Total War: WARHAMMER III - Patch 5.3.0

Greetings folks,

We hope you enjoyed reading through our Dev blog last week, where we shed some light on the changes coming in Patch 5.3 for Total War: WARHAMMER III.

In advance of the patch's release tomorrow, you can find the full release notes below, including all the new and updated content, balancing and bug fixes.

Due to a technical error with our Total War Community Blog, we've needed to separate the more nuanced Battle Balance detail into a separate forum post which you can find here. It details all of the changes we've made to various units across the Factions, from Hit Points, to Base Weapon Damage, Recruitment Costs in Multiplayer, and various other factors. We're working on an update for our Web Tech to ensure that we won't need to add so many clicks to your day in the future, so please accept our apologies for the extra inconvenience today.

Patch 5.3 otherwise contains plenty of new changes, fixes, improvements, and an all-new unit variant so let's get into it!

Campaign

Ogre Kingdoms - Mercenary Recruitment Rework

While the mercenary system for Ogres in WH3 introduced certain improvements compared to WH2, it also missed the mark in a number of ways, leading to player feedback requesting the return of certain features from WH2, ideally integrated with the improved UI/UX of WH3. In response, we’ve made several updates to Ogre mercenary recruitment:

• Increased the Ogre mercenary unit cap per army from 1 to 3
• Ogre mercenary pools now replenish at a rate of 1 unit every 5 turns
• The quality of mercenary units available now depends on the tier of the Ogre camp More mercenary units are now available from Ogre camps, including:
  • Ogre Bulls
  • Ogre Bulls (Dual Weapons)
  • Maneaters
  • Maneaters (Ogre Pistols)
  • Mournfang Cavalry
  • Ogre Giant
    

Developer Note: We're aware that Zhao Ming's benefits for Ogre Mercenaries currently do not apply to the new units, and we will look to resolve this in the near future.

Ogre Kingdoms - Bounties

We plan to release a large rework for the Ogre Kingdoms in the next DLC pack, alongside an extensive 'Mercenary Contracts' feature for Golgfag Maneater. Therefore, we felt the existing Contracts feature needed a refresh and were able to implement it ahead of that release.

• The feature has been renamed to "Bounties" to avoid confusion with the upcoming feature
• We've improved the UI to make it more thematic
• Bounties no longer require player acceptance at a rate of one every 10 turns
  • All three are issued and active simultaneously, allowing players to complete them opportunistically.
• When one Bounty is completed (or expires or is aborted), it will be replaced with a new one on the following turn
  

We hope this whets your appetite for the upcoming Ogre Kingdoms rework, where the existing Legendary Lords will even get some exclusive toys to play with! More on that in the future.

New Magic Items

You can read more about our plans with Magic Items in our recent patch 5.3 dev blog. We're releasing 16 new generic items (in the dev blog it previously stated 18, but this was an error, sorry!) that are useful for ranged characters, who, until now, haven’t had the best selection of items. Additionally, we're adding 6 new unique Magic Items with more strange and powerful effects. All of these new items will be accessible as post-battle loot for all factions, with the chance of the item dropping depending on its rarity of course.

Developer Note: As of 5.3, unique items (just those below at the moment) can drop from battles, which wasn't the case previously. For now the chance for these to drop is alongside other generic item drops, meaning you'll likely get a generic and a unique from a battle when a unique does drop, but as giving unique items outside of bespoke situations is new to the game how we provide them may change in future.

Generics

• Tilean Pavise
• Forest Cloak
• Longshot's Cap
• Engineer’s Knapsack
• Ranger's Quiver
• Potion of Farsight
• Spotter's Spyglass
• Deepwood Branch
• Lucky Arrow
• Asp Bow
• Dragonfire Handgun
• Hunter's Talon
• Outrider's Handgun
• Ranger's Axe
• Sky Titan's String
• Wyvernbone Bow
  

Uniques

• Helm of The Draesca
• Deathsinger (Named "Cynatcian" if it belongs to the High Elves)
• Doomsinger (Named "Elthraician" if it belongs to the High Elves)
• Maad's Map
• Idol of Zak-Aloooog (Only available for Greenskins)
• Aldred's Casket of Sorcery
  

Developer Note: In our past developer chat video and our latest patch 5.3 dev blog we've used 'ancillary' as a catch-all term for items in the game. We appreciate this might have caused some confusion, given that in-game, Magic Items and Ancillaries are separate categories. Moving forward, we'll be clearer about which category we are referring to when adding new items or discussing the item system in general!

Research Overflow

We've always presented the research rate as a percentage and the time required to research technologies in terms of number of turns for ease of understanding. However, under the hood, you actually generate a certain number of research points every turn while actively researching a technology. The base amount of points generated is 100, so a 150% research rate means you generate 150 points. Technologies are defined by a total point cost needed to complete them; we simply shorthand this as a turn counter.

So what's the problem? Let's look at an example scenario:

You've started researching a technology with a base time of 4 turns (which translates to 400 research points). You also have a mighty +30% research rate, hard-won from several settlements worth of wizard towers or engineering schools, allowing you to generate 130 research points per turn.

Turn 1 130/400

Turn 2 260/400

Turn 3 390/400

Turn 4 400/400

Well, it didn't actually save you any time at all. And under our previous implementation, those extra 120 points you generated on turn 4 would be lost to the ether, leaving you with no benefit whatsoever for your increased research rate when not researching technologies with high enough base costs.

With our new system, when you finish researching a technology with surplus points, those extra points will be stored as 'research point surplus' in your technology tree. This surplus will then automatically be applied to the next technology you research. Enjoy the small (but now real) benefits of 5% research rate in the long, long run.

For additional helpful info, you can now hover over the turn counter for any technology to see a breakdown of its actual cost in research points and the effects of your surplus!

Shoutout to JerreyRough whose mod implements a similar feature ❤️

Movement Range Display

We've reworked how campaign movement range is displayed in an effort to improve clarity when moving and switching stances.

Previously, movement range was shown as percentages, but it often represented a numeric value under the hood. To clarify this, movement range is now displayed as a numeric value, while bonuses will still be presented as percentages. This change should make entering and exiting stances much more understandable, especially when calculating the movement range you need!

Disciple Army Confirmation Button

When you press the button to create a Disciple Army as Slaanesh, a confirmation prompt now appears to prevent accidental creation (so many accidental armies...).

Battle

New Unit - Grave Guard (Halberds)

Long have the Vampire Counts suffered under the tyranny of large monsters, with dirt cheap skeleton spearmen preceding a vast, empty void until the Blood Knights and their own anti-large monsters take the field. Here to fill the gap, a new unit variant!

Grave Guard Halberds enjoy spectacularly high weapon strength for a halberd unit, though their general low skill statline and lack of a shield makes them less an AP generalist frontliner and more a dedicated monster hunting unit. Styled after their 6th edition miniatures, they wield bardiches to bring low large foes.

Battle Map Tree Cluster Update

Following our previous update, we have continued reworking maps to remove or replace tree clusters with more natural-looking forests that enhance visual appeal and improve gameplay.

For 5.3 we have updated the following battle maps:

• Cauldron Creek – Ogre Valleys
• Misty Valley – Ogre Valleys
• The Great Gulley – Ogre Valleys
• Forest of Shadows – Vampire Forests
• Cursed Marshes – Vampire Forests
• The Dead Wood – Vampire Forests
• Corpse Crossing – Vampire Forests
• Forest of Shadows (conquest)
• The Dead Wood (conquest)
• Shadow Mountain – Darkland Mountain
• Scorched Valley – Darkland Mountain
• Darkland Peak – Darkland Mountain
• Darkened Gorge – Darkland Mountain
• Ashen Trails – Darkland Mountain
• Great Hunt Tomb – Norscan Hills
• Old Corpse Hills – Norscan Hills
• Spine Path – Norscan Hills
• Horned Hills – Cathay Plains
• The Raining Rocks – Cathay Plains
• Shell Mountain – Cathay Plains
• Terracotta Walk – Cathay Plains
• Horned Hills (conquest)
• Hungering Valley – Ogre Valleys
• Jade Desert – Cathay Desert
• Husk Desert – Cathay Desert
• The Arid Shrine – Cathay Desert
• The Dry Plains – Cathay Desert
• False Oasis – Cathay Desert
• The Desert’s Run – Cathay Desert
• Old Hunt Rise – Norscan Mountains
• Carrion's Course – Norscan Mountains
• Peak Hunger – Ogre Mountains
• Plains of the Darklands – Darkland Plains
• Tempest Plains – Kislev Plains
• Icy Breath Bridge – Kislev Plains
• Plains of the Patriarch – Kislev Plains
• The Flats of Kislev – Kislev Troll Country
• Troll Run – Kislev Troll Country
• Bastion River – Kislev Troll Country
• Fjord's Edge – Kislev Troll Country
• The Flats of Kislev (Conquest)
• Troll Run (Conquest)
• Compass Reach – Cathay Wastelands
• Dragon Ash Fields – Cathay Wastelands
• The Barren Plains – Cathay Wastelands
• Red Dust Route – Cathay Wastelands
  

To help convey these changes, here are a few before-and-after shots of some of the maps mentioned above:

The Dead Wood – Vampire Forests

Before	After
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The Arid Shrine – Cathay Desert

Before	After
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Old Corpse Hills – Norscan Hills​

Before	After
​	​

The Flats of Kislev – Kislev Troll Country

​

Before	After
​	​

Modding

• We have made a number of changes to many of our Lua scripting files to enable modders to edit them without requiring a full overwrite of the file. While this will not have a noticeable gameplay impact for most users, it will enhance compatibility between various mods and reduce issues when using multiple modifications. We’d like to give a big thank you to the modders, including ChaosRobie, All is Dust, and Rhox, who reached out to us requesting these changes ❤️ If you're a modder with suggestions on how we can facilitate easier or safer file modifications, we would love to hear your ideas!
• Addressed a known issue for modders by removing the previous cap on the maximum number of provinces, now allowing more than 255 provinces. This change should resolve the limitation, though further testing by the modding community is encouraged, as additional restrictions may still exist. 
  

Bug Fixes

PERFORMANCE

• Fixed a rare crash that could occur when entering the Nemesis Crown marker.
• Fixed a crash when opening a character's skill tree, especially affecting Kairos Fateweaver. This issue caused consistent crashes under specific conditions and has been resolved to improve stability. 
• Fixed a crash that occurred when a character ranked up and triggered auto development of skills.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when units attempted to dock a ladder to a wall.
  

CAMPAIGN

GENERAL/GAMEPLAY

• Fixed an issue where certain playable factions could not be revived through rebellions after being destroyed.
• Fixed an issue with the Warband mechanic that prevented Be'lakor from upgrading Chaos Troll units to Bile Trolls.
• Fixed an issue where the Dragon-Blooded Shugengan Lord (Yin) had only one use of the bound spell "The Enfeebling Foe" in campaign. The number of uses has now been increased to four.
• Fixed an issue where, when playing as a Warriors of Chaos faction, many technologies requiring active Gifts of Chaos would not consistently work without a clear reason.
• Fixed issues with teleportation to foreign regions via Oxyotl's ‘Visions of the Old Ones’.
  

AI

• Campaign AI should now use certain mechanics less frequently to align with intended design, including Book of Grudges units, Matters of State, Colleges of Magic, and Malakai’s Adventures.
  

SKILLS

• Adjusted Nakai's 'Wild-Eyed' skill to align with the Kroxigor Ancient's 'Blade Master' skill, increasing the melee attack bonus from +9 to +12 for consistency.
• Fixed inconsistencies in the names of skills and unit abilities in the Gorebull skill tree. 
  

SETTLEMENTS/BUILDINGS

• Fixed an issue where occupying the Oak of Ages as the Ogre Kingdoms allowed the construction of regular settlement buildings instead of the Oak of Ages building.
• Fixed an issue where some effects of certain Dwarf Deeps buildings, which require adjacent Dwarf factions, were not triggering. 
  

UI/UX

• Addressed an overlap issue in the Lords & Heroes dropdown, where the remaining travel time counter overlapped when using sea lanes with Greasus.
• Resolved an issue where the UI for building Silent Sanctums as Oxyotl was obscured by a dark overlay, making the icons and confirmation dialog difficult to see.
• Fixed an issue where the Wood Elf Tree Spirits buildings were incorrectly showing as a landmark building in the landmark icon tooltip.
• Resolved a UI issue where players, despite having sufficient resources, could not send gift payments to Clan Moulder, affecting multiple factions and occurring without warning; the gift mechanic now functions correctly for all factions.
• Fixed an issue where the contact effects in the Daemon Prince gifts panel did not display tooltips.
• The Gorebeast Chariot of Khorne unit is now correctly listed as a 'Monstrous Chariot.'
  

ANIMATIONS

• Resolved an issue where Karanak's running animation on the campaign map did not loop smoothly, causing snapping and desynchronization with his movement speed.
• Resolved a visual issue where Alarielle did not play animations while mounted and moving in Lileath's Blessing or Ambush stances.
• Resolved a visual issue where the floating part of the helmet on the Heralds of Tzeentch unit duplicated during idle animations for both the Lore of Metal and the Lore of Tzeentch.
  

ENVIRONMENT

• Fixed visible terrain holes at the edge of the shroud.
  

BATTLE

GENERAL/GAMEPLAY

• Resolved an issue in Kislev's Frozen Falls battle where defeating the initial enemies did not progress the mission, preventing completion and leading to an automatic defeat.
• Fixed an issue where Greasus' quest battle, 'Overtyrant's Crown,' in both multiplayer and singleplayer campaigns lacked objectives and featured immobile AI. The battle now starts properly, with objectives displayed, enemy units moving, and reinforcements spawning as intended.
• Addressed situations where the default deployment leads to units being cramped in one corner.
• Fixed an issue where ranged units with the ability to shoot while moving would sometimes not fire when repositioned. Additionally, addressed instances where they experienced significant delays in firing due to misaligned ticks.
  

AI

• Ambushed armies that have retreated and are set to be wiped out will no longer attempt to withdraw from battle.
• Fixed an issue where Chaos Warhounds exhibited erratic movement and became stuck behind corners in Domination Battle maps. Pathfinding has been improved to ensure they move smoothly towards their targets.
• Addressed an issue where large AI attacking armies on certain maps encountered challenges reforming due to constrained playable space. In these situations, AI armies will now bypass the reform phase and proceed with a more focused attack.
• Fixed an issue where the AI remained idle during ambushes when the enemy was hidden (stalking).
• The Battle AI will attempt to distribute its units across multiple targets to minimize blobbing in land battles.
• Fixed an issue where the AI seemed idle while crossing the river, waiting for reinforcements. Now, when 95% of the units have crossed, they advance to attack without delay.
  

UNITS

• Dwarf Ancestor Ghosts with shields now have the correct Missile Block Chance (55%).
• Alberic's unique Hippogryph Mount (Tempete) now correctly uses Bordeleaux's faction colours.
• Adjusted the size of Feral Ice Bears to match the intended design.
  

ABILITIES/ATTRIBUTES

• Fixed an issue where certain contact effects, such as those used by Skaven units and Vampire Coast spells, were incorrectly applied despite being intended to be ignored by unit attributes like ' Immune to Contact Effects’.
• The leadership benefit from the 'Encourage' attribute has been normalized to +4, regardless of whether it comes from a character or a unit (previously +3 for characters and +8 for units). This reinstates an earlier improvement from Warhammer 2's Twisted and Twilight DLC.
• The quest ability ‘Soulbinding’ is now correctly classified as a passive ability.
• The Doombringers (Warpfire Throwers) now correctly have the ‘Scurry Away!’ ability.
• Resolved an issue where manual fire orders for the Iron Daemon and Dreadquake Mortar were being ignored, even though the UI indicated the orders were active.
• Wulfhart's Witch Hunter, Dr. Hertwig van Hal, now benefits from the abilities ‘Tools of Judgement’ and ‘Grim Resolve.’
  

ANIMATIONS

• Adjusted the collision boxes of the Steam Tank and Land Ship to allow both units to be more reliably hit from the rear.
• Fixed an issue with the Khepra Guards Regiment of Renown unit, where the left sword floated during the knockdown animation.
• Fixed an animation issue for the Scions of Mathlann (High Elves) where their spears appeared to snap when transitioning from combat to idle.
• Resolved a visual issue where the Iridescent Horror's helmet disappeared during idle animations for both the Lore of Tzeentch and the Lore of Metal.
• The Golden Griffon RoR now plays an animation when casting the bound spell ‘Searing Doom.’
  

ENVIRONMENT

• An asset outside the playable area of the Black Fortress siege map has been grounded to ensure full player immersion. This is a Greenskins map, not a Tzeentch map - know your place, asset. 
• Fixed a bug involving several floating assets in the siege battle for The Crystal Spires.
• Adjusted rock and cliff assets across multiple Ogre Mountains maps.
• Camera collision has been implemented for the lava pools surrounding The Bleeding Spire battle map, limiting visibility beneath them.
• Cliff assets and terrain have been adjusted to eliminate unintended gaps across the Altar of Chaos battle map.
• A wall asset in the Black Fortress siege battle map has been readjusted to better align its textures with surrounding assets. 
• A number of humanoid reference assets were unintentionally left in Throgg's Monster Hunt: The Salzenmund Soul-Eaters Quest Battle and have now been removed.
• A tower on the Hell Pit siege map has been marked as destructible to align with the intended design, ensuring the complete destruction of all towers on the east side of the wall. 
• The deployment zone of the Fetid Catacombs map has been adjusted to avoid overspilling into the non-playable areas. 
  

UI/UX

• Players can now see the "Quenched!" contact effect from Soul Quench in the temporal effects UI when the ability is applied.
• Replaced the incorrect ‘Shielded’ tooltip with the correct ‘Armour Piercing’ tooltip for Dwarf Ancestor Ghost Hans Valhirsson.
• Fixed an issue where Blessed Field Trebuchets were missing their 'No Friendly Fire!' Tooltip.
• Adjusted the tooltips for Piercing Bolts of Burning and Searing Doom to reflect the actual duration of the bombardment.
  

MULTIPLAYER

• Addressed an issue on the Galbaraz Conquest map in multiplayer where water did not apply shallow water terrain effects.
• Resolved an issue on the Dok Karaz multiplayer map where water pools did not apply water terrain effects.
• Fixed a bug where disconnecting a player's ethernet cable during the multiplayer campaign countdown could create a dead lobby. One player would sometimes load into the game and get kicked out, while the remaining players were left in a lobby that became invisible to others. 
• Fixed an issue where the Chaos Sorcerer Lord (Shadows) was missing the Tormentor Sword item in Skirmish vs AI.
  

MISCELLANEOUS

GAME SETTINGS

• Improved the wording of an instructive tooltip in the game settings for better clarity.

AUDIO

• Fixed a bug where setting up a Cult after attacking a settlement in the Changeling campaign did not trigger any VO lines.
  

LOCALISATION

• Resolved an issue where Thorek Ironbrow's name was not translated into French in the Great Book of Grudges.
• Fixed an issue where the effects of the skill 'Barak Varr Handshake' - increased range and anti-infantry units - are now correctly translated into Traditional Chinese.
• Fixed an issue with the Czech translation of the Dwarf blue line skill 'Mason,' ensuring it's now clear that the effect applies only to the main building chain of each settlement in the province, not all buildings.
• Fixed a bug where the Ancient Protector ability text was not translated, making it visible only in English. 

BLOOD PACK

• Fixed an issue where Oxyotl could be dismembered.

Multiplayer Battles

We've made some small but impactful changes to MP this time around. Special thanks to our MP community who guides our hands as we try and make the game the best it can possibly be ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Unit Caps

We've received reports from several community members about several cheesy single-entity focused army builds that have been circulating (we're looking at you Kislev single entity heal blob!).

To combat this, we've introduced a new unit cap called 'Single Entity Characters, Monsters & War Machines'.

We make this specific distinction because there are some units that have escaped this classification.

These units are:

• Corpse Carts
• Single Entity Artillery
  • i.e. Casket of Souls, Queen Bess, Dreadquake Mortar

We hope that this new cap will promote more healthy army compositions to prevent some of the more problematic matchups from occurring.

Conquest Mode

Since the introduction of Conquest mode, we've received plenty of feedback from the community with multiple ideas on where to evolve the mode further.

We're currently treading cautiously as we let the dust settle, so the following changes are quite conservative for the time being.

• The Default Ticket Limit in ranked battles has been increased to 650
• All of the maps that were setup for Conquest mode are now part of the ranked matchmaking pool; you can find a list of these in-game.

Domination Mode

There’s not much to report from Domination this time, except that we’ve added the map 'Hidden Oasis' to the ranked matchmaking pool.

RACES & BALANCE

As ever, special thanks to our Exalted Creators, as well as CatholicAlcoholic and the team behind the 'Community-Sourced, Peer-Reviewed Balance Recommendations' thread on the forums.

This time around we're shifting the multiplayer meta slightly by introducing some small (and not so small) changes to just about every faction in the game. These tweaks aim to correct outlying units in various rosters and bring them back in-line with what both we and the community expect to see. Beyond this, our aim is to keep the experience feeling fresh by shifting the faction meta around slightly.

For anyone who missed our note at the start of todays Update Notes, due to a formatting issue with our website, we've needed to separate out some of the more nuanced detail for many of these changes to a separate post over on the Total War: WARHAMMER III forums. Be sure to check out the complete list of changes here.

Update 5.3 otherwise contains plenty of new changes, fixes, improvements, and an all-new unit variant so let's get into it!

Complex Stat Changes

Encourage

We made this change to the Encourage attribute in Warhammer 2's Twisted & Twilight DLC:

This change has now been made in Warhammer 3, so characters and units provide the same leadership bonus (+4) from the Encourage Attribute.

Chariot Mass

We reviewed the mass of chariot-type units across the game, placing each chariot into a specific weight bracket. We found that chariot mass was wildly inconsistent, so their collision interactions should now be a bit more uniform.

Since there are quite a lot of changes here, we've listed the brackets we used below.

• Small Chariots are now 1000 mass
  • e.g. Goblin Wolf Chariot
• Medium Chariots are now 1500 mass
  • e.g. Ithilmar Chariot
• Monstrous Chariots are now 2000 mass
  • e.g. Gorebeast Chariot
• Monstrous Single Entity Chariots are now 3000 mass
  • e.g. Chariot of the Gods
    

Flying Charge Speeds

We addressed a bug where flying units could be observed to be slowing down when charging from a flying state to the ground.

To resolve this issue, we've increased the charge bonus of most flying units to exceed their flight speed.

As a result, flying units charging along the ground will now benefit from better impact due to their enhanced speed.

For the full breakdown of all the changes, head over to this post on the forums.

Known Issues

Here's a small list of known issues that we are aware of and will be addressing in future updates.

• All units that use the collision type "capsule" have a problem where missiles can pass through the top 5-10% of their collision box and deal no damage.
• Articulated vehicles, such as chariots, can be hit multiple times by projectiles, resulting in double or even triple damage being dealt to them.
• A unit docked onto a wall that is also partially docked onto a gatehouse may have its line of sight blocked and could be unable to shoot.

As always, thank you all for your ongoing suggestions, feedback and bug reports! If you run into any issues after updating to 5.3.0 tomorrow, be sure to report them over in our dedicated bug reporting area, where our hard-working QA teams can continue to investigate and feed them through.

We'll be back soon with our next dev chat video, so until then, we'll see you on the battlefield!

—The Total War Team

⚠ IMPORTANT

If you experience any issues after downloading the update, please take a moment to Verify the integrity of the game files first to ensure there were no issues when downloading. A step-by-step guide can be found in this article. If the issues persist, please visit our support site for additional troubleshooting steps and assistance.

🧱 MOD WARNING

Please note that user-generated mods may have compatibility issues with new game updates. If you are encountering performance or stability issues following a release, is recommended that you disable any mods you're running. If you continue to experience issues, please visit our support site for additional troubleshooting steps and assistance.