Total War Warhammer 3 patch 6.2 brings a big magic items rework and new units

Total War Warhammer 3 patch 6.2 is on the way, and developer Creative Assembly is making "extensive revisions" to magic items in the sprawling strategy game. Scheduled for launch next week, the new Total War Warhammer 3 update will also include a first introduction to the recently tested enemy AI improvements, and additional units for the Chaos Dwarfs and Vampire Counts. Senior game designer William Håkestad walks us through the changes in a fresh CA dev blog.

We're currently waiting on more juicy details about the upcoming Total War Warhammer 3 DLC, Tides of Torment, for which CA recently revealed a new Norsca legendary lord. More immediate, however, is patch 6.2. The headline feature here is "a pretty comprehensive effort from all of us on the team to unify our design approaches to generic magic items across the entire game," Håkestad reveals. Their gradual introduction to the strategy game over time has led to "a significant disparity between items," and the redesign attempts to correct this.

Such a fix was attempted previously, Håkestad says, but admits "our original scope wasn't big enough." The initial shortlist of 80 items wasn't sufficient, so the team "went back into the kitchen and ensured that the rebalance didn't just apply to 10% of our items, but the over 800 common, uncommon, and rare items we have in the game today." The distribution of rarity levels has also been adjusted so that each increase feels like a dramatic step up.

Håkestad adds that you don't need to worry about iconic items being lost in the shuffle. "Previously, if an item was powerful for its tier, we'd have brought it down to an appropriate level, but on review we've taken a hard stance of pushing the item up instead, helping to keep the core of what made certain items special fairly intact." Among the others, some have had their rarity adjusted to better reflect their actual potency, while those that "scream powerful by name and description" are more likely to have been buffed instead.

On top of these changes, the drop rates for all items has been lowered, meaning there will be less spam clogging up your inventory, unless you create a build that is specifically designed to help find such loot. Furthermore, a new pseudorandom system will take into account items that have already dropped in your current campaign, as well as those you are and aren't using, to ensure you get a wider spread of options coming your way.

Item fusing will now provide an outcome of the same category as those you use to craft it, and there's the newfound potential to fuse rare items into unique-tier ones. There's only a small chance that it will succeed, however, and failure will leave you with only scrap to be salvaged. In a final change, there is also no longer a restriction of one banner of each type per army, on the condition that the character in question also provides a banner themselves.

Also of note in Total War Warhammer 3 patch 6.2 are two more units joining the fray. For the Chaos Dwarfs, Hobgoblin Bolt Throwers are a provide accessible siege weapons that are cheap and not bound by typical capacity restrictions, and offer a more stable and accurate option than their goblin equivalents.

The Blood Knights of the Vampire Counts, meanwhile, have a new variant that trades their signature lances for swords and shields, giving them less range but much greater sustainability, allowing them to carve through hordes of enemy infantry without suffering heavy losses themselves.

Creative Assembly plans to launch Total War Warhammer 3 patch 6.2 next week, along with the full patch notes. For now, you can take a look through all the details courtesy of Håkestad's extended developer blog, including a few glimpses of the new unique items if you're happy to spoil yourselves on what you might find.

While we wait for the update to land, take a look through the best Warhammer games on PC right now, along with the best grand strategy games for lots of large-scale tactical powerhouses.

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