Ninja Kiwi promised a calendar year full of new content for Bloons TD 6 and—so far, at least—the developers are keeping their word when it comes to patches.
Update 42.0 for the successful tower defense game went live in early April, just a month after version 41.0 (which was the first update of the year) hit live servers. This time around, the highlights of this update are:
- Gentlemonkey Gadgeteer Geraldo, the first skin for everyone’s favorite shopkeeper.
- Castle Revenge, a new take on a map from BTD5 and BTD: Battles.
- New Trophy Items, including a Corvus Owl pet, an Engineer Palbot pet, and a Nightcap Bloons decal.
- Accolades and Player Revenue Share, a new way to financially support creators that help grow the community.
- Bug fixes and general balance changes.
The BTD 6 devs shared the full patch notes on Reddit on April 9, and some players were sad to learn that one of the bugs fixed is the one allowing Blons to be played through co-op. Any medals achieved this way have also been removed.
Bloons TD 6 update 42.0 patch notes
Key new features: Accolades and Player Revenue Share
With the continued success of BTD 6, developers at Ninja Kiwi decided to reward creators “who are helping in making the game more awesomer.” That comes in the form of animated Accolades, which bring to a certain map or challenge when gifted to others.
The idea is players buy their favorite Accolades to gift, and a part of the revenue from that purchase is shared with the gifted player.
- Initially, there are 12 different Accolades, including Smart, Tricky, Beautiful, Fun, and Masterpiece. All are inspired by positive reactions to quality content.
- Player creators receive 35 percent of the price of the Accolade by default. That amount can go up to 50 percent if the Accolade is purchased using their Creator Code.
- Devs have stated that, purposefully, Ninja Kiwi and Nexus.gg get “the smallest shares” of revenue from Accolades, because the goal is to actually reward creators.
- Currently, it is only possible to receive Accolades if you register with Nexus or play on a non-subscription platform. It will take longer to make the option available to players everywhere.
New awesome
- Geraldo finally gets his first Hero Skin in Gentlemonkey Gadgeteer Geraldo.
- Castle Revenge is available now as a new Map that brings a fresh spin on the classic found in BTD 5 and BTD: Battles.
- Four new quests are up:
- Multi-stage story-based Bloonarius quest
- Royal Tank Academy trial with Captain Churchill
- One Stop Pop Shop trial with Geraldo
- Phayze One Experiment Quest, with a scaling Quest Boss and unique mechanics that are perfect for those who enjoyed the Party Bloon Quest
- New Trophy Store Items available:
- Heroes: Corvus Owl pet
- Monkeys: Engineer Palbot pet
- Bloons: Nightcap Bloons decal
- Game & UI: CatEzili avatar, Boss Phayze avatar, Super Chill Banner
- New CT Team Store items include the Base Prop Junk Tower.
- Big additions to the Map Editor:
- New Removable/Interactable state in the props UI
- New category for Interactable props, represented by the Hammer icon
- Over 60 new construction props to customize your city as you wish
- New Paths, Stamps, and Terrain matching the construction props
Game changes and additions
- Players can now use map search in co-op lobby map selection.
- The Challenge Editor “removable cost rate” now has an influence on items including Workshop Conveyor Belt / Track Extensions, Dark Dungeons Statue, and the Polyphemus Eye mechanic.
- Monkey Money unlockable heroes are no longer all unlocked immediately at account level 10. They are now available in three groups, the first available at level 15 and the last, comprised of the most complex Heroes, only at level 35.
- Level 15 heroes: Churchill, Benjamin, Pat Fusty
- Level 25 heroes: Sauda, Ezili, Etienne, Adora
- Level 35 heroes: Psi, Brickell, Geraldo, Corvus.
- “Cash spent” is now part of the Victory Screen summary.
- New section of default unbound hotkeys added, allowing players to manually bind their favorite hotkeys.
- Cycling upgrades menu in challenges now skips past towers that are banned.
- Quests now allow for replaying individual stages without the need to reset the Quest entirely.
Bug fixes, general improvements, and balance changes
Bugs have been fixed across several maps, events, towers, heroes, and platforms. That includes ranked boss and Battlemode boss challenge starting cash, which are now the same, as well as an issue with co-op matches, which no longer shows other players’ towers as upgradeable to one another.
General improvements were also made to UI, overlay display, and refresh rates.
When sharing your Odyssey crew to the Content Browser, you can no longer modify it. A previous inconsistency in the “Upgrade Restricted” red stripe was also fixed. And, sadly, the Extreme mode Blons can no longer be played through co-op.
On Glacial Trail, two main fixes were deployed:
- No more occasional crashes when loading saves
- Lych no longer drains the Frozen status
In the Map Editor, a graphical error is resolved, and a few bugs related to the prop limit are now fixed, including:
- Duplicate prop button allowing to exceed the prop limit
- In-progress maps at prop limit allowing plus-one prop after loading saves
- Erasing stamps not restoring “prop limit” spent on them correctly
Towers that got specific fixes include Dart Monkey, Ice Monkey, Sniper Monkey, Monkey Sub, Heli Pilot, Ninja Monkey, and Druid. And the immense list of towers getting balance updates includes Dart Monkey, Bomb Shooter, Ice Monkey, Sniper Monkey, Monkey Sub, Monkey Buccaneer, Heli Pilot, Mortar Monkey, Wizard Monkey, Super Monkey, Ninja Monkey, Alchemist, Druid, Banana Farm, Beast Handler.
As for Heroes, only Quincy, Geraldo, and Corvus underwent small fixes. Quincy and Corvus are also on the list of balance changes, along with Gwendolin, Obyn Greenfoot, Benjamin, and Ezili.
Finally, players on Android (particularly those with Exynos Chipset devices) and Vision Pro each got specific bug and crash fixes. For PC players, most of the adjustments made are related to the new hotkeys options.
What comes next
Ninja Kiwi also shared a few glimpses of what they plan for the future. Here are a few highlights:
- Devs are keeping a close eye on the newly-launched Player Revenue Share to think of ways it can be improved;
- PlayStation launch, planned for early April, was delayed, but is still close and should be announced soon;
- After the long-awaited launch, the next step for Xbox and PlayStation consoles is a content update focused on maps;
- Jetpack Hero and Boss Rush Team Event are planned for Update 43 and Mermonkey Tower for Update 44;
- One more surprise, so far unannounced, is coming before Update 43.
You can find the full list of changes on Reddit or the Steam Community pages.
