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Creative Assembly has dropped the Total War: Warhammer III update 2.2.0 alongside the patch notes.

There’s plenty to unpack this time around, including a brand-new unit pack and plenty of balancing and updates to all races and gameplay.

There really is too much to cover in this update in terms of condensing it into one short paragraph, so here are the cliff notes from the mouths of Creative Assembly themselves:

The following Total War: Warhammer III Update 2.2.0 patch notes have been taken from the official Total War blog:

In Update 2.2, we’re introducing our third Regiments of Renown unit pack, free for all players of WARHAMMER III. Monsters rise up this month as we focus on some of our factions’ most vicious units, blessed with a few extra nasty tricks that make them more powerful than ever!

Regiments of Renown III unleashes the following units:

THE GREEN GUARDIAN – Terracotta Sentinel GRAND CATHAY

Centuries of silent sentry duty at the edge of the Warpstone Desert has been broken by a stunning display of choreographed violence. Foes stand little chance against the enchanted behemoth towering above them.

KHORNE’S BLOODY FIST- Bloodthirster KHORNE

Even by Bloodthirster standards, the Bloody Fist stands apart. With every savage-yet-precise blow, it grows stronger, while its enemies are pounded to a gory blot on the landscape.

THE FROZEN HEART OF WINTER – Elemental Bear KISLEV

More than a mere bear, this elemental creature has all the pride and rage of its beleaguered Motherland distilled into its colossal, icy form.

UNCLE FURUNCLE – Great Unclean One NURGLE

Those who’ve heard of Uncle Furuncle know to steer well clear of his gaseous girth, lest a torrent of putrid filth descend upon them from gods know where.

THE SNOWHORN OF MOURN – Stonehorn OGRE KINGDOMS

Used to living in the sub-polar temperatures of the Granitetooth Graveyard, this characteristically vicious Stonehorn knows how to use the icy cold to its best advantage, bringing far more than mere heft to the fight.

THE MARQUIS OF MASOCHISM – Keeper of Secrets SLAANESH

“I have such sights to show you!”

THE GOLDEN GRIFFIN OF THEURGY – Lord of Change TZEENTCH

The most powerful of the Changer’s chosen confuses and beguiles before swooping in to give his enemies a bloody, merciless mauling.

The Skaven undercities are erupting!

Burrowed deep beneath the surface, the Skaven are expanding their underground empire to the farthest corners of the old world. With Warpbombs ready to turn your settlements to ash plus hordes of vermin spewing out from the dirt in the name of the Under-Father, willing factions must race to wipe the major Skaven factions off the map and put a stop to the Vermintide.

But tread carefully, for every Skaven clan that’s yet to be slain makes the erupting undercities even deadlier.

Improvements made to the overall stability and performance of the game.

Below are changes made to the gameplay rules, AI, and other mechanics that dictate how the game is played.

We’ve implemented additional fixes for instances of flying units being able to capture points, this time affecting:

The Blood Pack Incidents would regularly all fire between turns 10 and 20. Given the duration of most campaigns, this meant that around 20% of campaign battles were actually being fought with a completely different pace and balance than intended.

In Update 2.0, we significantly buffed many units across all the undead races. Combined with the switch to percentage-based healing in Total War: WARHAMMER III, this significantly reduced the impact that Crumbling has on units whose Leadership has broken. As a result, we’re slightly increasing the damage of Crumbling to help with clearing out undead enemies that are falling apart.

CRUMBLING (Tomb Kings, Vampire Coast, Vampire Counts)

Several races lacking the Channelling stance now have their own unique method for replenishing Winds of Magic.

It gets spicy after hours! This faction now benefits from greatly increased Winds of Magic replenishment during Full Moon events:

In addition, Beastmen now gain +10 Winds of Magic per turn when in a Raiding stance.

The Flagship Expansion stance (only available at sea) now offers the following Winds of Magic options:

In this update, we’re raising the multiplayer cost of all Chaos Spawn units for all races, as they were an overly prevalent unit thanks to their excellent mass and tanking potential. In the Beastmen’s case, they have a notably lower damage than the other variants, so we are compensating for that.

Across the board, Giants have been not a popular unit in any race or game mode despite the addition of missile resistance. We are again giving them a blanket buff: increasing their armour and weapon strength to make them one of the hardest hitting units in the game! They’ll still be a slow, huge target, so we believe that this should bring them into the meta without making them too oppressive.

Minotaurs are another unit that has been performing poorly, especially when Chaos Spawn occupy a similar design space. For now, we are giving them a boost to their hit points: allowing more time to benefit from their Bloodgreed passive. Paired with reductions to their multiplayer cost, we hope to encourage their inclusion in competitive builds.

BUTCHERS OF KALKENGARD (MINOTAURS – SHIELDS)

In Update 2.0, we changed the speeds of several horse-based cavalry rosters. However, Bretonnia hadn’t received this treatment… until now! We’ll monitor how the faster cavalry units get on, as well as your feedback as you get the time to experiment with them in combat.

Chop chop! Update 2.2 delivers the following speed buffs:

The Daemon Prince’s deity-specific, post-battle captive options now offer an additional effect in addition to Glory gain:

The Dark Elf slave system felt too passive, so we’ve made things a bit more dynamic by removing the Slave Cap on Minor Settlements. Players can now utilise the global effects at the cost of their Public Order to focus on capacity, or instead have a settlement utilise around 100 Slaves to keep their Infrastructure Bonuses active. Other settlements, in the meantime, can keep their capacity lower and just use slaves when maximum capacity is reached.

Once you get a chance to play with it, let us know what you think: whether the system is now too punishing or if it is still too passive.

SLAVES (Dark Elf Racial Mechanic)

Several adjustments have been made to the slave drain in relation to public order:

The slave capacity brackets have also been adjusted as follows:

The Increase Production Commandment now has the following effects:

Sacrifices for Khaine’s Slave effects have changed:

Both Miao Yin and Zhao Ming no longer have access to active spells or abilities when in their dragon transformation, with the exception of the following:

Greenskins will also benefit from the Giant buffs. We will, of course, be monitoring both how it plays out and your feedback as we make additional changes.

Grimgor’s short victory underwent some tweaks to bring it inline with other short victories:

Although they remain capable in campaign, High Elves have been called out for their overall underperformance in multiplayer—despite implementing numerous buffs to them in 2.0. So, we are rolling out a massive pass of Multiplayer Cost reductions across the board for Ranged and Elite units. This will allow High Elves to bring more troops to multiplayer battles, significantly boosting their overall power level and map presence.

We are also adding Martial Mastery to Swordmasters of Hoeth and Loremasters. As some of the best combatants in the High Elven roster, we believe this to be not only an appropriate buff for performance reasons, but also thematic ones.

EVERQUEEN’S COURT GUARD (SISTERS OF AVELORN)

HERALDS OF THE WIND (ELLYRIAN REAVERS)

KEEPERS OF THE FLAME (PHOENIX GUARD)

TALONS OF TOR CALEDA (ARCHERS – LIGHT ARMOUR)

THE PUREMANE COMPANY (WHITE LIONS OF CHRACE)

THE SCIONS OF MATHLANN (SPEARMEN)

THE STORM RIDERS (LOTHERN SEA GUARD)

While Khorne performs very well in campaign, their units are often too expensive in the multiplayer environment—even when considering their high power levels that are designed to make up for the race’s lack of magic. As such, we are reducing the Multiplayer Costs of the most elite units of Khorne to allow them to shine in multiplayer.

At the same time, the Spawn of Khorne underperform when compared to their counterparts, so we are very slightly increasing their armour. Minotaurs of Khorne will be receiving a significant Multiplayer Cost reduction, in addition to matching the hit point buffs of the Beastmen variants. This should make them a more attractive pick in all game modes.

The Chaos Shrines of Khorne have a similar problem: where their Giver of Furious Glory ability is much weaker than the counterparts, and so we are increasing the maximum boosts these can offer. That said, we are assigning a multiplayer cap of 1 to all Chaos Shrines, as we would like it to be a support unit as opposed to core pieces of the army.

Chaos Knights have been underperforming in multiplayer across the board for all races, so we are reducing their Multiplayer Cost globally.

CHAOS KNIGHTS OF KHORNE (LANCES)

CHOSEN OF KHORNE (DUAL WEAPONS)

KNIGHTS OF THE BRAZEN THRONE (SKULLCRUSHERS OF KHORNE)

MINOTAURS OF KHORNE (GREAT WEAPONS)

GIVER OF FURIOUS GLORY (CHAOS SHRINE OF KHORNE)

MANTLE OF IMMOLATION (BLOODCRUCHERS OF KHORNE)

Lizardmen have been performing very well since the changes we introduced in 2.0. We will keep an eye on them as we consider further tweaks for roster diversity; keep the feedback coming!

For now, we are only adding a cooldown to Lord Kroak’s Deliverance of Itza spells, as these are hugely powerful and should conform with the norms of our spell systems, regardless.

DELIVERANCE OF ITZA (Lord Kroak)

These spells now have cooldowns of:

This time around, Norsca only receives some minor changes. Ice Wolves in particular have been performing significantly worse than Flesh Hounds while being in a similar cost bracket. As such, we are bumping up their combat performance and slightly reducing their Multiplayer cost.

Additionally, we are also slightly increasing the leadership of Norscan and Chaos Troll units: matching those of the Greenskin variants and allowing them to remain in combat a little longer. We are also reducing the Multiplayer Cost tax on the heavier Troll variants.

We can see that players are enjoying Norsca now, although there have been a lot of comments about the ease of their campaign. We want to retain their naval based expansion pattern and their strong focus on naval operations, so we have therefore reduced their land-based economy. This should also put a bit more emphasis on devoting razes to the gods without stopping players from creating a bit of static economy where needed.

BEASTS OF TASHNAR (NORSCAN WARHOUNDS)

In this multiplayer update for Nurgle, we are making their Chaos Shrines more expensive on characters while encouraging the inclusion of Elite Monsters and Chaos Knights in the meta.

CHAOS KNIGHTS OF NURGLE (LANCES)

In Update 2.0, we went a bit too far by reducing the capture weight of all Ogre Infantry to 3 in Domination mode—akin to other monstrous infantry. As this race lacks access to regular, non-expendable troops, we will be making an exception to bring their control capabilities up to speed with other races.

The mass of Skaven Doomwheels needed a bump, especially since similar chariots are significantly more weighty. This should allow them to push past infantry mobs more easily while ensuring that they can still be surrounded and caught.

We’re continuing to iterate on the Faction and Lord effects of older Lords. The goal is to ensure every character has their own thematic playstyle that incorporates any new mechanics and systems added since their original introduction. 

Clan Mors are known for a most un-Skavenlike loyalty, so we’re representing this by giving Queek access to cheaper, more frequent uses of Menace Below, as well as cheaper Clanrats and Stormvermin.

The following changes have been made to Faction Effects:

We’ve also added a new reward for capturing Karak Eight Peaks and tweaked Queek’s Lord effects to be more versatile.

Queek’s Lord Effect changes:

Tretch’s original bonuses for breaking treaties were not really worth the major reliability cost. We’ve reworked them to instead provide major bonuses on any war declaration: rewarding the player for setting up cunning schemes and eliminating their opponents in rapid, unexpected attacks. To represent Clan Rictus’ renowned wealth, Clanrats and Stormvermin who manage to survive a few battles and gain some experience will win the gift of improved armour and weaponry. Tretch’s own army will now benefit from the Devastating Flanker attribute—making his armies particularly vicious in ambushes.

The Betrayal Bonus has been reworked; Tretch’s faction now gains the following bonuses to all armies for three turns whenever he declares war:

Other Faction Effect changes include:

Slaanesh has shown near-absolute dominance in multiplayer as of the 2.0 update. There are many factors to this, and while we have raised the cost of Devoted Marauders in 2.1, many significant outliers remain.

One such overperforming unit is the Chaos Shrine of Slaanesh. We are reducing the damage of its Giver of Torturous Glory, seeing as the Shrine does not need to be actively in melee to trigger this. Reducing the Multiplayer cap will have a significant impact, too.

Another big overperformer have been Hellstriders of Slaanesh, as they have gained significant stats thanks to the Mark of Slaanesh but remained at the same price. This will now increase to match the Hellscourge variant.

On the topic of Hellscourges, we have an across-the-board problem where the associated infantry units have no armour-piercing damage. Expensive units must perform well, so we are giving them a 1/3 Armour-Piercing ratio and matching their costs to the core variants. Hellscourge units will continue to be better at holding the line, but perform just slightly worse in terms of damage dealing than their regular infantry counterparts.

CHAOS KNIGHTS OF SLAANESH (LANCES)

CHAOS WARRIORS OF SLAANESH (HELLSCOURGES)

DEVOTED MARAUDERS OF SLAANESH (HELLSCOURGES)

Previously, the player would receive an Imperial Authority penalty when Elector Count capitals were razed, but not when they were occupied. This produced strange outcomes; for example, it was considered fine if Festus occupied Hochland, but not if he razed it. Now, the penalty will apply if any non-Empire faction controls the capital.

Since Sylvania is occupied on Turn 1, we’ve increased the ‘buffer’ for when penalties from lost capitals kicks in from 1 → 2.

Elector Counts now use the Region Tagging system present in Champions of Chaos.

Note that players will need to start a new campaign for these changes to be implemented.

The Emperor was due a touch-up. His new lord effects allow him to operate more effectively when supporting the Electors, and we’ve buffed Ghal Maraz to better align with its legendary status in the lore.

Lord effect has also undergone some tweaks:

We are for the most part happy with Tzeentch’s performance, and these changes are largely just part of wider passes such as the Spawn and Chaos Knights.

Chaos Sorcerers of Lords were able to instantly summon Spawn without a wind-up or initial cooldown, and we are bringing this in line with Cultist summons.

Chaos Warshrines of Tzeentch haven’t been as performant as their counterparts, and have forced your spellcasters to stay in the direct vicinity. This isn’t very practical, so we are giving the Giver of Arcane Glory a map-wide buff, with a better Spell Mastery effect.

CHAOS KNIGHTS OF TZEENTCH (LANCES)

KNIGHTS OF IMMOLATION (DOOM KNIGHTS OF TZEENTCH)

THE SEVERED CLAW (ASPIRING CHAMPIONS)

SWORD OF CHANGE (CHAOS SORCERER LORD OF TZEENTCH)

GIVER OF ARCANE GLORY (CHAOS WARSHRINE OF TZEENTCH)

Being an ethereal unit, we want to make the damage Armour-Piercing vs normal damage output ratios consistent with other ethereal units.

Warriors of Chaos have been performing rather well since they can have access to marked units and a wide variety of characters. Largely speaking we are happy with where they stand, with the majority of issues addressed with changes to the mono-god races. 

The Undivided Chaos Warshrine has been not nearly as performant as its marked counterparts, and so we are doubling the Physical Resistance effect of Giver of Glory.

The rework on Aspiring Champions have got them performing better than before, but we felt they could use another bump up to their hit points. This should bring them more in line with units of 16 entity count.

SWORDS OF CHAOS (CHAOS KNIGHTS)

With the inclusion of Be’lakor in the Warriors of Chaos race—as well as his frequent appearances in multiplayer events—we noted that the cost of his abilities haven’t been set properly for the Multiplayer setting; today, we’re taking taking steps to address that and bring him into balance with the rest of the multiplayer roster.

Additionally, his Shadow Shroud ability’s duration is significantly longer than that of similar abilities while also offering a notably stronger +40% Damage Resistance. While we want to maintain the power level, we’ll be reducing the uptime to bring it into line.

GIVER OF GLORY (CHAOS WARSHRINE)

LORD OF TORMENT (BE’LAKOR)

Reduced the intensity settings of the item:

We’re continuing to iterate on the Faction and Lord Effects of older lords, with the goal of making sure every character has their own thematic playstyle and to incorporate new mechanics and systems added since their original introduction. 

As the face of the more hostile side of the Wood Elves, we’ve tweaked Orion so that he focuses much more on campaign map mobility and aggression. Orion is now rewarded for fighting multiple factions at once, and gains improved tools to allow him to zip around the map – opening up a more expansionist playstyle than is available to other Wood Elves.

We’ve also tweaked the Wild Hunt to have it trigger more frequently, though with a shorter duration, meaning that it can have a more reliable impact on Orion’s campaign.

Changes made to his Faction Effects:

Changes made to his Wild Hunt:

Changes made to his Lord Effects:

Changes made to his Neverending Hunt Skill:

With Drycha heavily focusing on the Tree Spirit side of the Wood Elf roster, Durthu was left without a clear niche. Back before he got really cranky, Durthu was the architect of the original alliance between the Wood Elves and the Forest Spirits –  as such, we’re giving him a host of tools that open up new synergies between the two halves of the rosters.

His Ancient Treemen now provide map-wide missile damage buffs when casting, and both Spellsingers and Ancient Treemen will become more powerful when working together. On top of that, his Treemen can now also tear down walls, opening up new avenues of attack for mobile Elf units.

This theme of synergy extends to Durthu’s personal army; with his Treemen and Treekin now providing potent area effects, he’s encouraged to mix units together to maximize their performance benefits.

We also felt that Drycha’s combination of much stronger Treemen and much earlier access to them was probably a bit too much of a powerful combo, giving a major power-spike as soon as you built a Tier 3 settlement. As such, we’ve split the difference between the two Tree Spirit focused characters—both Drycha and Durthu now get access to Treemen at Tier 4, rather than at 3 and 5 respectively.

Changes made to his Faction Effects:

Changes made to his Lord Effects:

Update 2.2 brings an assortment of changes have been made to the overworld campaign and world mechanics.

In WARHAMMER II, character experience from battles was based entirely on the result type of that battle—a Heroic victory would grant a certain flat amount, and a Crushing Defeat much less.

In WARHAMMER III, this was changed so that the value of the enemy army played a major role. While this resolved some issues (such as reducing the amount of XP you could get from trivial battles) it didn’t address them all. Notably, battle result types continued to play a major part, even though the logic producing them was not clear; whether you got a Heroic, Close or Pyrrhic victory could often feel arbitrary and random. This also greatly disadvantaged the AI’s own progression, which tends to lose a larger proportion of battles than the player.

Additionally, the system resulted in substantially faster progression compared to WARHAMMER II, especially if fighting against high-value armies. While we are happy with the rate of experience gain being faster than WARHAMMER II, it also greatly increased the range of XP you could earn from a single battle. This meant that the rate of progression could be radically different depending on factors such as starting position and playstyle.

As such, we are making the following changes:

Victory type is no longer used as part of the experience calculation. Instead, experience will be granted based on a combination of the enemy army’s value and the proportion of the enemy army that was destroyed, regardless of whether the battle was a win or a loss.

The formula used to calculate experience has been adjusted to narrow the range of possible experience rewards. Experience gain will be around the same while fighting low and moderate-value armies, but less when fighting very high-value ones.

In addition to this, we’re adding a new Mentor skill to every Lord and Hero. This unlocks at Level 30, and can be upgraded further at Levels 40 and 50, and allows them to share a portion of their experience earned among characters of the same type across the faction. Plus, the Lord version of the skill will grant increased experience gain to Heroes in their army.

We continue to look for a sweet spot for the unwalled settlement battle type. The following changes will adjust the frequency of the battle type and reduce it – how much will depend on the player’s and also the AI’s playstyle.

Additionally we have lost some of the more detailed and nuanced pieces of content when we transitioned from ME to IE, but are in the process of re-adding some of this flavour.

The below exceptions should remain as they were before:

There are some additional changes, too:

Missing siege defence tower projectile upgrades have been added for:

Heroes have been added to settlement garrisons from hero unlocking buildings:

In addition, we have added missing spells to garrison heroes.

Finally, additional units at all tiers for special settlement locations with 3-4 units of higher unit quality have been added to the following:

We have received quite a lot of feedback related to AI and game difficulty. While we’ve been fixing significant issues, we also felt it was a good opportunity to increase the aggressiveness of the AI. However, this is a double-edged sword: for players that are already struggling with the game, this has the potential to worsen the experience. We will need a lot more feedback on this topic to decide if these changes are correctly balanced.

Please be vocal about your experience and don’t forget to add your difficulty settings.

It is called ‘Total War’ after all, so of course Update 2.2 brings some improvements to the battles themselves!

With Update 1.3, we added the normal land battles to the Ranked Matchmaking queue, which was the first step towards providing a more complete battle experience within a multiplayer context. In 2.2, we’re not only updating the Domination core tickets mechanic, but we’re implementing a game mode selector for Ranked Matchmaking.

Balanced, competitive factions are great and all, but it’s important they look and sound great as they get to business. Here’s a look at all the issues that have been fixed in Update 2.2:

We’ve implemented fixes and made adjustments to several graphical aspects of the game:

We’ve implemented fixes and made adjustments to several audio aspects of the game:

We’ve enhanced the audio of several Lord Select videos:

The sounds of legacy faction settlements have been updated, polished, and brought up to a similar standard as the settlements added in WARHAMMER III. All settlements now have bespoke crowd wall and loops with unique one-shot sounds based on the temperament of the settlement. This means that if the settlement is in revolt or under siege, the player will get a better sense of the current faction flavour more than ever before.

As a part of this, you will also be able to hear which faction is in control of a settlement building. For example: the Empire has a real bustling crowd activity with farm animals, metal steam machinery, and old world industry. Gone are the continual bell sounds, which have been replaced with a richer soundscape that feels like you are in Empire territory without having to look.

This has been an improvement the sound design team have wished for, as it felt weird to hear high quality, detailed sounds from Cathay and Tzeentch settlements in contrast to factions from WARHAMMER I and II.

The following factions have had their settlement sounds recently updated:

Added new fullscreen parallax background illustrations for:

Multiple instances of missing translations have been fixed:

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