New Awesome
- New Hero Skin - Firecracker Gwen!
- Celebrate anything and everything with Firecracker Gwen’s fireworks!
Game Changes / Additions
- Co-op end screens now have Add Friend buttons
- Advanced tower performance: Towers Info panels now have an extra button listing a performance summary with more details for how many pops, how much damage, cash earnt, current value and lives earnt they have!
- You asked (many times), and finally you receive! Powers that you own a copy of can now be used in Sandbox for free
- Obtaining an Insta-Monkey for the first time will now display a ‘New’ banner on the rewards screen - no more guessing if you already had it in your collection!
- Hero Pets can now be mixed and matched regardless of the associated Hero Skin, because Ocean Obyn loves that little fiery Balfrog
- Optimizations made for load times & performance in Legends game modes
- Boomerang Paragon new ability ‘Overcharge’. Upon activating immediately granting itself 10 stacks of ‘Overcharge’ which give increased attack speed for every stack, stacks will deplete over time one by one every few seconds. More detail in balance changes section later
- Druid Jungle’s Bounty ability is no more, druid cash generation is now purely a passive end of round bonus. We are looking at possible changes for other abilitized cash generation and would like to hear more thoughts on this. To be clear; we are not simply looking to swap every cash generating ability to a passive, but there should be some choice in when you time an ability activation and we do not agree there was any reason to not spam these on cooldown which makes this a tedious clicking quota. Druid’s cash generation already has interesting interaction so for this case it felt more interesting to focus on that interaction instead, and the new ability gives careful timed activation that can assist in holding off on spending money on DPS towers for longer to effectively earn more cash which is more engaging of a choice to make. More detail in balance changes section later
Bug Fixes & General Changes
- Resolved a number of minor localization & UI issues
- Resolved a number of erratic menu screen transitions
- Crash closing tab when previewing Prop or Action Prop
- Resolved an issue with Tower Unlock Packs displaying ‘purchased’ when they were not
- Resolved an issue where T5 towers consumed to create paragons were contributing their cost value in addition to their T5 value to the resulting tower
- Pro Powers should no longer count as a tower towards global tower limits in regards to preventing placement of future towers (Were already placable themselves past the limit)
- Insta Monkey collection no longer list ‘out of 1664’ as there are still only 1600 instas
- What Did it Cost should now work again
- Budget Cash Drops should again work while in the main menu
- The ‘Log In’ pop up should no longer be able to stack multiple times
- Challenges that prevent use of certain upgrades should now correctly prevent use of instamonkey towers that are upgraded beyond those banned tiers
- Fixed that one guy’s really specific crash
Event changes
- Resolved some buggy interactions with Beast Handler
- Resolved a number of missing animations for items placed in CT team island
- Updated some missing seasonal visuals
- Resolved an issue where Blastapopoulos could double Fireball Spawn
- Correct a number of cases of incorrect localization
- Fixed a number of cases where things that should have progressed certain goals were not doing so correctly
- Resolved and Error popup that could appear clicking Share Button
Map Specific changes
- Reduced hitbox size for lights interactables
- Adjustments made to fix overlapping farm placement
- Should no longer prevent Chinook from redeploying towers from one category specific tile to another specific tile for that same category
Marketing Changes
- Following mobile marketing tests last year, we are starting a broad paid marketing push for Bloons TD 6, starting with mobile platforms and expanding to PC later
- For marketing to be effective, we enable basic player behavior data to be shared with the advertisers so that we know what type of ads are most effective
- Players on iOS may now see the App Tracking Transparency system message, especially new players. This is Apple’s high standard opt-in for data authorization, so completely up to each player and will not effect game performance or features.
- For perfect clarity, this has nothing to do with ads being shown inside BTD6. We do not show ads and we have no plans to show ads in BTD6. This is only so that players who see an ad and download the game can share data that will help us improve our marketing efforts - making the BTD6 community bigger and better. Thank you!
Legends changes
- A pass has been made over the mode for improved UI polish
- Implemented small dialogue pop ups over monkey villagers and other NPCs
- Improved Bloon circling around map tiles to be different depending on tile size
- Added a warning prompt when attempting to retreat a tower with 0 stamina
- Bananite count-up animation is now faster the more Bananite was earned
- Rocko now has the Sticky Bomb trait wherever they appear in the campaign
- Improved visual feedback for Lives & Stamina both in game and overworld
- Added a 3D Overworld Diamondback model for associated tiles
- Current Bananite balance is now displayed in the Fishing UI
- Players can no longer fast travel to their current location
- Resolved a rare issue when fishing up a Bloon Chipper if the player was outside or had an open window they could be sucked through it into a pocket dimension and forced to compete against other players at yahtzee where the champion would be selected to challenge the evil power and if successful be the only one permitted to claim the crown and return back to their original reality
- Improved UI layering to resolve some cases of clipping
- Players should now properly be able to resume Frontier progress after immediately after completing the Trial & purchasing the DLC pack at the end, without being kicked out of Frontier mode and having to load back in
- Resolved some cases on awkward map geometry in a number of locations
- Resolved a number of cases where multiple different cutscene type events could trigger at the same time
- Resolved an issue where some tiles could become uninteractable after a loss
- Frontier profile stats should no longer include a bunch of Rogue related stats
- Frontier save data has been optimized to reduce space
- Resolved a number of cases of incorrect camera transitions / skipping
- Sheriff should no longer retain his clothing in the UI at the start of a new campaign after deleting an old one
- Resolved an issue where dismissing heroes in a certain order allowed purchasing the same Hero multiple times (Could not be used in the same posse anyway)
- Fishing rods can no longer be cast multiple times at once to trigger many fishing minigames simultaneously
- Boss Bloons should now correctly animate when found in the Overworld
- Glass Bloons should no longer be immune to projectiles that spawn inside of the reflection radius (Including things like explosions and 3xx Beast Handler fish)
- Glass Bloon immunities list has been corrected
- Resolved an issue where some tiles would vibrate slightly when held
- Quick Restart hotkey disabled as it is not supported & was breaking games
- Chest lids are now attached to the bottom of the chest with hinges
- Beast Handler should now correctly be stunned by Retribution Bloons
- Resolved issues where Beast Handler could break attacking Frontier Bloons
- Feeble trait damage reduction corrected 50 > 40
- Phantom trait stamina cost reduction corrected 20% > 25%.
- Rebound trait correct to bounce up to 1 > 2 times
- Undertaker trait corrected Zombie lifespan 3s > 18s
- Zombie Traits should no longer be overridden by the Wader Outfit
- Resolved an issue where the currently selected base base hero’s description could apply over the top of different heroes selected within frontier
- Resolved an issue where maps were not properly randomizing
- Sheriff should no longer appear as an insta-type reward. Wait, what’s that? Oh, it probably wasn’t actually happening anyway but I already wrote this so just pretend
- Resolved some Artifact generated projectiles not correctly scaling with the visibility slider
- Corrected some tiles appearing rotated backwards in maps
- Resolved some crashes that could occur related to rebounding artifacts
- x3x Druid Vines can no longer crit with artifacts as they destroy all targets
- Legends Trials should now play their associated music instead of the main menu theme
- Resolved some cases in which Rich Presence could not differentiate legends
Tower & Hero Fixes
- Dart Monkey 4xx Crosspathed Juggernauts should no longer bounce off map borders
- Ice Monkey 4xx Embrittlement shaved off a single vertice error from its left eyebrow
- Ice Monkey x5x Absolute Zero’s freeze should no longer prevent Ice Monkeys attacking the target
- Mortar Monkey 032 Mortar should now be able to apply Burny Stuff to Black Bloons
- Captain Churchill Lv17 Bonus damage to Fortified should no longer break at this level
- Ezili's Lv3 Heartstopper Ability now grants Purple popping power for Blastapopoulos (Fortunately doesn’t even have to convert Purple Bloons into MOABs to achieve this!)
- Ezili's Lv3 Heartstopper Ability should not lag as much with high Bloon Counts
- Psi Lv4 Should no longer hit Lead/Purple until Psi is able to pop those types
- Silas Lv13 no longer allows T5 Ice Monkeys to be placed when prohibited by challenge rules
Platform Specific fixes
- Resolved an issue which could prevent the FPS cap from applying in all cases
- Resolved a crash that could occur after updating linked email address
- Resolved a crash upon finishing the Frontier Legend preview quest
Balance Changes
We have seen an increase in feedback related to power creep impacting enjoyment and we do want to go into this year similar to how we finished last year with more thought on targeted nerfs and fewer buff changes mostly focussing on the quality of life angle or big things that have been on the backlog for a while rather than injecting raw improved stats, this said there are still a number of your highly requested buff changes in this list.
Dart Monkey
Juggernaut knockback is excessive against regular light Bloon targets and will be reduced.
- 4xx Juggernaut light knockback multi reduced 6 > 4
- 402 Juggernaut light knockback multi reduced 9 > 6
Boomerang Monkey
Bionic Boomerang is getting a rebalance improving baseline power outside of ability activation while maintaining roughly the same power when ability is activated. MOAB Press continues to act as a very powerful scaling MOAB Stall option, slightly increased cost will add up more when building these in groups.
- x3x Bionic Boomerang bonus damage to MOAB-Class 2 > 1
- x3x Bionic Boomerang attack cooldown reduced 0.238s > 0.15
- x4x Turbo Charge ability rate boost reduced from 7x > 5x
- x5x Perma Charge attack cooldown 0.034s > 0.03s
- xx4 MOAB Press price increased from $2400 > $2700
Boomerang Paragon is being rebalanced around a higher price point, and as a part of this change is gaining its own ability Overcharge. Upon activation this immediately grants itself multiple stacks of Overcharge buff which each increase the tower’s attack speed but these stacks rapidly deplete over time one by one until expired.
- Paragon cost increased $250,000 > 375k
- Paragon attack damage increased 20 > 25
- Overcharge number of stacks applied: 10
- Overcharge attack cooldown per stack: -10%
- Overcharge duration per stack: 3s
- Overcharge cooldown: 45s
Bomb Shooter
Previously increasing the Bomb Blitz cooldown once the passive became much more powerful felt like a mistake, instead we want to bring that back and push the price up to something more fitting again instead.
- Bomb Blitz price increased $23000 > $30000
- Bomb Blitz Bomb storm cooldown reduced 75s > 60s
Similar to previous changes for abilities on paragons, as Bomb Paragon’s main attack is quite slow we have decided to tilt its power more directly to MOABs than just bosses. So its damage & MOAB Damage bonuses are being scaled up so that outside of the ability it should hit for much chunkier explosions whenever it attacks.
- Paragon main explosion damage increased 210 > 250
- Paragon main explosion bonus MOAB damage increased 2100 > 2500
- Paragon main explosion bonus Boss damage increased 0 > 2500
- Paragon cluster explosion bonus MOAB damage increased 300 > 1000
- Paragon cluster explosion bonus Boss damage increased 900 > 1000
- Paragon secondary cluster explosion bonus MOAB damage increased 150 > 500
- Paragon secondary cluster explosion bonus Boss damage increased 450 > 500
- Paragon Ability cooldown reduction per leak increased 5s > 10s
Tack Shooter
We feel the Tack Paragon needs a nudge to help it compete against other paragons as this price range proves to be quite easy to skip over.
- Paragon Ability Meteor damage increased 50,000 > 60,000
- Paragon Ability Fireballs damage increased 700 > 900
Ice Monkey
Ice Monkey T5’s are very strong right now, Embrittlement in particular stands out as a problem with its high damage so this is being reduced, however the range of its shards is being increased to retain the higher cool factor of buying this upgrade. Absolute Zero is also seeing a price increase as another very powerful Ice right now. We’re also increasing the soluopopatsalB counter potential here on middle and bottom paths. Ice Monkey’s paragon has caused a big stir with the powerful mechanics it brings to the table; uptime of its passive debuffs is being lowered as currently it maxes uptime too easily without degree investment and Embrittlement debuffs will no longer be stackable - only the highest tier Embrittlement debuff will take priority. Finally players responded with a lot of love for what Ice Paragon brings but also big annoyances with timing; for QoL we have changed the skull freeze from a debuff that has to be applied to a boss to be a simple active duration, this means is instead timing 1 exact frame for the debuff to be applied the effect will just be active for a duration and should work so long as a boss skull is triggered any time within that active duration.
- 5xx Embrittlement shard damage reduced 10 > 5
- 5xx Embrittlement shard projectile range increased 20 > 40
- x5x Absolute Zero price increased $19k > $21k
- x4x Snowestorm ability heat reduction 500 > 1000
- x5x Absolute Zero ability heat reduction 1500 > 3000
- xx5 Icicle Impale icicle heat reduction 6 > 10
- Paragon attack interval increased 4 > 5
- Paragon attack cooldown increased 3s > 4s
- Paragon beam pierce set to 500
- Paragon Bloon damage debuff reduced 10 > 8
- Paragon’s bonus damage for ice attacks no longer applies to Shatter damage type
- Paragon’s Eclipse of Fimbulwinter skull freeze is now an active duration not a debuff
Desperado
Bottom path’s Avenger was severely underappreciated when it was last buffed, with that buff bringing in so much attention it is time to step back that power. At the same time bottom path Desperado’s low shotgun range is being scaled up to increase their useful placement, and as a fittingness and fun bonus Nomads will also be allowed to group up in range of other Nomads with no penalty. The Desert Phantom also gains more single target buckshot power as this big weakness holds it back considerably.
- x3x Deadeye fort bonus reduced 12 > 10
- xx1 Wanderers no longer remove Wander stacks from other Wanderers
- xx3 Enforcer shotgun range increased 28 > 36
- xx4 Avenger price increased $6500 > $9500
- xx4 Avenger moab knockback reduced 2 > 1.5
- xx5 The Desert Phantom buckshot MOAB bonus increased 20 > 40
Sniper Monkey
For Deadly Precision a price decrease allows for more early to mid flexibility, and granting it a huge Ceramic bonus allows it to pop Super Ceramics now in 1 hit instead of 2 for possible lategame use cases without spiking its MOAB power too much as Maim MOAB doesn’t really want to destroy MOABs quickly.
- 3xx Deadly Precision Ceramic bonus damage increased 15 > 50
- 3xx Deadly Precision price reduced $2500 > $2200
- 4xx Maim MOAB price increased $6000 > $6300
Monkey Sub
Monkey Sub kept leaving bags of poop on our doorstep and will be gaining improved reliability for its de-camo pulse, with Reactor already doing very good at this and buildup growing more reliable from the change it gets a tiny price raise.
- 3xx Submerge and Support de-camo pulse cooldown reduced 1.5s > 1.35s
- 4xx Bloontonium Reactor price increased $2300 > $2400
Monkey Buccaneer
Destroyer’s price is going up very slightly as it’s performing well, but we’re mostly happy with it. Aircraft Carrier’s lifespan is being tweaked slightly to properly tie in the xx1 crosspath as a projectile distance buff for all projectiles rather than just the small selection it currently buffs.
- 3xx Destroyer price increased $3050 > $3350
- 4xx Aircraft Carrier base projectile lifespan increased 0.6s > 0.7s
- 4xx Aircraft Carrier plane missiles lifespan reduced 24 > 16.8
- 401 Aircraft Carrier plane projectiles scale with the Long Range upgrade
Monkey Ace
The suggestion sounded cool? & Pineapple crosspath has always been really boring so some cool would be nice. Ground Zero feels like a good tower, but has had a hard time fitting anywhere being power creeped by other meta options.
- 320 Fighter Jet missiles distance reduced 600 > 420
- 320 Fighter Jet missile explosion now drops an Exploding Pineapple
- x4x Ground Zero price reduced $18,000 > 16,000
Mortar Monkey
The Biggest Stun gains great value from any rate buffs, causing it to become a powerful full game lockdown without very much support.
- 5xx The Biggest One stun MOAB duration reduced 0.5s > 0.4
- 5xx The Biggest One stun DDT duration reduced 0.3s > 0.2
- 5xx The Biggest One stun BFB duration reduced 0.3s > 0.2
Super Monkey
Temple is receiving some more changes in regards to balance and scalability based on recent feedback; while we would like to take time to balance the lower tiers out more, this should improve the overall top end category balance of sacrificing.
- Temple Sun Beam attack cooldown reduced 0.06s > 0.05s
- v1 Primary Golden Blades damage reduced 150 > 100
- v1 Military Missile attack cooldown increased 6s > 12s
- v2 Military Missile attack cooldown increased 3s > 6s
- v3 Military Missile attack cooldown increased 1s > 3s
- Military Golden Spectre Bomb damage increased 6 > 15
- Military Golden Spectre Dart damage increased 25 > 50
- v1 Magic Arcane Blast damage reduced 75 > 40
- v2 Magic Arcane Blast damage reduced 100 > 60
- v3 Magic Arcane Blast damage reduced 140 > 80
- Magic Arcane Blast projectile speed reduced 300 > 200
- 15k Military Sun Beam damage bonus increased 1 > 2
- 25k Military Sun Beam damage bonus increased 1 > 2
- 35k Military Sun Beam damage bonus increased 1 > 2
- 45k Military Sun Beam damage bonus increased 2 > 4
- Support’s $15k & $25k bonuses swapped around
- Support’s $40k & $45k bonuses swapped around
Druid
We want different farming methods to have different interesting ways of engaging with them, but when an ability should always be used on cooldown that’s when it really shouldn’t be an ability, while there is strategy in stall tactics there isn’t for that ability timing most don’t have fun engaging with this when they are group spam abilities. Due to this we’ve reworked the druid ability so that the farm interaction is the important mechanic to engage with here instead, and the ability is a targeting method of providing cleanup that does have strategic timing which can be used to focus more on farming with careful ability usage instead of building other defensive towers.
- x4x Jungle’s Bounty now generates cash & lives passively after each round
- x4x Jungle’s Bounty ability replaced with Vine Crush.
- x4x Vine Crush: Upon activation grabs up to 10 Bloons anywhere on the map and crushes them into a rubbery paste (Not for consumption!)
Mermonkey
Top path Mermonkey’s pierce scaled up more than intended from applying its own pierce buff to its own already high pierce so this is being reduced but the T5 Lord of the Abyss will now gain a slight base range increase. Riptide Champion as an underappreciated star performed exceptionally well with recent changes which are now being scaled back, and Popseidon which was also performing extremely well will likewise be scaled back. Echosenses
- 4xx Abyssal Warrior tentacle pierce reduced 30 > 25
- 5xx Lord of the Abyss tentacle pierce reduced 80 > 50
- 5xx Lord of the Abyss range increased from 28 > 32
- x3x Riptide Champion price increased $1100 > $1400
- x3x Riptide Champion range reduced 35 > 32
- x5x Popseidon range reduced 50 > 40
- x5x Popseidon price increased $48,000 > 52,000
- xx2 Echosense Network range bonus reduced 10 > 7.5
- xx3 Alluring Melody pierce increased 5 > 6
- xx4 Symphonic pierce increased 10 > 12
Spike Factory
Carpet of Spikes attack rate was slightly faster than intended likely due to a previous balance change not carrying up correctly, the upgrade is performing a little good right now anyway so this formula has been corrected
- x5x Carpet of Spikes attack cooldown increased 0.49s > 0.525s
- xx5 Permaspike could not be reached for comment
Engineer
Engineer Paragon's power glove pairs up much too well with some paragons compared to others so we’re trying out a shift to lower cooldown but also lower duration to break this up.
- Power Glove cooldown reduced 90s > 60s
- Power Glove duration on Paragons reduced 25% > 15%
- Power Glove AoE duration reduced 60s > 30s
Beast Handler
Giganotosaurus is getting something of a fix to its stun which was previously stunning BFBs for longer than MOABs, additionally it is seeing the long requested change to finally after all this time become best friends with permaspike, that’s right, Giganotosaurus was spotted at Permaspike's birthday and we have eye witness reports that they have signed a buddy agreement. Now it can break through Moab layers at the cost of pierce.
- x5x Giganotosaurus Stomp MOAB stun duration increased 3s > 8s
- x5x Giganotosaurus damage now carries through MOAB layers
- x5x Giganotosaurus pierce reduced 60 > 44
- x5x Giganotosaurus pierce scale reduced 90 > 66
Silas
To reduce frustration Silas’ main attack minimum ricochet distance has been reduced, however his discount to T5 Ice Monkeys is also being reduced as getting this bonus twice for the same T5 Ice Monkey potentially even for the other 2 was proving to be far too much power.
- Minimum ricochet range reduced 10 > 1
- Lv13 Price Discount for T5 Ice Monkeys reduced 25% > 15%
Blastapopoulos
Blastapopoulos’ Rocks too often end up landing on a tower which takes it out of the game for a long time and hurts the intention of favouring closer range towers over long ones, to alleviate this we are cutting the rock duration in half and also increasing the radius of this rock circle so it becomes less likely to cover closeby towers.
- Normal Rock circle radius increased 50 > 65
- Normal Rock duration reduced 24s > 12s
- Elite Rock circle radius increased 50 > 60
- Elite Rock duration reduced 24s > 12s
Freeplay
The final freeplay income cut has been pushed back 20 rounds for a little more juice finishing off long Boss Fights, and to give less harsh of a cutoff for early freeplay base cash earnings.
- Round 120 income cut increased from 5% > 8%
- Added a Round 140 income cut back down to 5%
Frontier
Reigning in the 2 standout Frontier weapons; Dynamite only lasted 1 layer which caused it to fail to work against smaller Bloons so we’ve enabled it to explode upon that layer being destroyed, and Zig Zag outperformed the power of other weapons by too much while also creating tons of projectiles for triggering additional item effects.
- Dynamite Stick: Now explodes on target being popped
- Dynamite Stick: Speed increased 150 > 300
- Dynamite Stick: Pierce increased 18 > 25
- Zig Zag pistol: Attack cooldown increased 2 > 3s
- Zig Zag pistol: Pierce reduced 6 > 5
Looking Forward
- Happy 2026 everyone - we hope your holidays were playful and that the new year has started well for all of you! Following the busy end of 2025 we had across Ninja Kiwi, we’re super excited to start the year with new energy and with heaps of quality of life improvements in this first update of the year. Powers in Sandbox and adding friends at the end of coop games have been on our lists and player requests for some time, and making Hero pets available to all skins of that Hero adds fun and flexibility. We also added more balance changes and fixes than expected, which gives us a lot to talk about with the community right out of the gate.
We also listened carefully to the feedback from the end of year Looking Forward, and interpreted some of the lack of feedback on a few points. The majority of interest was on the Mod System and console, so we’ll start there.
- Mod System
- We’ve crossed a major milestone with working builds and significant UI rework on the player flow to both create and browse player created content
- We’re focused on 4 core mod areas that we’re aiming to deliver in the mid year update v55 - Towers, Bloons, Rounds, and Monkey Knowledge
- After working through use cases and bugs internally, we’ll be sharing with some active BTD6 modders for feedback, and we hope to work with our Bloonstubers to get some work in progress videos to help answer the many “but what is it” questions
Enjoy this first update of 2026 and we look forward to an exciting and fun year ahead!