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Total War: Arena’s latest update gives the barbarians lots of lovely ponies

Total War: Arena patch

What’s more terrifying than a horde of barbarians charging at you in Total War: Arena? A horde of barbarians with four legs charging at you in Total War: Arena. 

The latest update to Creative Assembly’s free-to-play game introduces new units for the most hairy of factions, giving more cavalry units to barbarian commanders. 

Total War: Arena’s big brother, Attila, is one of our best PC games.

With the Raiding Party patch, you’ll be able to, eventually, unlock four new units: The tier 4 Brigands, tier 5 Mounted Warband, tier 7 Chargers and tier 8 Blood Riders, who sound just lovely.

Along with these hirsute mounted men come a bunch of bug fixes and tweaks, to boot. Check out the patch notes below.

Improvements

  • Ranged units rebalancing:
    • Slings: removed slow effect, slightly reduced damage, increased reload time
    • Arrows: reduced damage
    • Javelins: increased damage
  • Removed 100 Gold from First Daily Victory bonus, and increased the reward multiplier from x2 to x3 instead.
  • Consumables are now always restocked using the same currency that they were purchased in, if “replenish automatically” is active.
  • Focus Fire will now cause a unit to move towards its target, if the target is out of range.
  • There’s now a clear indication in the UI of what bonuses you receive for using a premium unit.
  • Barbarian unit pack 2: “Raiding Party”
  • We’ve improved the look & feel of the Gold purchase panel.
  • Currencies displayed in the purchase panel now show the commonly-used symbols ($ instead of USD, for example).
  • Matchmaking now takes commander tier into account.
  • The UI now clearly shows which players are grouped together in a party, and which are not.
  • Unit equipment is now priced more finely, based on its usefulness. Dead end equipment is now significantly cheaper, while unlock-enabling equipment is more expensive. Overall, prices have not changed.
  • Pricing update: we’ve updated the prices of some payment packages to better reflect the real purchasing power of several countries.

Bug fixes

  • Army Panel: Unit XP unlock costs are no longer displayed as a Gold cost.
  • Unit XP should now display correctly in profile stats.
  • Aspis Companion Cavalry appear to be able to unlock the Silver Shield Swordsmen on the unit tree, but cannot.
  • The fire whilst moving ability can no longer be used against your own units.
  • Purchase price for commander is no longer present on commander tooltip after purchase.
  • The speed penalties for Hold the Line and Fight in the Shade can no longer be ignored by exploiting turn speed.
  • Infiltration ability now deactivates after being attacked by enemy players.
  • Amazonian Warriors and Praetorian Cavalry now have the Charge ability.
  • Chat cursor is now aligned properly.
  • The commander portrait is no longer cuts off in addition to slightly clipping into the text if the commander has a wide portrait in the post battle panel.
  • Multiple consumable names are no longer slightly bleeding out of their tooltip.
  • Switching from a commander with unit slots open to a commander with a unit equipped no longer causes their unit’s panel to open.
  • When buying new upgrades the cost number is now aligned correctly with the word “cost”.
  • Command ability tool tips will no longer follow the mouse cursor when the user views the tool tips detail before results are posted.
  • There is now a tooltip on the default colour option on your colours panel.
  • Hastati Advance ability is now available under scipio.
  • Shop/Convert XP dialog no longer shows only relevant units.
  • The “The Alpha” and “The Vanguard” names have now been properly appended.
  • Battle chat now has a backdrop/shadow.
  • Units on low ground can no longer see units on high ground.
  • Tarantine Cavalry can now activate any of their ammo consumables.
  • News stories are now sorted by date.
  • Players are no longer able to place multiple deployables on the same spot.
  • Lockdown ability formally used a generic voiceover – it now uses an alternate line of dialogue to fill in the gap.
  • If battle results appear while in the gold confirmation screen for consumables, players will no longer get the invalid purchase error.
  • If battle results appear while the XP confirmation popup is open, both purchase buttons no longer grey out.
  • Tooltip text of the “play” button during matchmaking now properly displays as “connecting”
  • Memory leaks have been fixed.
  • Ignitable tar no longer has a misleading effect.
  • Health Bar is now light blue, instead of white.
  • Battle start time for the metrics now displays as server time.
  • First load no longer causes a large visual bug.
  • Players will no longer have their client crash when a user interacts with a Greek commander card when a faction colour is applied.
  • Chat input box now disappears once a command is sent.
  • The chat toggle button has been substituted for a prefix.
  • Charges now last longer than 5 seconds.
  • UI integration from mainline has been completed.
  • A fix for client crashing when there is no mouse/keyboard detected has been implemented.
  • Constantly removing at unit via click and drag no longer results in tool tips breaking.
  • The about panel now features an updated patch number.
  • Tooltips on the front end are no longer small and difficult to read.
  • Text/tooltips for different settings in the graphics menu are no longer small and difficult to read.
  • Various crash fixes.