What’s that unholy rumbling? An avalanche? Ah, nothing so delicate. It’s the next free update for Total War: Warhammer 3, which launches tomorrow alongside the Tides of Torment DLC. The strategy barons of Creative Assembly have just put up a blog post, and frankly, it’s a mess. The Chaos demons of Salaanesh have mastered the foxtrot. The Norscans now give birth to squadrons of porters when they pillage stuff. The Trolls have discovered imperialism, the High Elves have devised a patronage system, and the Dark Elves have learned how to prioritise. It’s a close-packed salvo of additions worthy of the cabin scene from A Night Of The Opera. I am trying to think of a Warhammer-appropriate Groucho joke and failing.
You can read about it all over on the developer’s site. Go on, off you go. Don’t ask me to summarise, I’m busy watching Marx Brothers clips now. Ugh, fine – here’s a whistlestop tour. The update will add a new legendary Chaos lord, the Masque, who got cursed by Slaneesh once and can’t stop shaking her booty. Usefully, she can also make her armies dance for bonuses, as long as you vary your steps and maintain the tempo.
Where are my Norscans? Stop quaffing the gore of your enemies and sit in a circle while I explain your new pillaging mechanics. Whenever you pillage or raze a settlement, you’ll now spawn a small army to courier the Spoils – a new global resource – back to home territory. Spoils are for new recruitment and building options; they’re also now required to occupy captured settlements outside of Norsca, so invade at your peril.
If that sounds like too much fuss, you’re going to hate the new approaches to Chaos Altars and Norscan Allegiance. Altars now have a couple of building slots, so you can tailor them to the region. You can still use them to earn Allegiance with Chaos gods, but when you max out your Allegiance with one god, you’ll be able to accept their favour for a free Lord or Hero, at the price of riling the others and provoking an assault on your capital. Safer, perhaps, to go hunt one of 12 newly added monsters via the Monstrous Arcanum, with new categories of hunt to enjoy. Is Wulfrik the Wanderer good for hunting? I don’t know, but I do know that this particular Norse legendary lord has a new starting position and some new travel abilities.
Hello Trolls! Please put me down – I taste only of regret, and besides, I have vital intelligence to share. Your best boi Throgg now has the ability to found a Troll Empire by means of Trollkind, a unique resource earned by fielding armies of Trolls. It’s good for new buildings, a special reinforcement action, and the ability to recruit Trolls specific to certain latitudes. Rivers harbour river trolls, for instance. Mountains are the preserve of stone trolls. It’s like Troll Pokemon in here all of a sudden. Trolls!
High Elves! Stop looking at me through your nostrils and heed my wisdom. You’re getting a Patronage system so that you can scheme against each other more. This lets High Elf factions appoint Lords to 11 seats around the continent of Ulthuan, granting access to various benefits and, if you play your cards right, confederation opportunities.
As long as one High Elf faction owns a provincial capital, all High Elf factions can spend Influence to become patron of that region. It’s a fine balance of factional unity and internal feuding that is designed to keep diasporic High Elf factions circling back to the homeland. Also, your legendary lord Tyron has a bunch of new strategic actions reflecting his prominence among the pointy-eared, while top wizard Teclis can research special actions across the five floors of the White Tower.
Dark Elves! Thankfully for my rapidly dwindling neurones, all you’re getting is more focussed victory conditions. Why defeat all the High Elves? Why not just defeat that one High Elf you particularly despise? Oh, go on, here are some new tricks for the Kraken Lord. He can teleport to Black Arks now, and hijack Aislinn’s Sea Lanes.
There’s more in the full post, and there’s more in the full patch, with taunting mention of secret, smaller features to unearth. One thing I need a refresh on is whether Twarham 3’s campaign AI is working again. It wasn’t back in October. “A catastrophic failure,” they called it. Seems bad! Maybe they’ll talk about that in tomorrow’s Total War Direct at 4pm UK, which will hopefully not inflict any further intricacies on the Norscans. Look at their poor befuddled beards. They have no clue which cities to pillage now, or which gods to pillage them for.
