Update Video: https://youtu.be/gVaNbCIr2mY
Key New Features
- New Legends DLC - Frontier Legends
YEEHAWW! Saddle up, partners! It is our incredible pleasure to introduce our second game-within-a-game Legends drop - Frontier Legends! This DLC is the longest and most robust long-form story game we’ve built at Ninja Kiwi, and we sincerely hope you enjoy the experience. If we were to describe it in BTD6 main game terms, it’s like an Odyssey Quest across 50+ maps in a huge 3D world, plus mini games, persistent currency and upgrades, and RPG-style Monkeys with prefix names that correspond to unique traits.
We have gotten so much fan art over the years about the maps being connected, we decided to pay homage to that in a pretty huge semi-open world. We love discussing canon with the community and often intentionally dodging questions of exactly what is canon, and we felt ready to tell a story that adds lore and whimsy to the Blooniverse.
Relative to Rogue Legends, the size of Frontier Legends DLC and the development effort behind it are both significantly larger and the slightly higher price of US$12.99 reflects that.
Check out all of the awesomerness included in Frontier Legends!
- Build your Sheriff by mixing and matching Hats, Torso Equipment, Weapons, and Consumables - and don’t forget to bring along your favourite pet companion!
- Mosey on over to the Saloon to recruit hired monkeys with their own unique names and randomized traits
- Sometimes a Legendary Recruit may show up, so keep an eye out for them!
- Multiple Heroes, as you journey through the Frontier world, you can increase the normal hero limit by earning Deputy Stars. I wonder how high this can go?
So get ready to mosey on in and wrangle up some Frontier Legends, because this is an entirely new way to play Bloons TD, and we hope you enjoy it!
New Awesome
- New Paragon - Herald of Everfrost, the Ice Monkey!
- The Herald of Everfrost unleashes a shattering Ice Lance Beam to freeze everything it hits for 10 seconds. As the beam rips through the Bloons, it leaves a wake of icy shards in every direction as it passes, tearing apart Bloons while Frozen Bloons slice each other with razor sharp icicles
- Alternating with this is a thunderous Snowstorm Roar attack that passively freezes everything below a BAD, applying Permafrost, removing all Camo & Regrow, and inflicting a brutal debuff causing targets to take +10 damage from all attacks, with an additional +40 taken from any Cold-type damage attacks
- When all else fails, the Ice Paragon calls upon the Eclipse of Fimbulwinter, giving Boss Bloons brain freeze! Or skull freeze anyway. This ability has very limited use, but freezes EVERYTHING. Break a Boss Skull during its freeze, and the boss will thaw early, but that skull shatters, and its activation is completely nullified!
Game Changes / Additions
- Rogue permanent artifacts page now has a total owned counter
- Rogue permanent artifacts page now has a search bar, even without starting a new run
- Due to Frontier being built off the same system we were able to retroactively apply improvements in texturing to the Terrain tiles in Rogue, allowing them to match the new and much fancier ones in Frontier! This should make the environments where you see below the surface tile feel much more alive, since we have now textured the bottom of all the Terrain tiles.
Bug Fixes & General Changes
- Resolved an issue with guest accounts not recording pops correctly in co-op
- Resolved an issue with missing animations for items placed in CT team island
- Menu Navigation should no longer run at 3x speed after a data conflict
- Resolved an issue with some projectiles not remembering their tower category after the parent tower is sold
Event changes
- Vortex’s Stun should now be correctly saved
- Resolved an issue with Team Score Display
Map Specific changes
- default music track set to Haunted House
- Bloon Speed nodes have been slowed more to fit difficulty
Legends changes
- Resolved a number of edge case crashes and performance issues
- The Low Knowledge Curse should correctly disable MK upgrades
- Rosalia’s movement should correctly match the category of her Workshop
- The Quantum Leap Artifact should no longer expire Heli Crates too quickly
- Resolved a crash with Rogue Legend profile stats
Tower Specific Fixes
Super Monkey
- Temple Mini Sun Avatars should no longer stop attacking once the main tower is sold
Alchemist
- Resolved a crash that could occur in co-op upon losing the game while an Alchemist's transforming tonic is active. Funny, I’ve been using transforming tonic in co-op and never crashed🤔
Mermonkey
- x4x Ice Jet should no longer rebound off map borders independently
Banana Farm
- Resolved an edge case crash linking Pro Farmer to a farm then selling the farm
Spike Factory
- SFX from Bloons hitting spike piles should now be correctly rate limited
- Resolved a crash that could occur with spike paragon spawning mini storms in invalid locations
- 4xx & 5xx should no longer fail to deal their final instance of damage over time
Beast Handler
- Resolved an issue where top path’s thrash rates differed for latched & destroyed targets
Hero Specific Fixes
Quincy
- Trophy Placement Animation should no longer break after loading a save and restarting
Gwendolin
- Resolved an issue where extra projectiles could not be gained from applicable levels
Admiral Brickell
- Retry Last Round should no longer cause Brickell to become invisible with her Aerial Deployment placement animation
Corvus
- Resolved some crashes with using & loading saves with Corvus
Silas
- Resolved an issue where only standard MOABs received a slow penalty from Rime
- Resolved an issue where Lv6 could attack in range of towers other than Ice Monkeys
- Resolved a crash with Silas in Rogue Legend related to some artifact combinations
Balance Changes
We wanted to focus heads down on getting the Frontier’s Campaign out before the end of the year, and due to how large of a project this ended up being we did not have the time in this update to go over our usual balance process and had to make do with the light list of changes that had already been looked at. We can’t make any promises on this as there is not much longer until we wrap up for the year and we expect it will be very busy already, but we will try to consider more light lift (numerical-only) balance along with minor v52 patches as time permits.
Dart Monkey
Dart Monkey’s paragon is currently far too cost effective for being the cheapest paragon so we are lowering its power, but this is mainly directly against bosses so its base damage will also increase to compensate against non-boss targets. We also want to note that the Juggernaut is currently unintentionally rebounding even off map borders, we have not fixed this for this update though will still be monitoring it for now.
- Dart Paragon attack cooldown increased 0.4s > 0.5s
- Dart Paragon Boss damage bonus reduced 80 > 60
- Dart Paragon damage increased 15 > 25
Bomb Shooter
Now that Bomb Blitz is much more reliable of a safety net we’re increasing its cooldown
- xx5 Bomb Blitz ability cooldown 60s > 75s
Desperado
Top and Middle Desperado favour lower tiers too much so we’re doing a light shift on these to more favour upgrades without improving them too much. Bottom path desperado on the other hand suffers on trickier maps due to its low range design so we are bumping up the knockback at all tiers and reducing Avenger’s cost.
- 4xx Twin Sixes price $4,800 > $5,800
- 5xx The Blazing Sun price $17,500 > $16,500
- 5xx The Blazing Sun To Burn stacks requirement reduced 55 > 50
- x3x Deadeye Rifle damage reduced 12 > 10
- xx4 Avenger Price reduced $8500 > 6500
- Knockback Multipliers against MOABs, Heavy Bloons, Light Bloons
- xx3 Enforcer knockback multi increased (0, 1, 2) > (0, 2, 2)
- xx4 Avenger knockback multi increased (1.1, 2, 2) > (2, 3, 3)
- xx5 The Desert Phantom knockback multi increased (2, 3, 3) > (3, 4, 4)
Heli Pilot
MOAB Shove heli’s still stall ZOMGs incredibly efficiently for such a cheap tower, so we are furthering the previous nerf to ZOMG slow amount, still leaving Comanche Defense unchanged
- xx3 MOAB Shove ZOMG Shove 0.5 > 0.75
- xx3 Heli BFB shove amount reduced 0.1 > 0.11
- xx4 Comanche Defense shove amounts unchanged
Super Monkey
Half the bonuses for Temples were being unlocked for 1/5th the price, which ended up making it very awkward to balance a meaningful progression between these unlocks, as well as being difficult for players to remember when a new bonus unlocked. We are now spacing these thresholds out across more consistent intervals which for the most part spaces out major bonus unlocks on every 10k interval, and minor upgrades on the 5k spaces between. Lastly, we’re increasing the minimum range requirement on the Military missile further as we want it to still be very powerful, but limited enough by this factor that you wouldn’t want it on too many temples
- 300+ > 10,001+ (major)
- 1001+ > 15,001+ (minor)
- 2001+ > 20,001+ (major)
- 4001+ > 25,001+ (minor)
- 7501+ > 30,001+ (major)
- 10,001+ > 35,001+ (minor)
- 15,001+ > 40,001+ (major)
- 25,001+ > 45,001+ (minor)
- 50,001+ unchanged
- Military missile minimum range increased from 80 > 100
Mermonkey
Last update many players felt blindsided when Brickell stopped applying her buff to Mermonkeys since there was no mention in the balance changes section. We would like to apologize for that - it was tasked internally as a bug as it was indeed unintended to work that way. We then left the issue alone for a long time, mostly due to other more pressing matters, and this issue fell through the cracks. In retrospect, it would have been better to treat this as balance rather than a simple bug fix due to how much time had passed. Reading through your feedback, we did consider just reverting the change, however the bigger issue that the feedback reinforced to us was that players considered Mermonkey to be so bad that it was only a "good" tower when used in combination with a single, water-only hero.
This sort of forced synergy goes against our design intentions - namely that Mermonkey being our signature amphibious tower should be able to stand on its own without being balance-locked to an interaction with a single hero. With all that in mind, we feel Mermonkey's highest priority right now is large sweeping buffs to each of the paths, so most of the following changes are our first step towards this starting from the low tier crosspaths.
- 000 Mermonkey price reduced $375 > $275
- 1xx Trident Efficiency rate bonus increased 15% > 20%
- 2xx Trident Swiftness rate bonus increased 18% > 25%
- 3xx Abyss Dweller pierce reduced 24 > 20
- 4xx Abyssal Warrior pierce reduced 32 > 30
- x2x Tidal Chill price reduced $300 > $225
- x3x Riptide Champion price reduced $1900 > $1100
- x3x Riptide Champion projectile speed increased 100 > 110
- xx2 Echosense Network price reduced $380 > $280
- xx2 Echosense Network range bonus increased 6% > 10%
- xx3 Alluring Melody trance pierce increased 4 > 5
- xx4 Symphonic Resonance trance pierce increased 8 > 10
Spike Factory
It seems we really overtuned Spike Paragon with its last changes, and it has dominated most boss events ever since, so it is being reeled back in again.
- Spike Paragon attack cooldown increased 10s > 11s
- Spike Paragon main attack damage reduced 140 > 100
- Spike Paragon Small Mine explosion damage reduced 240 > 120
- Spike Paragon Mini Spike Storm bonus MOAB damage reduced 160 > 100
- Spike Paragon Carpet of Spikes bonus Boss damage reduced 1500 > 800
- Spike Paragon Carpet of Spikes bonus MOAB damage increased 100 > 300
- Spike Paragon Spiked-Mine bonus MOAB damage reduced 140 > 100
Buffs. Aura. Nerfs. Meta. Long ago, the four aspects lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Ninja Kiwi Nerfs attacked. Only the Balancer, master of all four aspects, could stop them, but when Permaspike needed him most, he vanished. Two months passed and Scout and I discovered the new Balancer, a Buffer named Bubble O' Bill. And although his Buffing skills are great, he has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone. But I believe Bubble O' Bill can save Permaspike.
- xx5 Permaspike unchanged by 100%
Engineer
Engi Paragon is too good across the board since the addition of its Overclock ability, we’re moving the Village Range buff in line with the normal overclock, and nerfing its ability cooldown so that higher degrees are required to keep a high uptime buffing other paragons. Since the AoE overclock is unique to the Engineer Paragon and not aimed at other Paragons that part of the ability is instead being improved on.
- Engineer Paragon influence increase for Monkey Village reduced 25% > 15%
- Engineer Paragon Power Glove cooldown increased 45s > 90s
- Engineer Paragon AoE overclock radius increased 24 > 30
- Engineer Paragon AoE overclock duration increased 15s > 30s
Beast Handler
The Middle Path beast handler is too effective at grouped popping for how much damage it can dish out and is having its pierce reduced.
- x3x Velociraptor pierce reduced 14 > 12
- x3x Velociraptor pierce scale reduced +21 > +18
Hero Balance
Striker Jones
Striker Jones’ Concussive Shell has been working as too much of a heavy carry for how quickly it recharges, it will now have a little less pierce & the reduced MOAB duration now applies from Lv3 instead of Lv9, and will have even less duration against higher tier MOAB-Classes.
- Lv3 Concussive Shell pierce reduced 48 > 36
- Lv9 Concussive Shell pierce reduced 58 > 48
- Lv9 Concussive Shell MOAB-Class duration penalty now applies at Lv3 (-40% duration)
- Concussive Shell duration penalty on DDT’s remains 40%
- Concussive Shell duration penalty on BFB’s increased 40% > 55%
- Concussive Shell duration penalty on ZOMG increased 40% > 70%
Obyn Greenfoot
As Obyn’s value has climbed significantly, we no longer feel his Wall of Trees needs to continue being as strong as it is to prop him up, and so its pierce is being reduced.
- Lv10 Wall of Trees pierce reduced 3000 > 2500
- Lv20 Wall of Trees pierce reduced 9001 > 7500
Psi
Psi should be quite strong given their position in the game, but is performing a little too well so we are slightly reducing their Lv3 ability cooldown rate.
- Lv3 Psychic Blast cooldown increased 40s > 45s
Silas
This update resolved an issue where Silas’ Rime slow was only applying a reduced slow value to standard MOABs, meaning that all other MOAB-Class Bloons (outside of Bosses and BADs) were being completely slowed by the same amount as standard Bloons. Silas has been incredibly powerful so this fix felt entirely fair as a nerf, however we wanted to clarify this here as we mentioned there was little free time this update to review the impact of said fix in great depth so we may consider reducing the total MOAB penalty at a later date after this has time to settle
Admiral Brickell
We won’t repeat the Mermonkey explanation from above, so go back and read that if you haven’t. However for clarity Brickell has always been a ‘Military’ hero to us, there have only been 2 water-based towers in the Bloons series which are both military towers so it hadn’t felt necessary to explain this in further detail given her clear military title, but in hindsight this wasn’t as clear as it was to us. Brickell is in an awkward position where we see she is clearly problematic for us but we are always met with resistance when trying to do anything about this, but when we can get past this we would be more open to looking at her applying broader across military or other militarized options, though with such buffs as powerful as her Naval Tactics in particular they do need to stay limited in some regard
Known Issues - Frontier
We are aware of these issues and are working on fixes for them
- If you run into a bug, look for the RESPAWN SHERIFF option. We’ve worked hard to prevent issues here, but this is the biggest open-world-like project that our team has ever worked on, so if you do find yourself stuck or out of bounds, do not delete your save, return to the main menu of Frontier, select the ‘Settings’ button, and there should be an option for ‘Respawn Sheriff’. This is a debug tool that will move you back to Sandytown, and we have decided to leave it in with no cost to use for Launch to help with any edge cases we may have missed.
- The ‘Night’ toggle is currently purely cosmetic, we have many functional plans for this, though being low priority for launch these will be expanded on in a future update.
- Overworld Quickdraw Bloon fights currently do not have a ‘shoot’ animation when you successfully win the minigame, we plan to add one here to make these events more satisfying
- Sheriff’s information button currently does not provide any information. Sheriff’s abilities and what they do will be added to this button in the future.
- The Firing Range tile is setup as a ‘Sandbox’ for this mode, however currently this is very unclear and we will be updating its tile card to reflect this more appropriately.
- Geraldo, Benjamin & Banana Farms are not obtainable towers in Frontier. This is intended by design given the cash system works completely differently in this mode and they are not fun to use in this context which hampers most of their gameplay, so although some people may enjoy taking on the challenge we did not want average players to see them and expect them to work as well as other heroes so at least for launch they will not be available. Geraldo is still there manning the general store though!
- Optional end game side missions including tiles featuring the core bosses from the base game appear as difficult optional endgame content, there are a few known issues with some of these currently (Namely Dreadbloon and Phayze), as our focus for launch was the base campaign experience these are much harder than intended right now in part due to these issues, we'll be looking into adjusting these health values and having a greater balance pass for post-campaign content soon, so tackle them at your own peril!
- Boss models currently don’t animate in the Frontier Overworld.
- Sandytown does not show a campfire on the World Map even though it does have one.
- The "Quest Marker" and "You Are Here" markers will overlap each other on the map UI if you're currently in the same area the Quest Marker pin is at.
- You can trigger popup prompts multiple times when interacting with a locked chest, or entering new areas.
- When you unlock a new tower in the Saloon it'll say 1 of that tower will appear. This is a typo and simply means the tower now always has a chance to appear for hire.
- The tower models in the Saloon sometimes won't spawn or despawn properly if you hit the refresh button too quickly, this is purely visual and won't affect your ability to recruit.
- The Health and Stamina potions from Frontier are appearing as Powers in the Odyssey, also purely visual and we are working on a fix for this.
- Campsites/Homestead don't currently visually update any added or removed Posse members until you re-fresh the UI.
- Hero Icons aren't consistent between normal heroes and their skins for the tower hud in-game, some show only the head icon instead of the full body model.
- On the Player profile, the play stats are showing incorrect descriptions for Frontier.
- Purchasing new hero skins halfway through a campaign won't update these as available recruits in the Saloon. We intend to fix this so the skins get automatically added as options for hire upon purchase of the skin.
- Black Borders on elite tiles don't have sparkles: We know the community loves the black borders, so we have some more visual polish coming for 52.1.
- Deputy stars don't immediately update the UI when received.
- Directional track arrows are not yet showing in Frontier.
Looking Forward
The last update of the year puts us in a grateful frame of mind - grateful to have pushed ourselves creatively in the several big updates this year (Rogue Legends, Desperado, Silas, 3 Paragons, She-Ra and Skeletor, 6 maps, and Frontier Legends) and grateful for the deep, thoughtful play and feedback we’ve had from all of you in the community. We continue to dig into the range of responses on balance, tier lists, things you want, things you don’t want, constructive criticism, map entries, and super cool fanart. We learned more about how much we can do in a given update, and where we stretched ourselves too thin.
With those things in mind, we hope you’ll accept this as our wishlist for 2026 - not commitments, but instead the areas where we want to add more and then update you in the new year as we commit to our planning as a team. Please give us feedback on which of these ideas resonates most with you.
- Radical creative push - the work on Legends and mini-games has made us think about other fun ways to play with tower defense core mechanics and all of the abilities, artifacts, and items we’ve created in the game. Many of these dovetail with social and team-focused play, so there’s more to play with friends and family.
- Mini-games: use Monkeys, props, abilities, and modifiers in different ways; still mainly tower defense play, but room to do a few that are just for fun
- Monkey Me & 3D social hub: visualize the large concurrent playerbase we have and make it more fun to get into Co-op and Team play
- Create your own 3D Monkey with customizable outfits, accessories, VFX, and pets
- 3D space from which to hang out, start co-op games from a list of lobbies, and play mini-games, plus private 3D Team spaces
Thank you everyone for playing this game that we love to work on, and especially for being a thoughtful and supportive community who keep us focused on what’s most important to you in constructive and positive ways. We love what we’ve built together and we want to keep working on this for years to come. Happy Holidays to everyone and the very best wishes for a more awesomer 2026 from all of us at Ninja Kiwi!