A new Total War Warhammer 3 update is here, delivering developer Creative Assembly’s much-touted magic items rework along with the addition of new units. The overhaul is designed to better balance item strength across the strategy game’s campaigns, and should result in you finding fewer but more impactful drops, with a better variety of options to suit your chosen faction’s preferred play style. The complete Total War Warhammer 3 6.2 patch notes also include a nerf to Slaanesh mounted units, a fix for abilities granted to summoned forces, and a reduction to its storage size, as we wait on the Tides of Torment DLC.
After a stumble in late 2023, CA has been on a strong path, reclaiming Total War Warhammer 3’s place among the best Warhammer games on PC with a continued string of updates and expansions. We’ve already had the reveal of new legendary lords Sayl and Dechala, who will be joining the ranks of Norsca and Slaanesh respectively with Total War Warhammer 3’s next DLC, Tides of Torment. Right now, however, is update 6.2, and the main change is the sweeping item rework, which covers all the common, uncommon, and rare options, tweaking more than 600 magic objects in total.
You can read through senior game designer William Håkestad’s full explanation of the design process behind the transformation, but the quick breakdown is that it introduces a new ‘power budget system’ designed to ensure that an item’s rarity matches its strength accordingly. This means a mixture of changed rarity tiers for some, and balance adjustments for others, with a focus on maintaining the strength of particularly notable or beloved power items where possible.
You should now pick up fewer items, but find more of them worthwhile. Rather than drops being fully random, a new pseudorandom system means you’ll see a greater variety of options, with the game taking into account things you already have and those you’re likely to be able to make use of. Item fusing has also been overhauled, now guaranteeing you’ll get a result of the same type used in the production process, and with a small chance to fuse rares into unique items.
Alongside this comes a selection of six new uniques to discover, one of which is actually a chain of the Eight Burning Books of Khorne; this collection of ultra-rare magical tomes poses high risk, but high reward. Two new units also join the fray. The Chaos Dwarfs get the Hobgoblin Bolt Throwers, affordable and relatively stable siege weapons, while the Vampire Counts gain access to a new variant of Blood Knights that use sword and shield, a more sustainable option that are better suited to fighting infantry and.
Those are the main changes; CA notes that it hasn’t yet touched character-specific unique items or banners, but says both are on the table for the future. Update 6.2 also introduces campaign AI improvements with two additional customization options; one makes AI-controlled factions better at assessing threats, while the other increases the decision-making potential of minor factions.
There are also plenty of smaller bug fixes, tweaks, and balance adjustments. Most notably among them, abilities that are granted by effects should now properly affect summoned units such as the Summoned Skink Priest, Krell, and Summoned Keeper of Secrets. Elsewhere, units that ride on Steeds of Slaanesh have had their radii ratio increased, which means fewer of them can fight side-by-side in melee combat.
Total War Warhammer 3 patch 6.2 is out now. You can read through the full patch notes courtesy of Creative Assembly. While you should expect a fairly hefty download of approximately 55.3 GB, you’ll actually be saving space once you’re done. Improved compression has reduced the total storage requirement by 27%, and indeed my Total War Warhammer 3 install size shrunk from 113.16 GB down to 82.16 GB following the update.
Wondering what the best Total War Warhammer 3 races are? We’ve broken down our favorites. You can also browse our pick of the best grand strategy games on PC for plenty more large-scale logistics.
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