Hey folks,

Before we say our goodbyes to 2024, we just want to say one more thing - Thank You ❤️

Here's a letter from the VP of Total War, and a look at your year across our games.

[news.totalwar.com]

— The Total War Team

Hey everyone,

We’ve been continuing to listen to your feedback since the release of Update 6.0 and its subsequent hotfixes, and have been working on a number of adjustments for Skulltaker to address some of your concerns.

Our aim is to release these as part of our first hotfix in the new year, currently scheduled for late January, but we wanted to give you the chance to get an early look at some of these changes so have added a new opt-in Beta for Steam users, allowing you to try them out over the Holidays along with some other fixes and adjustments that have already made it in.

Once we’re back in the new year we’ll be cracking on with our work on this hotfix, getting some more fixes added in and completing our testing to ensure everything is working as intended.

For now, let’s take a look at what’s included in this Beta release.

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• Adjusted Blood Hosts and Disciple forces so they no longer benefit from the Daemonic Reforging chance.
  
• Adjusted the effects of the Cloak of Skulls so that they now only apply when Skulltaker himself defeats a Lord.
  
• When playing as Skulltaker, the Legendary Lord 2x bonus for Champion’s Essence will now only be applied once. After defeating a Champion in battle, the bonus will no longer stack.
  
• Blood Hosts now increase the cost of the ‘Blood for the Blood God’ occupation option while they are on the map. This means that the more active Blood Hosts there are, the more costly it becomes to create new Blood Hosts. This change addresses the over-reliance of Khorne factions on excessive Blood Host forces.
  
• Reduced the XP gain bonus from the Cloak of Skulls on the ‘Dubois the Prescient’ skull, from 25/50 to 20/40.
  
• Fixed an issue where Bloodspeakers lacked mounts when playing as Valkia.
  
• Fixed an issue where Heralds of Khorne and Bloodreapers on Blood Throne mounts were missing Siege Attacker.
  
• Fixed the 2D porthole for The Slaughtergard (Chosen of Khorne - Halberds) using the wrong image.
  
• Fixed a text inconsistency in the description of the Daemons Reforged effect for the Skulltakers faction.

• Resolved a rare crash that could occur during VFX rendering.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when loading saved Savage Orc Great Shaman lords.
  
• Fixed a potential crash when loading a battle in certain cases.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when loading the Black Orc Big Boss character.
  
• Fixed a crash that occurred when teleporting to the Great Drill of Hashut quest battle.

• Erd Mentality Rebalance:
  
  • Melee Defence: 40 > 20
    
  • Ward Save: 40 > 20
    
  • Number of Squig Herds in range for maximum value: 10 > 5
• Fixed an issue where Da Acid Burpa (Colossal Squig RoR) was not counting towards the unit requirements for the ‘Splode Da Big One Tactik’ in Da Plan.
  
• Ogre Camps now take only 3 turns to be redeployed, instead of 5.
  
• Removed Destroy ‘Kraka Drak’ from Throgg and Astragoth’s victory conditions and replaced it with Malakai’s faction
  
• Nasty Skulkers, Rogue Idol, River Trolls, and Snotling Pump Wagon (base unit) have been added to Gorbad - Omens of Destruction DLC for use in his Da Plan feature.

• The Hammer of Gork’s Blinded contact effect is no longer replaced by Dazed from the Orcs & Goblins’ Avalanche Smash technology.
  
• Eshin Maneater’s Weeping Blade effect is no longer replaced by Armour Sundering from the Ogres’ Betta Plunda technology.

• Fixed an issue where Snagla's ‘Beneath the Gloomy Canopy’ skill would lose its Stalk effect when upgraded.
  
• Removed the ‘Immune to Contact Effects’ from the Slaughtermaster's Poisonmaster skill, as they possess that attribute innately.
  
• Removed the Thundertusk and Stonehorn from the Hunter skill effects that provided Vanguard, Frenzy, and Stalk Hunter skills.
  
• Fixed the missing Idol of Gork Scrap upgrade for Savage Orc units.
  
• Fixed the Divinatory Authority skill incorrectly reducing cooldowns for Cold-Blooded instead of Focus Instincts.

• Fixed an issue where Markus Wulfhart’s Imperial Regiments of Greatswords had a different tier to regular Greatswords.

• Fixed a UI issue with the Ogre’s army ability ‘Meat Feast’, which incorrectly stated it affected multiple units when it only affects a single unit.

• Fixed an issue where Colossal Squigs were missing Siege Attacker.
  
• Added missing MP unit caps to the following: Colossal Squig, Da Acif Burpa, Snagla Deff Throwa, Piggyback Knights, Slaughterbrute, Eshin Maneater, Skullcannon, Hellforged Bellowers, and Arachnarok Flinger.
  
• Fixed an issue where Khorngors were still available for Warriors of Chaos when unit caps were active.
  
• Fixed the abilities ‘Bathed in Blood’ and ‘Blinding Radiance’ being incorrectly labelled as active abilities.

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If you would like to opt-in to this Beta branch and try these changes today, here's how you can do it:

1. Open your Steam client and go to your Library.
   
2. Right-click on Total War: WARHAMMER III and select 'Properties'.
   
   
3. Navigate to the 'Betas' tab.
   
   
4. In the drop-down menu, select the option ‘beta_hotfix_603 – BETA Hotfix 6.0.3'.
   
5. Steam will then download the necessary files and begin the patching process to install the Hotfix.

The download is relatively small, but Steam will need to patch around 25GB of game data in order to install the Hotfix. This can take some time depending on your hard drive speeds.

The full release of Hotfix 6.0.3 is currently aiming for this Friday, and when this happens your game will automatically switch to the main release.

Please note: If you update to 6.0.3 early, you will only be able to play multiplayer with other players who are also opted in to the 6.0.3 Beta until the update rolls out to all players. You can switch back to 6.0.2 at any time by selecting ‘None’ in the Betas dropdown menu.

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​Thanks to everyone who’s shared their feedback with us since the launch of Omens of Destruction and Update 6.0. This will be our last game update before we power down for a couple of weeks to rest, recuperate and eat our body weight in mince pies. We’ll be back in 2025, ready and raring to kick back into gear.

Happy Holidays!

—The Total War Team