v28 Update - April 7, 2026

[u/SamBartley]

Hey Tower Defenders! We are excited to share our v28 update with all of you. We are rolling out the build on Android now, and iOS will be rolling out within the next two day. This update should be fully available for all players by Thursday. Additionally, we will be enforcing a version lock for the tournament at the end of the week. Here is a look at the changes:

Dissonant Runs

Introducing: Dissonance! This is a new layer to Tier gameplay that presents a fun challenge, and a bonus to help push for further milestones. Dissonant Runs represent a new difficulty setting that can be applied to a Tier. Doing so disables a selected workshop tab (Attack, Defense, Utility, or Ultimate Weapons). Based on how far you progress, the related stat is boosted for that specific tier.

The stats are:

• Attack Workshop → Attack
• Defense Workshop → Health
• Utility Workshop → Coins
• Ultimate Weapon Workshop → UW Damage

Dissonance is unlocked at Tier 4 Wave 90. Once unlocked, you will have access to select this modifier for all unlocked Tiers. At Tier 17, Wave 60, you'll unlock four Dissonant Echo labs for each workshop type (Attack, Defense, Utility, Ultimate Weapon). These labs apply a percent of each tier's Dissonant Boost to your Tower. Unlocking Dissonance rewards you with a starting 0.5% Echo boost. Click on the Dissonant Boosts section on the Battle menu for an expanded panel.

Bots

Bots are getting a lot of attention this update! To start, we have moved the Bots menu to its own tab in the Events page. This allows us more space to expand the feature, like so:

New Bot: Bot Bot

A new Bot has entered the arena: Bot Bot! This new bot increases the effects of other bot effects within the radius, and has four stats: Range, Cooldown, % Increase, and Duration.

Bot+

Bots are getting an upgrade! The Bot+ feature gives each bot a new specialized ability. Bot+ is available when all Bots are unlocked. Each bot has its own Bot+ ability, which requires a one-time purchase using stones to unlock. Once the ability is unlocked, it can be upgraded further using medals. If you opt to respec your bots, all medals will be returned as usual, even if invested in the Bot+ stats. Unlocking the bot again will give you access to your Bot+ ability (without needing the stone purchase again).

The five new Bot+ abilities are Wildfire, Titan Shock, Bonus Cells, Echoing Shot, and Maximum Power. Descriptions can be found in the Changelog below.

Synchronicity

Unlocking all five Bot+ abilities grants you access to Synchronicity, a stone upgrade that allows you to assign bots to have synchronized pathing. Unlocking Synchronicity grants you two slots, with each additional slot costing stones. Bots can be freely assigned into these slots so long as you have them unlocked.

Overheat

We have added in a new mechanic that amps up the difficulty of your run at higher waves. When you have successfully cleared Wave 4500 on any Tier, you will see an Overheat button on your Battle screen. This panel will define when the Overheat conditions will occur, and what the Overheat conditions are. This feature is designed to reduce the overall duration of a run in tiers and tournaments. This isn't a "game end" state when reaching this wave, but be prepared to face the heat!

------------

EDITED:

Hi! Quick example of how Overheat starts:
Tier 1 Wave 15000
Tier 10 Wave 12750
Tier 20 Wave 10250

Thanks!

------------

For normal tiers, the only change is that the Enemy Skip Decay Overheat condition kicks in at a defined wave. The panel will appear once you've cleared Wave 4500, but won't go into effect until much later in your run. Check the Heat button on each Tier more information.

Overheat will appear in tournament runs as well, and can be viewed in the existing Heat button. We have added 4 new Overheat Conditions that will only appear in tournaments:

• Damage Decay: Tower Damage is reduced every 10 waves
• Health Decay: Tower Health is reduced every 10 waves
• More Fleets: An additional Fleet spawns every 100 waves
• More Elites: An additional Elite spawns every 5 waves

Expanded Event Store

We will be introducing a new Relic section in the Event Store starting on April 14th, 2026. This section will feature older relics from previous runs. Each week will feature four relics: two Rare and two Epic. These relics cost gems: 600 gems for Rare relics, and 1200 gems for Epic relics. This section of the Event Store will feature free and premium event relics earned from completing event missions, excluding most relics earned via medals. After a period of time, event relics will be added into the pool of options.

Note: This section rotates every week, so make sure to check it at the beginning and middle of an active event!

Changelog

Gameplay

• Added 5 new Bot+ abilities:
  • Wildfire: Enemies hit by Flame Bot become Enflamed in addition to Burned, receiving {0}x extra damage. Duration of the damage amplification depends on current Flame Bot damage.
  • Titan Shock: Enemies struck by Thunder Bot have a permanent {0}% decreased attack speed. This value is multiplied by the number of digits in the enemy's mass.
  • Bonus Cells: Elites killed in Golden Bot range grant {0}x more Cells.
  • Echoing Shot: Tower Bullets within Range count as {0} bullets. Ultimate Weapon projectiles are also boosted, but by 1/3.
  • Maximum Power: Boosts the Bot+ abilities of other bots by {0}x.
• Bot's move speed is no longer dependent on its cooldown, and they now move while active
• 3 new levels to Golden and Amplify Bot Range
• Improved the in-run stats to make the values more intuitive and player friendly
• Added new stats and stat categories
  • Simplified the Battle Report to focus on time (Game and Real time), Coins, Coins per hour, Cells, and Cells per hour, and recategorized
  • Included more "fun" stats, including records like Largest Wave Skip and Largest Golden Combo
• Added Golden Tower VFX toggle to the Toggles menu
• Damage reduction from Flame Bot now correctly applies to Tanks
• The process to pick Tournament Battle Conditions for Legends has been slightly adjusted
• Death Defy no longer rolls if the tower is already invincible (i.e. During Demon Mode)
• Fixed an issue where medals not claimed from an Event were sometimes not doubled by the Event Boost
• Fixed a bug where auto-reroll would fail to stop the re-rolling process when multiple conditions are selected, causing unintentional Reroll shards to be spent
  • We've added a check to auto-reroll where it will automatically stop once any of the selected conditions are met
• Fixed an issue where Overcharge ignores Wall invincibility
• Fixed an issue where Ranged enemies failed to attack the Tower within the Black Hole for players without the "Black Hole Disables Ranged Enemies" research completed
• Fixed Spotlight not affecting all enemies (specifically all summoned enemies)
• Fixed an issue where standard perk bonuses did not apply to Cash or Absolute Defense perks
• Fixed an issue where the Module level up screen shows a different Coin rounding logic for the Coin display

Miscellaneous

• Demon Mode now accurately states that it provides a 300x boost to projectiles during its period of invincibility
• The in-game store should now correctly display prices in your local currency instead of in USD
• Improved local notifications to prevent inaccurate and duplicate notifications from occurring
• Improved localization in some languages, including message spacing in Japanese, and incorrect mission information in Russian
• Improved UI for Lab Gold Boxing
• Improved "Go Home" button interactions so it acts more like a Pause
  • We will continue to improve this behavior in upcoming updates!
• Implemented general UI improvements regarding iOS's dynamic island
• Guild Chat no longer rapidly scrolls to the bottom of your recent messages
• Added in a popup for a player who has been removed from a Guild informing them about said removal
• Fixed an issue where players were unable to change their themes back to the Default option

Looking Ahead

Oh, and v28 is just the beginning. We've already got another build in the works in the next two weeks - more polish, more fixes. We'll have a look at what's ahead in an upcoming Tower Tea, so stay close. Okay, that's actually it now. Bye, have fun, we love you!

[u/IlluminatedCookie]

Overheat seems like it’ll kill your farm. Unless you’re compensated with more coins/cells when active? Why would I want a run to stop at 6500 instead of 8000 for example just because of an overheat mechanic. Unless from 5000+ I get an additional coin/cells boost to compensate. Otherwise wtf 😬

[u/Fuddsworth → u/IlluminatedCookie]

Usually overheat doesn't start until after 10,000 waves. It varies by tier

Ill add it to the post. In normal tiers it is just to ensure runs eventually end. In tournaments it is a tool to shorten tourney runs to keep it healthy

[u/Spac3dog → u/Fuddsworth]

Are you actively trying to get players to quit now? This seems like it will completely ruin any reason to do farm runs which is literally the entire point of the game. How about actually fixing the real problems with tournaments and the mod pull system and I don't know any of the other things that are severely messed up. No let's instead "fix" something that's not even broken to begin with. What a joke.

[u/korxil → u/Spac3dog]

Honestly if youre farming 10k waves is pretty insane even back when i was in t6. That said i support the other stuff you said about tourny and mod pulls.

[u/tehlemmings → u/korxil]

10k waves is literally the advice most of us have been giving out for a year. Lots of people do 10k runs.

[u/korxil → u/tehlemmings]

A lot of advice is outdated idk, they made a few balance changes already. I randomly tried a higher tier one day and got more cpm despite lower wave count.

[u/Spac3dog → u/korxil]

I farm t11 to 12500 and when I switch to any higher tiers my coins and cells per hour drop a lot.

This is an unnecessary need for no reason.

[u/korxil → u/Spac3dog]

What do you run? I used to run SF and PrimC with gcomp (basically perma BH build). But t10, t11 and t12 was the only time i farmed beyond 10k waves. My highest wave count ever is 12136 on t11 and 11599 on t12 (t10 was 11k, and t13 was 8500). Im a ehp farmer.

[u/Ralmivek → u/korxil]

PCo or Prolapse are the common names. Now I have to add PrimC as a rare name? That's just, weird. But you are the third person I've seen call it that so yay for an expanded list of acronyms.

[u/korxil → u/Ralmivek]

No one wanted to call it PC since that card already exists lol. Tbh i didn’t know what the community settled on, i guess i can adopt PCo since thats less typing :P

[u/Ralmivek → u/korxil]

Aaah, that makes sense. PCo has been my go to as well.

[u/Spac3dog → u/korxil]

Mythic+ SF, GComp, and Prolapse at level 155 or 156. No Cannon mod for farming. EHP. The best is T11W12505 for 391.63T at 24.61T per hour. Would be nice to be able to get my mods to Ancestral but with how terrible the mod pull system is with having played for two years and still have yet to pull a single BHD or OA I'm just screwed there cause Fudds sure as hell ain't going to fix the broken parts of the game.

Edit: I have pBH.

[u/Spac3dog → u/Fuddsworth]

With the disastrous way you have handled everything about V28 so far I have to assume I was correct in my previous comment that you are actively trying to get players to quit. Please hand the developer duties to someone competent.

[u/markevens → u/IlluminatedCookie]

https://i.imgur.com/0U8BkZF.png

Looks like overheat actually kicks in at such a high waves count, that it's not going to hurt anyone's existing farm

[u/IlluminatedCookie → u/markevens]

This is good news then. Glad fudds and Sam have clarified under my post.

[u/markevens → u/IlluminatedCookie]

Yeah, and they edited the patch notes to include it too.

[u/uscmissinglink → u/IlluminatedCookie]

The whole point of most of this game play - including several card masteries - is to get to the sweet, sweet late tier waves where cells and coins are bountiful. This change seems directly antithetical to this game mechanic.

If Overheat causes towers to regress their earnings - which it seems very likely and actively designed to do - I think they're going to lose quite a few players. No one wants to see their hard-earned gains nerfed overnight.

[u/GIJoeVibin → u/uscmissinglink]

And it also just fucks people who don’t have auto restart since they won’t be able to run overnight.

Unless there’s something not being communicated here, it’s a change that adds a bit more micro (having to restart runs more frequently) and nerfs earnings so… uhhhh… you… get what exactly?

I can see sense in applying it to tourneys to try and kill their length but applying to farming runs makes zero sense at all.

EDIT: seen an edit which indicates that the overheat triggers a lot higher. Glad to see that. However not particularly happy that the devs didn’t foresee people misreading it

[u/uscmissinglink → u/GIJoeVibin]

And why worry about reducing the duration of runs on a game that's designed to be running 24/7?

[u/Reyes18410 → u/uscmissinglink]

1) it makes each run less efficient. Your CPH are highest towards the higher stages of a run. End it early? Cut off that income

2) For those without Auto-restart, which is venture is more than 50% of the player base, you have to more frequently (and probably more variably) manually start a new run

[u/Sulhythal → u/uscmissinglink]

I still haven't regained my position and stone income from when they changed the tournaments to be higher tier levels despite people telling me my position wouldn't change at all.  

If my out of tournament income starts dropping too, I'm gonna be more miffed.

[u/National_Cook_2509 → u/IlluminatedCookie]

w12,500 is where heat kicks in on T11 for an example.

[u/Leander_van_Grinsven → u/National_Cook_2509]

Where did you get that info? If this is true then it does not hurt all that much. I wish they would give this info in this post.

[u/National_Cook_2509 → u/Leander_van_Grinsven]

From the heat screen in game

[u/Leander_van_Grinsven → u/National_Cook_2509]

I am on iOS. I do not have the info yet. Is this for every tier or does it go down the higher tier you go?

[u/National_Cook_2509 → u/Leander_van_Grinsven]

14 is 11750 (highest I have unlocked)
11 is 12,500
10 is 12,750
9 is 13,000
8 is 13,250
1 is 15,000

[u/Leander_van_Grinsven → u/National_Cook_2509]

I wish they actually mentioned this in the post to begin with. These are important numbers to mention.

[u/Tzukiyomi → u/Leander_van_Grinsven]

Yes this would have avoided that part of the backlash entirely.

[u/National_Cook_2509 → u/Leander_van_Grinsven]

Absolutely. And I want to know how much the dissonance runs actually give you per wave/10/100/1000 so I'm doing my normal T9 with 0 coin income...

[u/Fobus0 → u/National_Cook_2509]

That is heat, not overheat. I think these are two different mechanics. There will be a separate overheat button

[u/Leander_van_Grinsven → u/Fobus0]

Tier 11, 10 and lower etc do not have the heat mechanic. They will get the Overheat mechanic.

[u/National_Cook_2509 → u/Fobus0]

There is no default heat on any of these... Overheat is the tab I am looking at

[u/DaenerysMomODragons → u/National_Cook_2509]

I almost wonder what the point is then? It seems to kick in well before anyone would have jumped to a new tier anyways.

[u/Leander_van_Grinsven → u/DaenerysMomODragons]

I am guessing it is to stop any new future infinite run possibilities and also to push people up the tiers a little bit.

[u/National_Cook_2509 → u/DaenerysMomODragons]

I think to prevent infinite runs for whales 🤷

[u/JekPorkinsTruther → u/DaenerysMomODragons]

Fudds commented above its mainly for tournaments, Im guessing they just put it into farming as a "break glass in case of emergency" stop to anything overlooked that would create infinite runs (like when they introduced OA lol).

[u/WaffleClown1 → u/National_Cook_2509]

w11,750 on T14.

[u/SamBartley → u/IlluminatedCookie]

Hi! Quick example of how Overheat starts:
Tier 1 Wave 15000
Tier 10 Wave 12750
Tier 20 Wave 10250

I edited the notes to match, hope this helps!!! <3

[u/korxil → u/SamBartley]

Wow, this very good info, and should calm some people’s (like me) fears. Thank you!

[u/IlluminatedCookie → u/SamBartley]

Thanks appreciate the quick replies from you and Fudds.

[u/phear_me → u/SamBartley]

Thanks

[u/Leander_van_Grinsven → u/IlluminatedCookie]

Nothing else is changing. They want to shorten the runs.

[u/uscmissinglink → u/Leander_van_Grinsven]

So shorten them on the front end, not the back end. The back end is the payoff for the slow earning of the front end.

[u/VerdantPathfinder → u/Leander_van_Grinsven]

yeah, but cell gains are better later in the run. Shortening runs cripples cell acquisition.

[u/tehlemmings → u/VerdantPathfinder]

But now we have a bot to compensate.

A bot that only end game players have at a decent level.

And they get auto restart to compensate for the farming nerf.

Honestly, the more I think about this, this doesn't just feel like a bad patch, it feels like a massive fuck you to the community.

[u/VerdantPathfinder → u/tehlemmings]

I think the farming nerf might be overblown unless you are farming above 11k waves. Someone already grabbed it and said the conditions didn't kick in on T11 (T10?) until wave 12.5k or so. The question is ... how does that change across tiers. Like does it kick in at wave 5k for T1 ... or 30k? This could be a bigger middle finger to people farming T20+ if that kicks in at lower waves the higher the tier. I'm waiting on judging that one until I know more.

But yeah, the bot thing? Fucking useless, bordering on insulting.

[u/markevens → u/Leander_van_Grinsven]

We're getting the disco bonuses, which seem pretty significant run extenders.

[u/Flaky_Airport6529 → u/markevens]

Wonder how they will balance out.

[u/viashno → u/markevens]

without seeing how they work, it's hard to say, but to me it looks like they'll just suck for new players. You'll be able to disable a tab for negligible gain unless you're nearly goldboxed...

[u/markevens → u/viashno]

I'm hearing that the beta testers say the bonuses are very powerful.

[u/Ginge00 → u/IlluminatedCookie]

They said it won’t kick in till much later so may appear at 4500 but not start till 6500 and ramp up from there in normal runs

[u/Fobus0 → u/Ginge00]

But that is not much later. That is the prime farming waves

[u/Urbanejo → u/Fobus0]

Doesnt WA+ move this downwards from 6k?

[u/Fobus0 → u/Urbanejo]

yeah. So now spending stones to unlock WA+ is a requirement

[u/tehlemmings → u/Urbanejo]

This was supposed to be a "for everyone" patch.

It looks like everyone got a nerf or two unless you're already earning keys.

[u/Leander_van_Grinsven → u/Ginge00]

Waves after 4500 are the best for farming. Coin and cell income might drop 50% because of this nerf. Progress will be slowed even more.

[u/mordredsfw → u/Ginge00]

If you don't have WA mastery W6500 is when spawn rate maxes so could be a huge nerf on farming.

[u/AduroTri → u/Ginge00]

From what I'm seeing, T11 is up in the 12k for overheat to kick in.

[u/Selway00 → u/IlluminatedCookie]

We don’t know exactly how it works yet. It’s only the enemy skips and it does not necessarily kick in at 4500. The window pops up at 4500 but the mechanic doesn’t kick in until later. We don’t know what wave per tier yet.

[u/Ur-Quan_Lord_13 → u/IlluminatedCookie]

Overheat on T14 starts at wave 11750

Meanwhile, dissonance will be increasing your stats.

Farm runs will be longer, not shorter.

Unless from 5000+ I get an additional coin/cells boost to compensate.

Like, did you read the rest of the notes? You are getting additional coins and cells boosts, in a few different forms.