue with using hotkeys during loading screens causing some tower portraits to become faded out

Towers

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To add a little more synergetic crosspath use for the Juggernaut 402 crosspath, xx2 will now also grant bonus projectile lifespan, this applies to any use of that crosspath though we feel it will in particular pair nicely with the ricocheting projectiles. Juggernaut in general is also seeing a small utility knockback buff to help it carry on a little longer into the game.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
4-X-X Juggernaut
5-X-X Ultra-Juggernaut
  •   Juggernaut gains a slight Bloon knockback causing bloons to move backwards at 3x speed for 0.1s
X-X-1 Long Range Darts
  •   Long Range Darts also increases projectile lifespan by +15%
X-X-2 Enhanced Eyesight
  •   Enhanced Eyesight also increases projectile lifespan by +20%
Tiers Changes
5-0-2 Glaive Lord + Red Hot Rangs
  •   Boomerang glaives again crosspath correctly with xx2 (bug fix)
The Frags crosspath for top path Bomb Shooter has always been quite a poor choice, trying to compete with attack speed as a benefit for stun utility isn’t going to ever work out so we have instead gone the route of turning the frags crosspath into a DPS/Stun hybrid with a lot of small buffs to frag power.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
3-0-2 Really Big Bombs + Frag Bombs
  •   Frags: Damage increased ― 1 → 3
  •   Gains more frags ― 8 → 12
4-0-2 Bloon Impact + Frag Bombs
  •   Frags: Damage increased ― 2 → 3
  •   Gains more frags ― 8 → 16
  •   Frags: Pierce increased ― 2 → 3
5-0-2 Bloon Crush + Frag Bombs
  •   Frags: Pierce increased ― 3 → 20
  •   Gains more frags ― 8 → 16
Tiers Changes
5-X-X Super Brittle
  •   Permafrost: slowdown to MOABs increased ― 25% → 50% (bug)
1-4-0 Snowstorm + Permafrost and further upgrades
  •   Snowstorm Ability: Now applies 50% Permafrost to MOAB-Class bloons (bug)
1-5-0 Absolute Zero + Permafrost
  •   Permafrost: slowdown to MOABs increased ― 25% → 50% (bug)
Tiers Changes
2-X-X Corrosive Glue and all crosspaths
  •   Corrosive Glue DoT: Tick cooldown decreased ― 2.3s → 2s
3-X-X Bloon Dissolver
  •   Bloon Dissolver DoT: Ceramic bonus increased ― +0 → +1
5-X-X The Bloon Solver
  •   Bloon Solver DoT: MOAB-class bonus increased ― +3 → +5
Energizer upgrade offers nothing extra to the reactor sub aside from niche utility buffs, so we have increased the lategame cleanup potential by a large amount to help deal with Super Ceramics.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
5-X-X Energizer
  •   Pulse: Damage increased ― 3 → 5
  •   Pulse: Now gains bonus Ceramic damage ― +0 → +5
The base Grape attack of T4 MOAB Takedown has had a ceramic bonus added to lead up to the T5 a little better.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-4-X Monkey Pirates
  •   Grapes: Now gains bonus Ceramic damage ― +0 → +1
Spy Plane is always a lesser crosspath aside from specific challenges that call for camo detection. It has a similar vibe to Night Vision sniper so we have given it a similar buff.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-2-X Spy Plane and all crosspaths
X-3-X Bomber Ace and further upgrades
  •   Spy Plane grants attacks +1 bonus damage to camos
  This article is in need of research. You can help out by editing this article or discussing your findings on the talk page.
The editor who added this notice elaborates: Exact details for the bottom Heli bugfixes are unknown. Is this comanche crosspath fix a buff?
Previously Razor Rotor’s used to make the heli pursue for a further distance & this caused it to often fail to reach Lead Bloons with the rotor attack that could pop them. This overall seemed like a design flaw so that back-off distance has been moved up to the T4 instead. Apache Dartship has also fallen off over time as a viable saveup for prime, though it is meant to be reasonably difficult some changes have made this a little more difficult than it probably should be so we have increased the pierce of the machinegun attack.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
3-X-X Razor Rotors
  •   Razor Rotor’s Pursuit targeting modified to move closer to the Bloons
    • Note: 4xx and above unaffected
4-X-X Apache Dartship
  •   Machine gun: Pierce increased ― 5 → 7
    • Note: Apache Prime unchanged
1-0-4 Comanche Defense + Quad Darts
  •   Mini Comanches now correctly fire 5 darts at a time with Quad Darts crosspath (bug fix)
X-X-5 Comanche Commander
  •   Comanche Commander's damage has been corrected with crosspaths (bug fix)
Tiers Changes
5-0-2 The Biggest One + Burny Stuff
  •   Biggest One now correctly applies burn to DDTs without MIB as long as it can detect camo (bug fix)
Ray of Doom suffers from the downsides of being designed as a high piercing tower, for the price this makes it feel far too weak against the round 100 BAD if you invest in it too early without some other forms of single target, to bring back a little of the interesting sort of targeting that the T4 has and help with this single target problem it will now deal a massive damage bonus to the first target hit along the beam’s path.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
3-X-X Laser Cannon
  •   Pierce increased ― 4 → 6
3-0-2 Laser Cannon + Powerful Darts
  •   Pierce increased ― 6 → 9
4-0-2 Plasma Accelerator + Powerful Darts
  •   Powerful Darts crosspath beam width increased ― 2 → 3
  •   Powerful Darts crosspath focal point size increased ― 4 → 6
5-X-X Ray of Doom
  •   Ray of Doom: Now deals +55 bonus damage to the first target
5-0-2 Ray of Doom + Powerful Darts
  •   Powerful Darts crosspath beam width increased ― 6 → 9
0-3-2 Hydra Rocket Pods + Powerful Darts and further upgrades
  •   Powerful Darts crosspath explosion radius increased ― 8 → 12
X-4-X Rocket Storm
X-5-X M.A.D
  •   Rocket Storm ability is now grayed out between rounds
X-5-X M.A.D
  •   MAD height inconsistencies compare to Rocket Storm have been resolved (bug fix)
X-X-2 Powerful Darts and all crosspaths
  •   Powerful Darts projectile size increased ― 2 → 3
Arcane Blast's benefit to the base tower is quite small for the price and also doesn't carry on well as a crosspath to the other T3s since they add new attacks instead of buffing the base attack, the price has been reduced to add a little more value here along with more MOAB damage at the T5 to give it a little more value over Arcane Spikes. As we somewhat expected the last Prince of Darkness rework didn’t end up really nerfing it so much, so we are now following up with a small price nerf.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
2-X-X Arcane Blast
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $600 → $450
5-X-X Archmage
  •   Bonus damage to MOAB-class increased ― +17 → +19
0-4-2 Summon Phoenix + Monkey Sense
0-5-2 Wizard Lord Phoenix + Monkey Sense
  •   Phoenix should now correctly interact with camo prio with Monkey Sense crosspath (bug fix)
X-X-5 Prince of Darkness
  •   Upgrade cost increased ― $24,000 → $26,500
  This article is in need of research. You can help out by editing this article or discussing your findings on the talk page.
The editor who added this notice elaborates: Does DChamp +1 pierce buff affect LotN?
Robo didn't need to lose pierce in the last Super Monkey T2 rework, and Dark Knight feels like it has too much pierce without ever considering the pierce crosspath. So to balance these together we’ve taken out pierce from Dark Knight and added it back into x2x carrying up into Robo Monkey. Dark Champion pierce is increased rather than decreased to push it further ahead of Dark Knight.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-2-X Epic Range and all crosspaths
  •   Epic Range pierce bonus increased ― +1 → +2
X-X-3 Dark Knight
  •   Pierce reduced ― 5 → 4
X-X-4 Dark Champion
  •   Pierce increased ― 7 → 8
X-X-5 Legend of the Night
  •   Portal: Now applies after lives are lost (bug)
Grand Sabotage is extremely powerful in freeplay, but really boring outside of that one scaling mechanic. For a little more flavour with the shinobi mechanic, the T5 will now boost the potential of your shinobi army.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-5-X Grand Saboteur
  •   Ability: Grants all Shinobi Tactics on screen +5 range
  •   Ability: Grants all Shinobi Tactics on screen +1 damage to MOAB-class
X-X-5 Master Bomber
  •   Resolved an issue with Master Bomber Stickies sometimes hitting regular Bloons instead of MOAB-class (bug fix)
Tiers Changes
5-X-X Superstorm
  •   Superstorm now benefits from Ball Lightning 25% freeze chance regardless of crosspath (bug fix)
Partially to help a little with tedious endgame farm collection in ranked boss events, or any other use you may desire for it, we have added a non-power form of easy banana collection. However we do not want to trivialize the intended downside of opting for a more micro intensive farm path too much, so this is still restricted behind a low-range tier 5 upgrade.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-X-5 Monkey Wall Street
  •   Monkey Wall Street now collects nearby bananas/crates as a Banana Farmer would
To help make the tradeoff of building one T5 over multiple T4 not be as hard a choice, the basic attack on Carpet of Spikes has had power increased significantly over rate, range & damage.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-5-X Carpet of Spikes
  •   Range increased ― 34 → 50
    • Note: May reduce concentration of spikes
  •   Spikes: Damage increased ― 3 → 4
  •   Attack cooldown reduced ― 0.98s → 0.33s
Call to Arms ability suffers from uptime, for such an expensive upgrade which is such low range and purely support this makes it hard to use, so duration has now been increased to push it up to a 1/3rd uptime threshold
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
X-4-X Call to Arms
  •   Ability: Duration increased ― 12s → 15s
    • Note: Homeland Defense unchanged
  This article is in need of research. You can help out by editing this article or discussing your findings on the talk page.
The editor who added this notice elaborates: Did these bug fixes also affect XXXL trap?
Sentry Expert really needed some logic fixes to get more of the actual correct sentries placed at the right times, it has also received a number of power buffs across the board to the special sentries at T4 complimenting the new logic reworking. Cleansing Foam has had some extra crosspath utility added at the cost of a small price increase and a large decrease to Ultraboost price.
— Update notes
Tiers Changes
4-X-X Sentry Expert
  •   Sentry Expert logic has been reworked to evaluate threat levels based on Bloon types that it can counter, Bloon types that counter the sentries that it wants to spawn, and which of the current threats on screen is the greatest. Distribution of sentry types should scale based on how much one Bloon threat is more of a threat than another.
  •   Crush Sentry: Ceramic damage bonus increased ― +1 → +4
  •   Crush Sentry:Damage type changed ― Sharp → Shatter
  •   Bomb Sentry: Damage increased ― 2 → 4
  •   Cold Sentry: Pierce increased ― 15 → 25
  •   Cold Sentry: Explosion radius increased ― 12 → 18
  •   Energy Sentry: Gains increased MOAB-class damage ― +0 → +2
X-3-X Cleansing Foam
  •   Upgrade cost increased ― $800 → $850
1-3-0 Cleansing Foam + Sentry Gun and further upgrades
  •   Foam makes Sentries shoot Foamy nails that strip properties
0-3-2 Cleansing Foam + Pin and further upgrades
  •   Pin crosspath allows Cleansing Foam to slow Bloons by 50% for 2 seconds
  •   Pin crosspath allows Cleansing Foam to slow all MOAB-class (including BADs) by 50% for 2 seconds (bug)
X-5-X Ultraboost
  •   Upgrade cost reduced ― $120,000 → $105,000
X-X-4 Bloon Trap
  •   Bloon Trap issue resolved on Sunken Columns with Bloontraps falling under the map in certain location (bug fix)
0-1-4 Bloon Trap + Larger Service Area
  •   Bloon Trap issue resolved with certain conditions causing Bloontraps to repeatedly auto-collect even while empty (bug fix)

Heroes

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Gwendolin’s Firestorm damage doesn’t carry well into the endgame so has been buffed at a later level.
— Update notes
Levels Changes
16+
  •   Firestorm: Base damage tic increased ― 1 → 5
  •   Firestorm: MOAB-class bonus damage tic increased ― +9 → +10
    • Note: 15 damage total
Pat Fusty was initially given a smaller footprint than it felt he should have due to concerns about balance with his small radius, but actually has been extremely powerful for a long time despite these radius issues. We feel like now giving him back the footprint size that he always should have had similar to Churchill will add a reasonable lategame downside to consider without harming his early use so badly.
— Update notes
Levels Changes
All
  •   Footprint size increased ― 7 → 8
Levels Changes
7+
  •   Adora sacrifice buff should now apply to Mini Sun Avatars from Temples (bug fix)
The Sea Mines delay that was added back in 29 has done well for reducing some of Brickells weaknesses, but as we expected somewhat does add in new weaknesses to rush rounds of Bloons that can now sneak past before all of her mines have been able to acquire a target. To help lessen this new issue she has gained a brand new ability that will allow more Sea Mines to rapidly deploy and find a target over a short duration.
— Update notes
Levels Changes
7+
  •   Lv7 Blast Chain utility ability added for Admiral Brickell. For 10 seconds all sea mines have their delay halved & their projectile speed doubled
10+
  •   Resolved an issue with Admiral Brickell's Mega Mine sometimes not showing stun effects (bug fix)
We felt that Psi’s early game too easily carried into some extremely powerful endgame setups. These setups were overperforming due to certain cooldown interactions with stalling out cooldown, however in an effort to try to avoid nerfing the cooldown for the average player we decided to make that stalling synergy harder to pull off instead.
— Update notes
Levels Changes
All
  •   Placement cost increased ― $800 → $1,000
10+
  •   Psionic Scream ability 'speed of blow back' increased from bloon speed increased ― 300% → 600%
    • Note: May reduce stalling potential, but also may allow targets to reach towers sooner

Bugs introduced

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  •   Lych-soul benefits from Freeplay scaling (bug)

Minor fixes and changes

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  • Resolved an issue with Custom Odyssey title/description being reset
  • Changed how boss bloon status overlays are applied to look better
  • Resolved an issue with Techbot ignoring hard limits on ability use in custom challenges in regards to overlap, causing laggy animation loops
  • Resolved players getting booted out of co-op sessions on some low end devices due to being timed out from a long desync
  • Optimizations made to freeplay roundsets
  • Resolved some low quality animation issues
  • Using Thrive right before defeat, and restarting should no longer break the animation
  • Fixed some incorrect medal displays on leaderboards
  • Resolved some specific cases causing the pause penalty on races to carry over onto the next attempt
  • Join Match button in play social now checks if you have internet again on press to prevent some edge case creation of broken lobbies requiring a game restart
  • Map Area data converted to a new System which should improve performance & allow for more complex shapes
  • Add new localization for all hero skins to remove ‘skin’ from their names on player profiles.
  • Resolved some issues with retry last round in challenge editor
  • Resolved some issues with hero skins changing when changing owner in co-op
  • Resolved a number of rare crashes
  • Added a new icon for the ‘Create Challenge’ button
  • Fixed Water Textures on Cargo map
  • A number of minor UI fixes
  • Resolved some issues with UI animation speed
  • Resolved a number of map specific height and placement issues
  • Added in fixes in a number of places to prevent the game from crashing due to certain server issues or loading broken challenges
  • Resolved an edge case crash on the data conflict screen
  • Resolved a crash with Lych Soul being saved on multi-path maps
  • Investigation success

Video

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Notes

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  • The official update notes claim that frags from 5-0-2 Bloon Crush + Frag Bombs now deal +12 damage to Ceramics, but this change was not actually implemented.
  • The official update notes include a list of joke changes for the Glue Rat.

Glue Rat pet has been overperforming in all game modes for a while now without any apparent weakness or strategic downsides.

  • Base movement speed ramping level endures persistently
  • Max level goggle tightness loosened from Max -> Sam

References

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