Total War: Warhammer III developer Creative Assembly has laid out its plans for the near-term roadmap for the fantasy strategy game, specifically discussing some of the big issues that will be addressed in the next major update, version 1.1, which the studio says should be ready to roll out in early April.
Some key changes are coming to the Realm of Chaos in update 1.1. For one thing, it’ll be less difficult to simply operate in those areas, as the strength of negative traits associated with each realm is being roughly halved, and daemon legendary lords will not suffer negative traits associated with their patron god at all. Traits picked up in the Chaos realms will be removed once a character completes the survival battle in that realm.
Update 1.1 will also introduce a new building chain called ‘Protection,’ which will prevent Chaos rifts from spawning in any province where they’re built. That sounds like an interesting new choice: you’ll be able to protect a certain area from the spread of Chaos corruption, but that could make it more difficult to reach a rift, and you’ll only be able to do it by using up a valuable construction slot in one of your settlements.
The studio also plans to launch Steam Workshop support and the mod manager with update 1.1, so if you’re one of the many players who loves tinkering with the game and adding custom units and options, you don’t have long to wait.
There’s a significant faction balance pass on the way in update 1.1, based on winrates Creative Assembly has observed in ranked matchmaking and domination. The Ogre Kingdoms have been doing quite a bit better than everyone else, and the studio says they’ll get some adjustments to bring them in line – although the blog post doesn’t specify how exactly the faction will be nerfed.
By contrast, Grand Cathay has been lagging behind, and Creative Assembly says the sizes of all Grand Cathay starting armies will be increased, since the faction does best with big stacks.
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The alt-tab crash fix should be out in beta next week, and – assuming the beta goes well – that fix should be moved into the main branch along with update 1.1, Creative Assembly says.
Creative Assembly says that it’s focused on fixing Total War: Warhammer III’s technical issues prior to setting release dates for future content, so we’ll have to wait to find out when we can expect additional lords, factions, and the hotly anticipated blood and gore DLC.