Umair
The long-awaited Total War Warhammer 3 patch 6.1 release date has arrived, bringing new units and major overhauls to the ambitious grand strategy game. The headline changes include a Kislev rework and alterations for Tzeentch legendary lord Kairos Fateweaver, but there’s more to look forward to for Grand Cathay and Ogre Kingdoms players. Creative Assembly has also adapted one of its most popular mods into an official feature, and included an initial change based on its ongoing campaign AI beta testing.
Despite some ups and downs across its various expansions, Total War Warhammer 3 remains unquestionably one of the biggest and best Warhammer games on PC. Its new update revisits one of the strategy game’s most divisive add-ons, Shadows of Change. CA has also split the DLC’s three legendary lords – Tzeentch’s Changeling, Kislev’s Mother Ostankya, and Grand Cathay’s Yuan Bo – into separate, standalone purchases to bring it in line with how more recent expansions are offered for sale.
Kislev no longer has requirements to unlock Boris Ursus, meaning he’ll be available to everyone immediately. The supporter race is completely gone, replaced by the new-look Court and Orthodoxy system. This is available to all its factions, including Mother Ostankya (who can now cure plagues and also has a new starting option to teleport to Plesk in Kislev’s Eastern Oblast, or continue with her default position in Naggaroth). As you play, your actions will accrue favor with the Ice Court and the Great Orthodoxy.
You’ll earn boons from each as your support with them rises, but favoring one side too heavily will destabilize Kislev and invoke increasing penalties as a result. These changes also see Devotion replacing Control for all Kislev factions, and you’ll be able to use it to invoke potent boosts to your armies and settlements. Atamans, Kislev’s unique lords, now have a new skill tree and can no longer be used as a standard field lord, but can perform sally attacks from garrisons to engage enemy forces as though you were using an army.
For Tzeentch, the fragments of sorcery system employed by Kairos has been replaced by a new, more freeform mechanic that gradually unlocks spell slots every five levels. Each starts with the ‘Lore of Tzeentch’ spell set, but can be freely swapped to its equivalent spell from eight lores of magic: Life, Death, Metal, Beasts, Light, Shadows, Heavens, and Fire. There are no limitations on changing your loadout, so you can prepare for every battle as you wish.
This is complemented by a revamped skill tree for Kairos, although you’ll also encounter new unique skills for both the Herald of Tzeentch and the Exalted Lord of Change. Building and unit availability has been reworked, with the likes of Tzeentch Cultist heroes, Chaos sorcerers, and Marauder horsemen available at lower tiers. Kairos now starts campaigns with two cults in operation – one at his old stomping grounds of Montfort, and one in the Crystal Spires in the far north.
Grand Cathay finds a new Ogre camp, the Stoneshatter Tribe, in the Wastelands of Jinshen just south of Zhao Ming. This band of mercenaries will offer their services to any and all nearby factions. Cathay legendary lord Miao Ying has some fresh faction traits, including bonuses to Nan-Gau units and Bastion-themed campaign effects.
Two new units have arrived with TWW3 patch 6.1. Cathay gains the Nan-Gau Grenadiers, who have grenades and hand weapons along with a single-use stun bomb ability that unleashes a significant melee debuff on affected units to swing fights in your favor. Gnoblar Flingers join the Ogre Kingdoms, providing a cheap but inaccurate ranged option that you’ll also spot supplementing the faction’s existing garrison forces.
Creative Assembly has adopted a popular mod that displays unit abilities in a more spread-out form across several lines rather than compressing them together into a hard-to-parse stack. “We’d like to give a huge shoutout to modder ‘sudkks’ whose mod has solved this until now,” game designer William Håkestad writes. “Fantastic work on this quality-of-life fix; we liked your solution so much we thought it should be this way in the game for everyone.”
Senior community manager Steve Coleman also notes that a change has arrived from the campaign AI beta. Computer-controlled factions will no longer treat enemy agents the same way they do enemy armies, and this is just the first piece of a change with “much more in the pipeline.” A second beta round will be coming in the next few weeks.
Total War Warhammer 3 patch 6.1 is out now. You can read through the full patch notes courtesy of Creative Assembly to dig into the details of the reworks along with all the rest of the bug fixes and balance changes, where you’ll spot a particular focus on raising the turn speeds of cavalry units to help them feel a bit more responsive.
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