Warhammer 3 Gets Huge New Update for June 2025

Total War: Warhammer 3 has released a big update for June 2025, bringing plenty of new content and important improvements to the game. Among the headline changes are significant updates to Magic Items, bringing more variety and strategic options to Total War: Warhammer 3 players’ arsenals.

Total War: Warhammer 3 was released in early 2021, bringing players into a mix of real-time battles and turn-based strategy set in the wild Realm of Chaos. Since it came out, the game has grown a lot through regular updates and expansions that have made its strategy deeper and its replay value higher. Total War: Warhammer 3‘s huge Immortal Empires campaign came early on, combining content from all three games into a large open world full of different factions. Big DLCs, like Omens of Destruction, added new Legendary Lords, units, and special campaign features.

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Total War: Warhammer 3 – Best Legendary Lords, Ranked

Total War: Warhammer 3 has a variety of Legendary Lords, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Total War: Warhammer 3 has just gotten another major update with Patch 6.2, adding big improvements to many parts of the game. The main change in this update is the complete overhaul of Total War: Warhammer 3′s Magic Item system. Over 600 ancillaries have been adjusted to make the differences between item rarities clearer, add new effects like healing limits and shields, and reduce clutter in inventories. Item fusing has also been improved, allowing more reasonable combinations and the chance for rare items to fuse into special items. However, unique items and banners tied to specific characters will be updated later.

The patch also adds several exciting new Unique Items, such as the Wyrmslayer Sword, Scintillating Shield, Accursed Armour, Briarsheath, the upgraded Fellblade, and the very rare Eight Burning Books of Khorne. Also, two new units have been added: Hobgoblin Bolt Throwers for the Chaos Dwarfs and a new Blood Knights version with strong anti-infantry skills. Several existing Total War: Warhammer 3 units have also had their names fixed, and balance changes made, making things more consistent across factions and unit roles.

Big Campaign AI improvements have been fully added, giving players two new options. The AI Strength & Threat Assessment setting (turned on by default) makes the AI smarter at judging threats and enemies, while the Minor Faction Potential option (turned off by default) lets smaller factions make better choices and have a bigger impact on the campaign. Also, over 1200 2D unit portraits have been redone to make the game’s visuals more consistent and better overall.

Besides these big changes, Patch 6.2 includes many bug fixes, balance changes, and quality-of-life improvements. Game performance has been made better with a new compression system, cutting game size by 27% and speeding up loading times. Many gameplay changes have been made to units, skills, technologies, buildings, and UI elements to fix bugs and improve balance. Importantly, several campaign crashes and battle problems have been fixed, making the turn-based strategy game Total War: Warhammer 3 more stable overall.

Total War: Warhammer 3 Update 6.2 Patch Notes

MAGIC ITEM REWORK

The Magic Item system has undergone a major overhaul, aiming to unify item design, balance power levels, and reduce inventory clutter. In total some 600+ ancillaries (all items in common, uncommon and rare) have had their effects and rarity adjusted to match our new balancing paradigm.

Core Changes

New Power Budget System: All items now follow a uniqueness/cost matrix to ensure rarity matches item strength.
Balanced Rarity Tiers:
- Clearer power differences between common, uncommon, and rare items.
- Rebalanced rarity thresholds (e.g., commons now 35–50, uncommons start at 80).
Expanded Item Effects: Added brand-new effects (e.g., generic barrier, healing cap) for more variety.
“Status Quo” Approach: Strong items now promoted to match power tier instead of being nerfed.

Smarter Item Management

Fewer but more impactful items to reduce UI overload.
Items tailored to your current collection and playstyle for better variety.
Item Fusing Update:
- Fused items now match category (e.g., armours fuse into armour).
- Rare → Unique fusions now possible (small success chance, risk of failure).

What we haven’t done

Character unique item updates
- These follow a somewhat different paradigm and have a much broader pool of effects than standard ancillaries.
- We’re likely to need to make adjustments here, as some weaker uniques are likely going to struggle to match up to the new top end rares. But this will be on a more case-by-case basis going forward.
- Where possible, we’d like to focus these in on their fantasy and give them powerful thematic effects, reducing the current trend of a pile of good to have but not particularly thematically coherent stats.
Banners
- These are planned to change, following the same paradigm as our approach to standard items in this patch, but couldn’t quite make the cut-off for this release. Expect to see these in the near feature after some more fine tuning!

Banner Changes

You can now equip multiple banners of the same type across characters.

New Unique Items

Wyrmslayer Sword – Anti-large slayer weapon.
Scintillating Shield – Reflects charges and magic.
Accursed Armour – Strong defense with a curse.
Briarsheath – Stealth-focused armour.
The Fellblade – Upgraded to Unique tier; powerful but deadly.
Eight Burning Books of Khorne – Risk/reward chain of ultra-rare magical books with major gameplay impact.

New Units

Hobgoblin Bolt Throwers – Affordable ranged siege unit for Chaos Dwarfs.
Blood Knights – Anti-infantry vampiric cavalry variant with high sustain.

COMPRESSION

Implemented and applied general compression with fast decompression speed for the majority of files in game packages:

Game storage size reduced by 27%.
Improved loading times when entering battles, with reductions ranging from 5% to 42%, depending on the battle.
Improved loading times when entering the campaign, with an average speed improvement of 9%.
Reorganised game packages to reduce and minimise patching time for future updates.

CАMPAIGN AI CHANGES

Added two new customisation options:

AI Strength & Threat Assessment – Default ON – When checked, campaign difficulty settings are overridden so that AI factions are always better at assessing threats based on strength and proximity of rivals, in addition to having generally increased hostility towards unknown factions. Enabling this setting is equivalent to the setup from CAI BETA 1.
Minor Faction Potential – Default OFF – When checked, minor factions make better campaign decisions, increasing their tendency to survive longer and have a bigger impact on campaigns. Enabling this setting is equivalent to the setup from CAI BETA 2.

2D PORTHOLE UPDATE

As part of 6.2 we’ve gone through the process of regenerating 1200+ 2d portholes across the game!

Most of these were only generated during the initial implementation of units, and over time the game engine has changed significantly, going through rendering and lighting adjustments (some were generated in the bloom-y metal dark ages, and were quite shiny indeed). They were also generated in different eras of how we approach the generation process itself, how much anti-aliasing, what kind of environment lighting do we use?

All regular units (not characters, as those use a different pipeline) have now been regenerated with a unified look and quality level, featuring anti-aliasing and consistent environments.

BUG FIXES

HIGHLIGHTS

Abilities granted by effects for summoned units (Summoned Skink Priest, Krell, and Summoned Keeper of Secrets) are now properly enabled.
Increased the Radii Ratio of units mounted on Steeds of Slaanesh (Seekers of Slaanesh, Heartseekers of Slaanesh, Hellstriders of Slaanesh, Hellstriders of Slaanesh (Hellscourges)) to slightly reduce their performance by having fewer of them fight in melee at the same time.
Stopped effects that grant Snipe from also granting Slayer.

PERFORMANCE

Fixed a potential crash upon opening a UI panel for the first time.
Fixed a potential hardlock related to the scripted settlement tour in the Prologue Campaign.
Added battle camera movement restrictions to prevent a potential hardlock during the unit positioning tutorial.
Fixed a potential hardlock during the scripted skill tour guide.
Fixed a potential softlock that could occur after teleporting the character and then declining a quest battle.
Fixed a potential campaign crash caused by the presence of a Skaven war machine during a playthrough.

CAMPAIGN

GENERAL/GAMEPLAY

Replaced the Vampire attrition immunity effects on Nagashizzar and the Crown of Sorcery for Azhag, as he already benefits from this as a faction effect.
Azhag the Slaughterer’s trait, Slaughterer, now correctly grants Immunity to Psychology to his army.
Added missing characters to the ‘Tzeentch characters’ category, so they are now affected by effects such as the Arrows of Destiny Gift of Chaos.
The Chaos Lord of Tzeentch now unlocks Gate of Tzeentch from the boon Mortal Supremacy instead of Gate of Khorne.
Grom’s trait now applies the Leadership effect only to Regular Goblins, matching the Physical Resistance effect.
Bloodspeakers are now affected by Annihilator’s Armour, as they also lead armies.
Removed Siege Attacker from Daemon Slayer lords, as they’re not legendary characters and don’t have battering ram size axes!
Malakai’s Encamp stance now provides an Ambush Defence Chance.
Karak Kadrin now starts with the correct treasury amount for its faction.
‘Pet the Female’ and ‘Feed the Male’ options now affect all Yin/Yang units rather than just a small selection.
Norsca can now recruit the Norscan Warhounds (Poison) unit in campaign, rather than it being exclusive to custom battles.
The Indisputable Champion boon for Chaos Lords of Tzeentch now correctly grants experience gain to Tzeentch units.

SKILLS

Arkhan’s skill, ‘Legions of Death’, now provides increased leadership at its second level.
The skill ‘Bloodthirsty Charge’ now more accurately describes which units benefit from its effects.
Resolved overlapping skills in Khargan the Crazed’s skill tree.
Added the ‘Plague Feeder’ skill to Khargan the Crazed’s skill tree.
Added a Resistance effect to ‘Beastlord’s Presence’ to mirror ‘Beastlord’s Gaze’; Rakarth’s later ability is now a true upgrade!
The Daemon Prince now affects Beasts of Nurgle with the skill ‘Rancid Menagerie.’
The Incarnate Elemental of Beasts is now affected by the Great Bray Shaman’s unique skills, ‘Bellows of the Discordant’ and ‘Hardened Pelts.’

TECHNOLOGY

Cockatrices are now affected by ‘Gaze of the Dark Gods’ when playing as any Beastmen Lord.
Empire Land Ships are now affected by the ‘Reinforced Armour Plating’ technology.

ANCILLARIES/ MAGIC ITEMS

Mother Ostankya’s faction, Daughters of the Forest, can now acquire the ‘Priest of Taal’ and ‘Priest of Ursun’ ancillaries.
Stopped effects that grant Snipe from also granting Slayer.
Warlock Engineers now have an arcane item slot.
Sacred Incense now correctly provides missile resistance to friendly units within range.

BUILDINGS/SETTLEMENTS

Nurgle outposts now provide garrison units where constructed.
Added the Spirit Leech and Soulblight spells to the Amethyst Wizard that Elspeth can get from the ‘Amethyst College’ building.
Pigbarter now functions correctly as a minor settlement in RoC campaigns.
The Throne of Chaos landmark building is now available to the Daemons of Chaos.
Added settlement effects to Konquata when occupied by Lizardmen as it previously only reduced corruption.

UI/UX

The recruitment effects for the “Exotic Animal” building chain now correctly indicate where they apply.
The Gorefeast skills for Taurox and Karanak now use the correct icon.
The ‘Shroud of Darkness’ skill for Khainite Assassins no longer displays the Vanguard Deployment icon.

ENVIRONMENT

Plagueridden, Cultists of Nurgle, and Plague Cultists now use the correct naval model when at sea.

BATTLE

GENERAL/GAMEPLAY/UNITS

Minotaurs of Khorne & Minotaurs of Khorne (Great Weapons) now have Woodsman & Hide (forest).
Alarielle the Radiant now has Martial Prowess when mounted on a Great Eagle, as it is not considered a monstrous mount.
Mournhowl has been given the Strider attribute and his Weapon Strength has been adjusted to better align with that of a Werekin – after all, he is a Werekin… just not exactly. (He now has Bonus vs Infantry instead of Bonus vs Large.)
The Mark of Slaanesh has been added to Caress, the Darkling Prince and the Mark of Tzeentch to Zarrivyk, Feathered-Prince.
Cultist of Tzeentch on Warshrine now has the correct health value.
Abilities granted by effects for summoned units (Summoned Skink Priest, Krell, and Summoned Keeper of Secrets) are now properly enabled.
Fixed the Celestial General not having Fear when mounted on a Longma.
The Druzhina can now fire while moving when mounted on a warhorse.
Added Skirmish mode to the Druzhina on a warhose so he can fight… to run away.
The Thundertusk and Amblepeak Greybacks now cause both Fear and Terror.
Reduced the Melee Attack and Melee Defence of Seekers and Heartseekers of Slaanesh by 2.
Reduced the Armour Piercing damage of Seekers of Slaanesh by 4 and increased their base Weapon Damage by 4.
Increased the Radii Ratio of units mounted on Steeds of Slaanesh (Seekers of Slaanesh, Heartseekers of Slaanesh, Hellstriders of Slaanesh, Hellstriders of Slaanesh (Hellscourges)) to slightly reduce their performance by having fewer of them fight in melee at the same time.
The Eshin Maneater now has the Ogre Charge attribute.
Fixed a bug where single-entity units could stop fighting during duels.
Grudge-Rakers for Master Engineers now match the range of the unit variant.
Iksha’s Triads now correctly gain the ‘Unspottable’ attribute when using their ability.

ENVIRONMENT/UNIT MODELS

Fixed areas along the rivers on The Obsidian Path map where shallow water was too deep in some spots.
Fixed an issue where Pestigors were noticeably taller than their counterparts aligned with other Chaos Gods.
The Sisters of Twilight now have a defined primary uniform colour.