Total War: Warhammer III’s big 1.1.0 update has arrived, along with a beefy list of patch notes. The update touches just about every aspect of the strategy game, and adds some new features and options that will make the campaign more interesting and, hopefully, a bit less frustrating at key points.
For most players, the most broadly impactful changes in this update are the ones made to the Realm of Chaos campaign. As promised, the effects of the negative traits gained by entering the Chaos Realms has been roughly halved across the board, and Daemon legendary lords won’t experience any negative trait effects whatsoever while traveling through their patron god’s realm. All negative traits associated with a realm are now removed as soon as your lord has completed the survival battle there.
The race to collect souls works a bit differently now, too. When you intercept an AI lord at the Forge of Souls, they’ll lose all the souls they’ve collected so far, rather than being wounded for 15 turns. It’s now possible to block chaos rifts from spawning in your provinces by building the ‘protection’ chain of structures in a local settlement.
Here’s an official video that goes over the top line changes:
Completing a survival battle in one of the chaos realms is now a more appealing prospect: you’ll get 10 turns with +/- 5 to the winning faction’s corruption,, +8 control, +15 growth, and +10% income across all of your holdings, so you’ll have the opportunity to rebuild after taking heavy losses in the chaos realms should you succeed.
Once you finish the campaign, you’ll now have the opportunity to banish Be’lakor instead of recruiting him. Taking the banish option will give you some tempting permanent benefits as you mop up the map: +3 hero capacity for all heroes, +14 hero and lord recruit rank, +5 winds of magic per turn for all armies, +7 control in all provinces, +25 growth in all provinces, and +15% income in all provinces.
Be’lakor himself does not start out with his unique ability, Shadow Shroud. Instead, he now has a trait that allows you to unlock the ability if you choose.
Creative Assembly has made adjustments to just about every option available for the customisable Daemon Prince. All of his base stats have gotten buffed, and most of his progression offerings and gifts have been adjusted to compensate for this. Spells granted by gifts he’s unlocked all have overcast variants now, too.
The patch also adds the new Domination multiplayer game mode, makes balance adjustments to all factions in both campaign and multiplayer, adds two classic maps from Total War: Warhammer II for use in the Domination game mode (Arnheim and Battle for Itza), and temporarily disables manual aiming in multiplayer (this is due to an exploit that allowed players to ignore reload times on certain units).
Another nice change is the improved unit responsiveness: infantry units should turn to face enemies as fast as they did in Total War: Warhammer II, ranged units will no longer fire at a reduced rate while docked to siege walls, and your control groups will no longer automatically enter guard mode when you give them attack orders.
Finally, the Steam Workshop for Total War: Warhammer III is now live, and you’ll find a mod manager tab in the launcher.
The full patch notes are available at the official Total War site.