Total Warhammer 3’s next patch will slow the Souls race

Plus add Workshop support

At the heart of Total War: Warhammer 3 is an extremely relatable struggle to murder four members of the monarchy, claim their souls, and cash them in so you can meet a really big bear. I would like to meet a big bear. I’m willing to do a lot to meet a really big bear. But many players have felt that this ‘Souls race’ forces the game into an unpleasant and uninteresting shape. Thankfully, the devs have plans for the next patch which they say should “make the Souls race less urgent”.

In a blog post today, Creative Assembly laid out their plans for Update 1.1. Expected to launch in “early” April, it’ll make some changes to the shape of the game as well as fixing a few bits and fiddling with balance.

“The Realm of Chaos has been one of the most prevalent discussion points amongst the community, and we’re using this update to implement several bug fixes and gameplay tweaks that change how it fits into the mechanics of the game,” they said. So, to start (but not to finish), v1.1 will bring some changes which “are intended to make the Souls race less urgent and give you the chance to approach the battlefield in different ways”. They say:

• The strength of the negative Realm traits has been reduced by roughly ~50%.
• Daemon Legendary Lords will no longer be burdened by the negative traits of their respective patron god.
• Traits gained in the Realm of Chaos will now be removed when a Legendary Lord completes the survival battle within that realm.
• When a player intercepts an AI Lord at the Forge of Souls, their souls will now be lost—forcing them to restart their collection. This should make it easier to disrupt the Souls race.
• The “Protection” building chain can now be used to prevent rifts from spawning in the province in which they’re built.
• The rewards for gaining Souls have been improved by providing additional bonuses for a limited period of time.

The blog post also gabs about faction balance in multiplayer (the delightful Ogre Kingdoms are “overperforming heavily” while Grand Cathay are faring the worst), improving AI responsiveness during battle, fixing bugs, releasing the mod manager and enabling Workshop support, and more. They talk vaguely about longterm plans too, though don’t say anything new about Immortal Empires or the usual Blood Pack DLC.

They say their present goal is to “iron out the technical wrinkles, improve the stability and performance of the game, and adjust the balance and gameplay based on ongoing commentary from the community” to create a “strong baseline” for future additions. Eventually, they hope to break from Twarhammer 2’s pattern of pairing the big patches with DLC releases, and start releasing “major” updates with balance tweaks and bug fixes between DLCs “on a quicker cadence than previous games”.

I’ll be curious to see what the game becomes down the line, as the end of a trilogy and grand unification.

“Though best considered as the final part of an excessive strategy megagame, Total War: Warhammer 3 is a heavyweight in its own right,” Nate said in our Total Warhammer 3 review in February. “A little too much RTS grind in the midgame is easily outweighed by transformative changes to multiplayer, sieges, diplomacy and more.”

What he was really waiting for is the upcoming Immortal Empires campaign which will roll the lands and factions of the entire trilogy into one giant war.

Disclosure: RPS co-founder Alec Meer (RPS in peace) wrote on Twarhammer 3.