Total War: Warhammer 3 will tomorrow receive a public beta of Immortal Empires, the vast, trilogy-merging game mode. At the same time, it’ll also receive a 2.0 update which brings sweeping changes to faction mechanics, the UI, individual units and many bug fixes. Creative Assembly have detailed some of those changes in a new video release today, which you’ll find below.
There will be a full set of patch notes for 2.0 along tomorrow, alongside all the new DLC, but for now here’s the video:
The video begins by detailing some major new features. The Warriors Of Chaos are receiving a campaign rework with four new legendary lords, including new God-given “chaos gifts” to boost your faction, a vassal-based settlement structure, the ability to hire mercenaries to join your warband, a warband upgrade tree, and more. There are also four new provinces on the Realm Of Chaos map. Some of these changes are presumably designed to coincide with the Chapions Of Chaos paid DLC which also releases tomorrow.
There are also UI updates, some of which are purely cosmetic like more variety in the colour palette, and some which make it easier to access information about your faction’s allies and vassals.
The video also details some of the changes being made to support the Immortal Empires campaign. If you’re not familiar, Mortal Empires was a mode for Warhammer 2 which allowed the races from that game to fight against those from Total War: Warhammer 1 on a much expanded map. Immortal Empires does the same but for the entire trilogy. To make that work, races from Warhammer 1 and 2 need to be amended in order to make them suitable for battling the races of Warhammer 3, including re-balanced reload times, changes to healing abilities, and changes to individual unit stats.
Nic Reuben has already been playing the Immortal Empires beta and wrote earlier today that the mode was an impressive achievement:
Impressive is the immense number of tiny tweaks for older factions, from balance and battle changes (Dragons are now beefier. Gor’rok’s unique rite now grants Saurus Warriors a Tzeentchy barrier. Norsca can build walls now) to lore-friendly recruitment options (Aranessa Saltspite can recruit Ogre Maneaters, ditto Vampire Counts and Mournguls). Alongside this, a few factions have had soft reworks – notably Vampire Counts and Tomb Kings – shuffling around build orders and unit tiers to make their starts faster and more forgiving. But practically every faction has received tweaks or passes of some kind.
Which is impressive work, even if I find the idea of playing Immortal Empires utterly overwhelming.