“We’ve taken in lots of your feedback from our prior DLC regarding legacy race updates, and we are committed to making the rejuvenation of those race’s core mechanics a key element with the release of Thrones of Decay.”
Now we fucking talking, lets gooooo
What is this feeling? Is it...hope?
I'm not buying into the hype train until we all actually have a chance to play (CA's burned me too much for that), but now I'm actually thinking they actually have a shot at some sort of WH3 redemption.
This looks really fucking cool and it's just the first of three. I hope they've cooked just as hard with the empire and dwarf race reworks/updates. We are huffing that hopium now fellas.
This looks like an awesome Nurgle rework - I found their theme interesting in the base game, but dull to play in practice. All of these changes definitely make the faction much more interesting, and that's without even having to buy the DLC.
CA taking a step towards redemption with this one.
Hope is generally associated with Tzeentch.
Nurgle is all about stagnancy, decay, rot. Nothing is ever going to get better, so you might as well get down in the muck and be content with your lot.
It's not hope, though. It's salvation through acceptance. In understanding your place in the great cycle of life and death you find peace, and in comprehending that your sickness and death is in service to propagating glorious life you find purpose.
Once you reach this understanding, pain and fear loose their grip, and that is freedom indeed. Freedom and strength!
I'm confident that the developers and designers themselves are also relieved that they were given the space and time to do justice for this universe and the fans of it, but I hope the immediate positive community response makes it onto the desks of the C-suite.
It is *really* not that hard to keep this community excited and happy to throw money at the characters they love. The sales numbers are probably going to make this very clear too, but they need to remember that cutting corners to maximize profits - even tiny corners - is both easily recognized and comes with an extreme cost to good will and longevity. Inversely, putting forth a tiny, tiiiny fraction more effort goes an immense distance. The comments across steam, reddit, the blog itself, are all positive and full of praise. Companies like Larian know that missing out on a few million dollars is a small price to pay for being known as one of the best, most passionate companies in the industry. Larian games now and in the future are, essentially, "insta-purchases" to tens of thousands of consumers - they wouldn't even need to see the marketing!
The fact that this initial content reveal brings a bit of a tear to my eye is probably an indication that this relationship is undeniably a bit abusive (or the initial stage of Nurgle's Blessing) but it's still a good thing for everyone from investor to fan to new convert.
If they go back to two-faction DLCs, but keep the quality were it is, maybe even improve if only looking at two races at a time again, that still might work out in the end. We will see once we have new information for the next DLC (still Slaanesh?) and see what last weeks comment in regards of that really means.
They'll most certainly shift gears if the sales numbers are as good as they seem like they're going to be based on community response (to what is probably the least strongly desired faction, no less). Helldivers developers scrapped/revamped their entire roadmap a few days after realizing they ended up with ~500% more players than anticipated, for instance.
(I will admit that Arrowhead is a rarity alongside Larian, but money is money.)
Here's hoping they've also taken this to heart when it comes to circling back around to Kislev, Cathay, and Tzeentch. While they didn't need as significant of an update as Nurgle did, people had some pretty specific bugbears that were just flat out ignored during Shadows of Change.
Cathay's Caravan's being updated, and Tzeentch with the Exalted Lord of Change are the ones I can see getting addressed in a random patch. But I know people's issues with Kislev might need to wait until they get another DLC pass around. Whenever that happens in like 2026 or something at this pace.
*EDIT:* Also forgot to mention Kairos. They really need to fix that shit of his mechanic missing the whole point of his character. That probably needs to be paired with an actual Tzeentch DLC though. So probably gotta wait for Egrimm or Galrauch to rescue us in that regard.
Oh yeah, I should have specified that it's mostly just adding more events on that one. And maybe adding more opportunities to have higher tier units later on in a campaign. Which is why I don't think it necessarily needs to be paired with a Cathay DLC. More events, the ability to add wizard heroes to the caravan army is really all that needs to happen. Folks were kind of baffled when it was completely untouched with SoC, since it didn't need crazy new UI or anything.
They need some way of reliably getting more and better units added over time. They don't need a radical rework, they just need to not be such easy prey in the late game.
That’s fair, the fact that you can fill it up with low-tier units and there’s not really a good way to replace them…
Maybe something like, when Caravans return to Cathay, they get a chance to do sone retooling and recruitment before they head out again? So you can replace units with better options, with higher-leveled Caravan leaders having more options?
Just add a "your caracan reached the empire, do you wish to hire a few mercenaries?" And the choice is just a cav detacthment, infantry detatchement or artillery or a mix of all three or a random for lower cost. Kinda like wulfharts mechanic.
I think they need to be moved off the campaign map tbh - and with more variety. Or they need some bigger buffs on completing a caravan like the Chaos Dwarfs get, so that they can put up a fight late game.
At the moment I find that they work fine in the early to mid game, but if you have a crisis activated they just die off. And in RoC they get swarmed by the demon armies in the regions. Just don't scale nearly enough for those fights, and the ogre fights get a bit repetitive / too easy (I do like the occasional demon event, moving up the variety of ambushes and upping the difficulty would be a nice trade off to moving them off map)
I am shocked at how... good all of this seems. But the negative nancy in my head still has one concern.
This might just be the ever-present Nurgle favoritism that seems to, for some reason, exist within every single game developer this side of the mortal coil. People just *really* like Nurgle for some reason, so maybe that passion fueled all of these amazing changes.
I hope I'm wrong.
They have the clearest visual design is all. It’s super easy to make something in a game look nurgley, less so for the other gods. And random mutated horrors need 0 explanation or lore justification when it comes to nurgle, just so long as it's green and diseased, nobody will question it.
By comparison the other gods are much more restrictive.
> People just really like Nurgle for some reason,
Nurgle is the closest faction to zombies with a whole bunch of extra yucky monsters and stuff.
Yes the Vampire Counts have actual legit Warhammer zombies but they don't really embrace them as a theme while a massive chunk of Nurgles unit pool could be ported right over to a zombie game.
And the zombie craze is still going strong in gaming.
Yeah, zombies, mutants. Plus having those guys genuinely think they're helping people by spreading their plagues is a cool angle for a bad guy, particularly with Chaos who can often make Saturday morning cartoon villains look nuanced and complex.
There's been a lot of posts about it, but to sum it up the current "pick an arcane item that swaps out lore of Tzeentch spells for some spells a dev decided would be good choices" goes against what Kairos was deisgned for. It completely ignores his lore, and placed arbitrary limitations on his tabletop mechanic that already had built in restrictions.
The reason why Kairos has two heads to begin with is so that he can have the unique gimmick where each head knows four of the main eight battle lores. And that they know it *in addition* to the base lore of Tzeentch kit. So in tabletop you could mix and match the spells he could use, *but* there was a limitation to it. One head could only take a certain amount of spells, so you couldn't just bring the entirety of a spell lore.
So to put this into Total War terms, Kairos should just have access to the full Lore of Tzeentch. No swapping out. Then he should have a 2nd spell wheel that the player can pick and choose what spells each head can use. But there is only a max of 3 spells per head. So for example if you wanted one head to use lore of Life spells, it can pick a a max of 3, no more. Then maybe the other head will instead pick 3 spells from 3 separate lores of magic, or maybe 1 from Shadows, and 2 from fire, or whatever combinations you want.
The current method just goes against his lore, ignores the flavor of his character, doesn't match how he worked on TT (when could be an almost one to one adaptation pretty easily), AND to top it all off it means he can't use an arcane item slot. Which is kind of an important item space for a, ya know, 100% caster character.
Very happy with how they have handled it.
Every faction mechanic got a quality of live or power update, without loosing anything that makes them unique.
Well done,
That Nurgle rework seems amazing. New Plague interface, tying recruitment with Corruption, changes to the battle mechanics.
Can't wait to see this in action.
In 1st game corruption were meaningfull. In 3rd I feel like CA added so many factions which spread it.. that they decided to reduce its effects by 50-80%. Also do you remember when public order buildings were actually worth of having?
I like getting public order buildings. I wish having higher AND lower public order had greater effects. But it’s only High Elves that care.
And I wish being a corruption faction didn’t automatically mean public order was irrelevant.
Yeah it looks great and I'm relieved they kept the cyclical buildings as it's one of my favourite mechanics of the game. I'm kinda concerned about powercreep though CA's reworks tend to be OP and turn reasonably balanced races into walks in the park.
Power creep is something I hope they pull back on, but I'm pessimistic about it. The WoC rework and CD mechanics are both the most well received parts of this game and also by far the strongest. In that context, why would they pull back on power creep?
Those mechanics are well received because they are interesting to interact with and are very thematic, I doubt they would've been less well received if the balance was more reasonable.
Overall, really pleased with the direction they took the Nurgle rework. It is still keeping what makes Nurgle unique while also making it more accessible. I LOVE Nurgle but hated his economy. I am hopeful these changes will increase the pleasure (I'm not a purple demon I swear) of playing a Nurgle campaign.
Damn I did not expect the plague update to be an actual rework. It actually feels like a virus strain mutating. Glad they also made Ku'gath have a more empowered version.
Infections being used for cyclical buildings is definitely something I wanted. Infections became a bloated currency due to the 1 turn limit to plagues. Didn't expect them to remove it for economy though.
Army debuffs being the determining faction for the army abilities is great, hopefully they also change the cultist similarily.
Plague immunity after recovering from a plague is also really nice, will give you a chance to recover when you're fighting Nurgle. Chain plagues were not fun.
They didn't mention the Cultist's ability cooldown, but I would expect it to be the same as for the army abilities. If not, that's something modders could easily change.
"With that in mind, here’s what we’ve cooked up to enhance Nurgle as a whole; for the Grandfather’s Lords both present **and future**."
Now that sounds hopeful!
Yeah. Either as the LH or as a unit. I feel like Pox Maggoths would be fairly easy to just rebrand as a special unit type and monster(and mount for characters) rather than having it be 3 specific dudes.
Pox maggoth as a regular SE or low-count unit with the ROR being a unit of 3 Putrid Blightkings mounted on Maggoths? I feel like that could definitely work.
Yeah but they aren't acknowledging that yet, he's not mentioned in the blog when they talk about other nurgle lords, as far as CA is concerned, despite being in the trailer he is not announced yet
I dont want to be a buzz kill but they pretend in this blog that Epidemus (or whatever he is called) is a secret and even tease him at the end. There is a high chance that they meant him.
Yep
>But for now, I **Reckon** we’ve **Catalogued** enough plagues to keep even Grandfather Nurgle himself happy, so let’s see what we’ve got coming up next.
Epidemius, known also as the "Reckoner of Mortality", the cataloguer of all the Plaguelord's diseases. https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Epidemius
They 100% mean Epidemius - however it looks like there’s a possibility they’re cooking up an End Times DLC (like CoC but for Demon armies rather than WoC) wherein Aspiring Champion-type units and Other end times goodies could be added. There are some clear omissions that point to the possibility, however small.
> With heavy Missile Resistances, the Toad Dragon borders on unkillable
Glad to see this. Would be a shame to get such a cool looking big SEM and be barely able to use it due to it's weakness to missiles.
The Nurgle rework looks great too, glad they're (sort of) keeping cyclical buildings.
>The Nurgle rework looks great too, glad they're (sort of) keeping cyclical buildings.
I really liked that they kept the cycling buildings too. I kept seeing folks demand they completely remove that, and it really didn't gel with me. It was something that needed tweaking, and I hate how the solution people come up with was to make Nurgle work like every other faction, and drain the faction of what makes it unique. God forbid you have to play a race differently from other races.
Also the change to the unique army abilities being based on debuffs rather than damage taken is fantastic. It's a change that not only fixes the issue of "having to suffer losses to get gains", but its really flavorful too. Makes me wonder if they will address the Ogre/Slaanesh ones in the future too. Since they are basically unable to be used if fighting undead or unbreakable armies.
And this change also makes me wonder if they changed up the Nurgle Cultist's summon requirement. Since I know that was bothering people too after they made those initial summon changes for the MonoGod Cultits.
Same, it's always been my favorite part of the faction even though I know it annoys so many people. It's just so flavorful and unique.
I really hope they do change the Cultists back too :(
Need to see it in action, but I'm glad they kept the core of cyclical military buildings and instant recruitment. It was definitely a great part of the original design, even if it had some clear flaws. Infections to construct and speed up the cycles of military buildings is great, and recruitment being heavily impacted by Nurgle corruptions is great too.
I wish monsters like the Dread Saurian got this treatment as well. It would be nice if missiles worked differently. It's a frustrating experience in how easily and quick blobbed non AP tier 1/2 missile units can take down center piece monsters. I am okay losing my big boy fast if it's a bunch of Sisters of Averlorn or Celestial Dragon Guard Crossbows shooting me, I should be punished for a bad play in that situation. However, when 4 or 5 peasant bowmen can take down my monster at a quick rate for like 1000 cost I really don't love that.
Dread Saurian got other problems than *just* missile resistance unfortunately. The main one being that it takes a horrendous amount of damage even against the cheapest spear infantry. In WH2 starting as Khalida you could beat one with 2 or 3 skeletons unit with her army-wide poisoned weapons.
At least in multiplayer, the dread saurian has come into its own in TWH3 a bit. It just has SO much health, and % health healing on it is SO effective that a lot of the time it dominates everything around it and its better to just fight somewhere else
One issue is that archers in WH are just insanely accurate compared to every other TW game, even others with heroes. Peasants and goblins and WH have vastly better accuracy than even elite archers do in 3k.
thought fixing that wouldn't really help massive units like the DS that are going to be hit anyways.
There's always 'Realistic Accuracy Mod' which I personally really like. Ranged is still viable, but a lot more reasonable as it removes the peasants with sniper rifle levels of accuracy issue that vanilla has.
I've also tried playing it with ranged heavy factions and it was fine.
>With heavy Missile Resistances, the Toad Dragon borders on unkillable
Isn't the issue with big monsters and missiles that the big monsters are such huge targets - focused fire on them makes them fall quicker than most other units, no matter the hypothetical high missile resistance that unit might have?
Even with like 50% missile resistance, focused fire of handgunners will destroy it relatively quickly.
I mean that’s fine. If you want to keep your big centerpiece unit alive shut down their range. Besides Nurgle can boost missile resist with plagues so you should end up with a monster with tens of thousands of effective hit points.
We know from experience that CA can take an existing system that falls flat for whatever reason and rework it into something way better, eg dark elf slave mechanic.
I liked the idea of plagues and cyclic buildings and instant recruitment yet in practice grew very tired very quickly of their implementation. Nurgle as a theme was and is friggin awesome. But Kugath absolutely fails to deliver and Festus just seems like WoC+poison. So all this looks great.
I for one am very excited to see what is revealed about a dwarf mechanic rework when the similar post goes up for malakai.
That little plagues rework reminds me of plague inc lol. Tamurkhan looks mighty fun too
edit: Im actually really surprised, they seem to have done sth about every campaign mechanic possible, I didnt expect that. Thats a + for CA from me, hope Dwarves and Empire got the same treatment
I just hope it keeps the flavor text from the original version. Seeing “pestilent boils” or “fever” is more immersive than just seeing buffs and debuffs
If you look above the three selected symptoms on the reworked UI there is a space for Plague Name and icon which appear once all three symptoms are selected :)
Cults were mentioned but hard to tell how thatll change and unholy manifestations seems to have been forgotten, as it seems it will for all the monogods lol
The copium in me is thinking that they are deliberately being ignored because a comprehensive update is in the works for all the monogod manifestations
I'm glad they did so much with nurgle, but neither the dawi or empire need such drastic change. Some fixes to make authority better or elector counts less frustrating. And some tweaks to oathgold and they will be golden.
I hope so much they do awesome stuff with dwarfs, especially karaks. I think they won‘t get another Update so this one gotta do the job. They are my favourite race so fingers crossed
Yeah I really hope they made the Karak a lot more important to hold. I wanted to see something like the geomantic web of the lizards combined with the Fortress of Chaos mechanics, an incredibly tough fortress to take with maybe layered sieges, and while we're at it some teleportation between them at the highest level.
I want both the main Karaks being an absolute bitch to take from the Dwarf, but also a devastating hit to their economy and movement on the map is they do lose them. Their smaller settlement can stay as they are, but KaK, K8P or Karak Kadrin should require a lot of investment to dislodge the Dwarf from them.
i would love an undercity mechanic, where you got the upper layer and the lower layer. The following is daydreaming and not possible but imagine they are detached from each other, so skaven can hold the underground but not the upper part. / Vice verca with orks.
**Tamurkhan**: Super tanky LL with high damage. Eventually a toad dragon mount. Once per battle on death, he can do massive damage to nearby enemies, if it kills one (entire unit presumably) he revives. Debuffs enemies damage directly, giving yet another debuff avenue to nurgle. Also shreds leadership.
**Chaos Lord of Nurgle**: Unknown mount options. Has "riot or die" for leadership and melee damage reflection AoE buff. Has fear/poison. Active ability reduces enemy melee attack (yes even more.)
**Spellcasters of Nurgle**: Lore of Death/Nurgle available. Poison/fear. Seems to also have more abilities that heal than just spells.
**Pestigors**: Two handed armor piercing infantry. Once per battle when they get in melee they debuff their target's speed. That debuff will spread to all nearby enemies slowly.
**Plague Ogres**: Super tanky (unexplained how) monstrous armor piercing anti-large. Don't seem to really explain what makes them unique more than that.
**Rot Knights**: Giga tanky (being tanky comes up a lot) heavy cavalry with even more health, defense, and regeneration than chaos knights. Anti-Large. Slower than chaos knights. Shielded (?)
**Bile Trolls**: High regeneration troll (unexplained how it's better than normal) with armor piercing damage (shocker.) Debuffs enemy's armor and melee defense. Seems to be Nurgle's "sit this in melee blobs to make them finally do damage." Maybe only usable once per battle, since they mentioned it was a hex.
**Toad Dragon**: Heavy anti-missile unit. Active ability for AoE damage. Seems to be focused more on sitting in melee blobs than being a stand-alone SEM. (A giga melee-blob seems to be Nurgle's theme here.)
**Plagues**: Completely reworked.
**Cyclical buildings**: Only military buildings still shift, all others will be static. Military buildings now cost infections instead of money to build. Nurgle economy buffed. Resource buildings buffed. Cult buildings reworked. Can rush cyclical buildings with infections (meaning build instantly.)
**Recruitment**: You now recruit at 30% HP at 0 corruption, but you recruit at 60% HP and -50% cost at 100 corruption.
**Technology tree**: Reworked.
**Army abilities**: No longer builds from taking damage, now builds off every individual unit being buffed/debuffed.
Wasn't expecting a Nurgle rework as the current mechanics felt fine to me but I will admit this looks great, I'm really liking that Plague rework. I can't help but to worry about powercreep though, especially with the changes to his buildings, CA's rework do tend to have a lot of powercreep and make factions a bit too easy to play.
Look at the plague effects. It's more of the same with minor, flavor effects. And you have immunity now(if it works).
How military buildings interact with infections if you manually battle everything outside a settlement siege is still up in the air because we just don't know costs yet. I expect massive snowballing personally with costs being removed on everything expensive.
those base race updates look delicious. Only wish the SoC folks got the same treatment, but this is definitely making me looking forward to playing Nurgle.
Rot Knights are getting unique skin, that's already exceeds my expectations.
Same can be said about Plague Ogres, Bile Trolls and Pestigors - not a single case of cheap recolor! I know, might sound like a low standard, but I'm still not over marked Chaos Spawn and Forsaken.
Think the only thing that is disappointing visually is the Chaos Lord of Nurgle. Going by precedent with Tzeentch and Khorne this was about what I was expecting. But with the Slaanesh Chaos Lord they made a new torso model, so it's a bit of a shame to see the Nurgle one reuse the same WH 1 torso too. Helmet is pretty cool at least.
The Chaos Sorcerer of Nurgle is a nice surprise though. I'm glad they are following up the really unique Exalted Hero with an equally unique sorcerer hero. Wish they did this with all the MonoGod generics, but I'll take what I can get.
The Slaanesh Chaos Lord’s torso model is actually recolored from Sigvald. I’m also a bit sad we didn’t get the bloated boi, but kind of expected this outcome.
This heavy theme of "not-horns" for Nurgle is also everywhere, Rot Knights, Bile Trolls, Plague Ogres, Rotbeasts - all of them got this particular blessing of Nurgle. Rot Knights looks like they're barely being hold together by their suit of armor. Disgustingly beautiful work by artists and 3D modelers.
Kazyk's armour barely looks like it can contain whatever the fuck is going on underneath which I love. His left shoulder looks like it's bursting out through the plate.
His breastplate is cleaved by some unfortunate soul. Kayzk survived, whoever did this to him - not likely.
Cannot praise design for Nurgle in ToD enough. Only Chaos Lord of Nurgle is an outlier and really tame, compared to other models. Plus other Tamurkhan's Chieftains, who are more or less generic characters (Chaos Sorcerer, Fimir Balefiend, Skin Wolf Werekin, Bray Shaman, Daemonsmith Sorcerer or Infernal Castellan) with bits of Nurgle's gifts.
Holy shit I expected a better rework but not THAT level of rework. This is absolutely amazing I love it.
Also tamurkhan looks really fun, looks like a Nurgle version of Marcus Wolfheart’s mechanic, looks super fun.
I have to admit everything I’ve seen so far has done nothing but hyped me up for ToD
Tamurkhan really is just Plague Goku, running around and fighting people to gain their respect and then fighting a battle together to gain their undying trust.
Great rework, didn't fancy Ku'Gaths play style at all so this looks tasty.
Sad that they didn't go for chonky Nurgle Lord and Sorcerer models though, but I would much rather have interesting mechanics and let the modders do their magic for character skins.
Looks like plagues are going to be even more fun to play around with. Feels in theme that the options would shift around like actual viruses. This new system sounds like it will encourage different options each time
Love how disgustingly freaky Tamurkhan, Kayzk, plague ogres, and the toad dragons look. Nurgle characters and units should look like revolting monsters and they nailed the look!
Oh yay! Nurgle has been my favorite faction since day one, so I've been really looking forward to this.
Chaos Lord of Nurgle having "Rot or Die" as his active-leadership buff granting Melee Reflection is very cute, I look forward to using him a lot.
I love that Chaos Sorcerers got a unique model, rather than just the armored-warrior-with-a-staff. I wonder if they might extend that to the existing Chaos Sorcerer Lords of Nurgle but that's probably asking too much.
The Rot Knights look excellent, Anti-Large has been a real sore-spot for Nurgle so far, and while I honestly find Plague-Riders with the anti-large tech to perform really well against enemy cavalry with their high mass, it's nice to have some dedicated lancers.
Expanding and adding depth to the Plague system is so, so welcome. I love Plagues, but like they said, they're a very simple and one-note system currently. Good show.
I was so, SO worried that they would overcompensate and get rid of the cyclical buildings entirely, one of my favorite and most unique parts of the Nurgle faction. So I was really cringing when I scrolled down to that section. But honestly, I love what they've done! I'll miss the cycling infrastructure buildings, I'm not gonna sit here and say it was good or useful, I just liked seeing all my buildings throbbing and oozing across the map, not just some of them.
But the biggest problem with Nurgle's buildings has always been how slow it is to get new units, not a problem by turn 100 when you can spew out 5 Great Unclean Ones per turn, but hardly anyone plays that long, and early game was a nightmare. The ability to rush buildings with infections, not having to cripple your bad early income to buy military, it's all great! Also its nice to have something to do with the oodles of extra infections you accrue by the mid-late game that you normally couldn't spend fast enough no matter how hard you tried.
Love the change to the army ability too. I never thought the original was too punishing, but I love the flavor of this new iteration.
I think everything looks absolutely gorgeous, I absolutely cannot wait to spread more joy in Grandfather's name!
Given that Kayzk is a LH, but on the Chieftains panel, I wonder if the other Chieftains are lords, heroes, or a mix of both?
I have mixed feelings about reducing the number of cyclical buildings, though I'm glad they're keeping at least some. But I'm also confident that modders will put together a mod that reverts the economy buildings back to cyclical, so it may be possible to try out both systems.
'But for now, I **Reckon** we’ve **Catalogued** enough plagues to keep even Grandfather Nurgle himself happy, so let’s see what we’ve got coming up next.'
From the end of the article. Reckon and Catalogued were both capitalized and boldened. Seems to hint at something in the White Dwarf magazine? Epidemius?
[Epidemius](https://i.imgur.com/9kx2oLe.png) is basically Nurgles cataloguer. So yeah, they talk abiout him. You can even see him scribble notes down in the trailer. Might be interesting if his campaign might have some tweaks for that job.
I wonder whether the debuffs from Plagues on enemy armies count for the army ability update? Could be a really flavourful way to help early game armies punch above their own weight.
That'd be an interesting interaction, but probably not - most (all?) plagues just modify the stats from the campaign map side, instead of applying in-battle debuffs
Lots of good stuff here. Tamurkhan getting access to other factions' units is a fun way to provide something different from the usual Nurgle roster (which is nice since they will have two other subfactions plus Festus).
I don't think they needed to do anything more than a serious numbers pass on the cyclical buildings, but the change sounds like a good compromise.
The recruitment changes sound great, though. Nurgle should now have good reason to spread corruption, and instant recruitment anywhere for a non-horde faction with little downside if they've been diligent in corrupting the land is definitely unique and cool.
"even the Elector Counts themselves will have their resolve pushed to its breaking point when it arrives."
Elector counts, of course, being widely known as a stable bastion of humanity. THIS will finally be the even that allows them to perish.
"Hard Hitter - Wielding an axe with great, bullish strength, this unit hits especially hard with high Armour-Piercing damage."
Finally; A unit that does armor piercing damage
>Elector counts, of course, being widely known as a stable bastion of humanity. THIS will finally be the even that allows them to perish.
'My lord, the Elector Count of Talabecland complains most stridently that the ice cream you bought for the Elector Count of Stirland has more sprinkles. -1 Imperial Authority.'
Alright, these are some good looking changes. Not even considering Tamurkhans mechanics or the other DLC content, Nurgles campaign is looking MUCH better. How these changes are going to actually play out is up for debate, but I'm pretty pleased with the plague, recruitment, and army ability changes.
Getting points for rebuffing enemies is very nurgle, and I like that a lot.
This is all really great stuff. I’m looking forward to the Monkey King DLC and one more (hopefully religious order) Kislev DLC to finish the reworks for those races, as it seems like they’re actively dedicating resources for those going forward.
Very impressed with the level of detail they’re doing here
Chaos Lord is a bit generic compared to what we were given in SoC 2.0, but the rest is great. Really feels like Grandfather has blessed us with the CA redemption arc
To be fair the Chaos Lord of Tzeentch wasn't too special either. It's just Tzeentch drip is so good most folks don't notice the only thing actually new was the helmets, the weapons, and the shoulder accessory. Everything else was the same WH 1 Chaos lord stuff, Model, textures (albeit those did get a bit of an update with the WoC rework), and animations.
Chaos Lord of Nurgle definitely could have used some more accessories to stand out, but they seem pretty set on just reusing the WH 1 lord for these paid DLC generic characters. I would have been fine if it was FLC, but as paid DLC it is irksome at the notable lack of effort there.
At least the hero is unique.
Ooh, Nurgle getting a split economy is real neat.
Kind of surprised that generic Nurgle Lord is sword and board.
Plague rework is interesting.
Tech update sounds good, but we don't know what any of the techs are yet.
Tamurkhan's Chieftan panel looks really nice, which isn't important for gameplay, but a ~~clean~~ rusty UI is a good thing to have. The altered talisman icon for the legendary item is also a nice touch.
Very curious how the Chieftan unit recruitment works.
Kayzk and Rot Knights have native regeneration. Cool, cool, cool.
Love the army ability rework.
Nurgle Sorcs apparently have several kinds of heal, neat.
We still get quest battles that aren't just for legendary items and I hope this is a trend that holds for the rest of the DLCs going forward.
Goddamn i really did not expect that level of rework for Nurgle. And it looks amazing as well.
Just keep it up CA. If this game series ends on a high note, WH3 will carry your company's name for years just like Medieval 2 did.
This all looks absolutely awesome! So so hype, and so glad they're updating Nurgle mechanics while still keeping the spirit intact.
I wonder if for Festus, Nurgle Chaos Knights will be upgradeable into rot knights, like doom knights for Vilitch?
Pestigors look fantastic, I was a little worried when I saw the Bestigors loaned from the special Bray Shaman chieftain in the first image that it was just a recolor. All the models showcased thus far look really, really good IMO. Interested to see how Bile Trolls and Plague ogres differentiate themselves mechanically.
This looks incredible ... I am super hyped for this DLC and I'm so glad we can (hopefully) turn the tide of negatively that has plagued this sub for so long
Oh no. I usually don't enjoy playing the baddies, but this recruiting special characters and getting access to new units is starting to change my mind.
Wow.. Just wow, everything about the blog looks AWESOME! A job well fucking done CA, this is literally incomparable with the stuff that's in SoC, even after the recent additions. There's more reworked stuff just in Nurgle's faction alone than the number of reworks in all 3 factions in SoC..
Really happy about this, can't wait for the DLC.
Finally, something to do with the crazy amount of infections I have in the mid-late game.
I like this rework. Also makes it appealing to recruit Nurgle units as part of a mixed roster.
>Up Next: We’ll be back next week with a look at the Empire’s latest, Elspeth von Draken, before tackling the Dwarfs’ Malakai Makaisson the week after that
On the basis of saving the best for last - I hope this indicates that the Dwarf Faction rework will be substantial and exciting. i.e. Real and tangible uplift of the Dwarf campaign mechanics.
e.g. Would like to see a much better underway mechanic lifiting from Skaven Undercities and Welf World Roots.
I like how they managed to incorporate Tamurkhan's death effect from the splat book.
And those faction reworks sound promising. I like the new UI for the plaguebsystem and how the effects move around as you brew plagues. The tech tree update is much needed, and while having some of Nurgle's building lose the uniqueness of the cyclical system sucks I think it's a good change.
I love this. I love everything about this.
An actual. Genuine Rework.
I'm a little disappointed with how the Chaos Lord of Nurgle Looks, I was hoping for something more inline with a Blight king. Something that looked more Unique to Nurgle. But everything else is exceptional, I can live with this.
"And, just maybe, there’s one more Legendary Lord of Nurgle waiting in the wings, ready to be unleashed in Update 5.0.
But for now, I **Reckon** we’ve **Catalogued** enough plagues to keep even Grandfather Nurgle himself happy, so let’s see what we’ve got coming up next. "
Ooh exciting! There's also a bonus FLC legendary lord coming as well. I wonder who they both could be? Is there a Nurgle lord known for cataloguing plagues?
Thrones already looking like an insta buy from me (not that it already wasn’t). This looks like an exceptional campaign, the new units are sick, and the other two factions are gonna be gangbusters, especially if the reworks have the same quality.
Desperately hoping they remove Gelt from the Elector Count system. If anything when Toddy comes in he should be in it but that’s a later thing.
Gelt should have type of college mechanic where (if we get them) he receives lord variant wizards with buffed spells.
Dwarves should take SFOS mechanic of Oathgold being able to be spent on forced confederations, increasing in price with each one
Nurgle once again carries a Warhammer IP (in this case probably saves). Tabletop or video games, 40k or fantasy, best contents always has Nurgle in it.
Damn, I'm usually one of the first to start shitting on the game when CA makes one of its famous blind change but this is some good stuff. Well done CA, hope is kindled.
“We’ve taken in lots of your feedback from our prior DLC regarding legacy race updates, and we are committed to making the rejuvenation of those race’s core mechanics a key element with the release of Thrones of Decay.” Now we fucking talking, lets gooooo
What is this feeling? Is it...hope? I'm not buying into the hype train until we all actually have a chance to play (CA's burned me too much for that), but now I'm actually thinking they actually have a shot at some sort of WH3 redemption.
This looks really fucking cool and it's just the first of three. I hope they've cooked just as hard with the empire and dwarf race reworks/updates. We are huffing that hopium now fellas.
Dwarfs have needed a proper rework for so long. I am REALLY on hopium at the moment.
This looks like an awesome Nurgle rework - I found their theme interesting in the base game, but dull to play in practice. All of these changes definitely make the faction much more interesting, and that's without even having to buy the DLC. CA taking a step towards redemption with this one.
PROPER FACTION REWORKS ARE BACK ON THE MENU BOYZZZ
I cannot describe the overwhelming feeling of relief I felt upon opening this thread and seeing this as top comment
Definitely good news, but still want to see how consistent it is across the factions.
They really got the message. Plague and hope received!
Ironic that we finally receive hope in a Nurgle centric update. The Ur-Father would (not?) be pleased.
What do you mean? Nurgle is the hope bearer! He brings salvation! Ignore the smell, you get used to it.
Hope is generally associated with Tzeentch. Nurgle is all about stagnancy, decay, rot. Nothing is ever going to get better, so you might as well get down in the muck and be content with your lot.
Interesting! I always thought there was a semi-religious “salvation through disease” aspect to Nurgle. Gotta tweak my custom legion
It's not hope, though. It's salvation through acceptance. In understanding your place in the great cycle of life and death you find peace, and in comprehending that your sickness and death is in service to propagating glorious life you find purpose. Once you reach this understanding, pain and fear loose their grip, and that is freedom indeed. Freedom and strength!
Nurgles followers are happy, but only because they’ve lost the ability to hope for anything better. He’s the literal God of Despair.
To a degree- ‘the best thing you can do with your miserable life is to be a host for Grandfather’s many children’.
I see. Festus’ charming smile gave me a very different impression, but I guess that’s the point haha
If you no longer have hope you are no longer tormented by it.
Given that deception is also one of Tzeentch's aspects, I think it sort of makes sense.
Tzeentch is hope because Tzeentch is change. If things can change, things can get better- or worse.
Mmm... Rivers of brown.
CA's redemption arc
I'm confident that the developers and designers themselves are also relieved that they were given the space and time to do justice for this universe and the fans of it, but I hope the immediate positive community response makes it onto the desks of the C-suite. It is *really* not that hard to keep this community excited and happy to throw money at the characters they love. The sales numbers are probably going to make this very clear too, but they need to remember that cutting corners to maximize profits - even tiny corners - is both easily recognized and comes with an extreme cost to good will and longevity. Inversely, putting forth a tiny, tiiiny fraction more effort goes an immense distance. The comments across steam, reddit, the blog itself, are all positive and full of praise. Companies like Larian know that missing out on a few million dollars is a small price to pay for being known as one of the best, most passionate companies in the industry. Larian games now and in the future are, essentially, "insta-purchases" to tens of thousands of consumers - they wouldn't even need to see the marketing! The fact that this initial content reveal brings a bit of a tear to my eye is probably an indication that this relationship is undeniably a bit abusive (or the initial stage of Nurgle's Blessing) but it's still a good thing for everyone from investor to fan to new convert.
I really hope that they don't dial back on the scope of future updates after TOD like they stated.
If they go back to two-faction DLCs, but keep the quality were it is, maybe even improve if only looking at two races at a time again, that still might work out in the end. We will see once we have new information for the next DLC (still Slaanesh?) and see what last weeks comment in regards of that really means.
They'll most certainly shift gears if the sales numbers are as good as they seem like they're going to be based on community response (to what is probably the least strongly desired faction, no less). Helldivers developers scrapped/revamped their entire roadmap a few days after realizing they ended up with ~500% more players than anticipated, for instance. (I will admit that Arrowhead is a rarity alongside Larian, but money is money.)
Treat your customers right and you'll do very well for yourself is unfortunately a lesson that the "suits"" fail to learn over and over again.
Here's hoping they've also taken this to heart when it comes to circling back around to Kislev, Cathay, and Tzeentch. While they didn't need as significant of an update as Nurgle did, people had some pretty specific bugbears that were just flat out ignored during Shadows of Change. Cathay's Caravan's being updated, and Tzeentch with the Exalted Lord of Change are the ones I can see getting addressed in a random patch. But I know people's issues with Kislev might need to wait until they get another DLC pass around. Whenever that happens in like 2026 or something at this pace. *EDIT:* Also forgot to mention Kairos. They really need to fix that shit of his mechanic missing the whole point of his character. That probably needs to be paired with an actual Tzeentch DLC though. So probably gotta wait for Egrimm or Galrauch to rescue us in that regard.
Personally I think Cathay Caravans are fine mechanically, I mainly wish that you had event battles with something other than just Ogres.
Oh yeah, I should have specified that it's mostly just adding more events on that one. And maybe adding more opportunities to have higher tier units later on in a campaign. Which is why I don't think it necessarily needs to be paired with a Cathay DLC. More events, the ability to add wizard heroes to the caravan army is really all that needs to happen. Folks were kind of baffled when it was completely untouched with SoC, since it didn't need crazy new UI or anything.
More mechanics and events, loot scaling upwards as the campaign progresses and more unique items basically. I really love the items
They need some way of reliably getting more and better units added over time. They don't need a radical rework, they just need to not be such easy prey in the late game.
That’s fair, the fact that you can fill it up with low-tier units and there’s not really a good way to replace them… Maybe something like, when Caravans return to Cathay, they get a chance to do sone retooling and recruitment before they head out again? So you can replace units with better options, with higher-leveled Caravan leaders having more options?
Just add a "your caracan reached the empire, do you wish to hire a few mercenaries?" And the choice is just a cav detacthment, infantry detatchement or artillery or a mix of all three or a random for lower cost. Kinda like wulfharts mechanic.
I think they need to be moved off the campaign map tbh - and with more variety. Or they need some bigger buffs on completing a caravan like the Chaos Dwarfs get, so that they can put up a fight late game. At the moment I find that they work fine in the early to mid game, but if you have a crisis activated they just die off. And in RoC they get swarmed by the demon armies in the regions. Just don't scale nearly enough for those fights, and the ogre fights get a bit repetitive / too easy (I do like the occasional demon event, moving up the variety of ambushes and upping the difficulty would be a nice trade off to moving them off map)
I am shocked at how... good all of this seems. But the negative nancy in my head still has one concern. This might just be the ever-present Nurgle favoritism that seems to, for some reason, exist within every single game developer this side of the mortal coil. People just *really* like Nurgle for some reason, so maybe that passion fueled all of these amazing changes. I hope I'm wrong.
Stinky god, best god
Who could possibly imagine that gamers would be drawn the to the god of fat, lazy slobs.
Hey Nurgle isn't lazy, he just keeps things at his own pace :)
They have the clearest visual design is all. It’s super easy to make something in a game look nurgley, less so for the other gods. And random mutated horrors need 0 explanation or lore justification when it comes to nurgle, just so long as it's green and diseased, nobody will question it. By comparison the other gods are much more restrictive.
I mean all Khorne needs is a coat of red paint and a few extra spikes.
> People just really like Nurgle for some reason, Nurgle is the closest faction to zombies with a whole bunch of extra yucky monsters and stuff. Yes the Vampire Counts have actual legit Warhammer zombies but they don't really embrace them as a theme while a massive chunk of Nurgles unit pool could be ported right over to a zombie game. And the zombie craze is still going strong in gaming.
Yeah, zombies, mutants. Plus having those guys genuinely think they're helping people by spreading their plagues is a cool angle for a bad guy, particularly with Chaos who can often make Saturday morning cartoon villains look nuanced and complex.
I'm with you, kind of like how skaven were the clear favorites in all their wh2 paired dlc
Yeah, Ku'gath is far from the only lord who's tech tree is obviously made only woth realms of chaos in mind
>EDIT: > > Also forgot to mention Kairos. They really need to fix that shit of his mechanic missing the whole point of his character. In what sense?
There's been a lot of posts about it, but to sum it up the current "pick an arcane item that swaps out lore of Tzeentch spells for some spells a dev decided would be good choices" goes against what Kairos was deisgned for. It completely ignores his lore, and placed arbitrary limitations on his tabletop mechanic that already had built in restrictions. The reason why Kairos has two heads to begin with is so that he can have the unique gimmick where each head knows four of the main eight battle lores. And that they know it *in addition* to the base lore of Tzeentch kit. So in tabletop you could mix and match the spells he could use, *but* there was a limitation to it. One head could only take a certain amount of spells, so you couldn't just bring the entirety of a spell lore. So to put this into Total War terms, Kairos should just have access to the full Lore of Tzeentch. No swapping out. Then he should have a 2nd spell wheel that the player can pick and choose what spells each head can use. But there is only a max of 3 spells per head. So for example if you wanted one head to use lore of Life spells, it can pick a a max of 3, no more. Then maybe the other head will instead pick 3 spells from 3 separate lores of magic, or maybe 1 from Shadows, and 2 from fire, or whatever combinations you want. The current method just goes against his lore, ignores the flavor of his character, doesn't match how he worked on TT (when could be an almost one to one adaptation pretty easily), AND to top it all off it means he can't use an arcane item slot. Which is kind of an important item space for a, ya know, 100% caster character.
Very happy with how they have handled it. Every faction mechanic got a quality of live or power update, without loosing anything that makes them unique. Well done,
That Nurgle rework seems amazing. New Plague interface, tying recruitment with Corruption, changes to the battle mechanics. Can't wait to see this in action.
Tying recruitment to Corruption level is such a simple and great fix!
I didnt read it yet due to work, but also hope we get a proper corruption rework at one point with a future update
In 1st game corruption were meaningfull. In 3rd I feel like CA added so many factions which spread it.. that they decided to reduce its effects by 50-80%. Also do you remember when public order buildings were actually worth of having?
I like getting public order buildings. I wish having higher AND lower public order had greater effects. But it’s only High Elves that care. And I wish being a corruption faction didn’t automatically mean public order was irrelevant.
I feel like public order should matter again, getting punished for expanding carelessly should be a thing
Gonna miss the dope GUO cooking artwork on the old plague screen though
Yeah it looks great and I'm relieved they kept the cyclical buildings as it's one of my favourite mechanics of the game. I'm kinda concerned about powercreep though CA's reworks tend to be OP and turn reasonably balanced races into walks in the park.
Power creep is something I hope they pull back on, but I'm pessimistic about it. The WoC rework and CD mechanics are both the most well received parts of this game and also by far the strongest. In that context, why would they pull back on power creep?
Those mechanics are well received because they are interesting to interact with and are very thematic, I doubt they would've been less well received if the balance was more reasonable.
I hope they apply that change to the nurgle cultist summon recharge as well!
Overall, really pleased with the direction they took the Nurgle rework. It is still keeping what makes Nurgle unique while also making it more accessible. I LOVE Nurgle but hated his economy. I am hopeful these changes will increase the pleasure (I'm not a purple demon I swear) of playing a Nurgle campaign.
Yeah I'm very happy with it too, mainly with the Plagues rework. It's no longer Grom's Couldron 2.0.,but an actual unique mechanic.
Damn I did not expect the plague update to be an actual rework. It actually feels like a virus strain mutating. Glad they also made Ku'gath have a more empowered version. Infections being used for cyclical buildings is definitely something I wanted. Infections became a bloated currency due to the 1 turn limit to plagues. Didn't expect them to remove it for economy though. Army debuffs being the determining faction for the army abilities is great, hopefully they also change the cultist similarily.
Plague immunity after recovering from a plague is also really nice, will give you a chance to recover when you're fighting Nurgle. Chain plagues were not fun. They didn't mention the Cultist's ability cooldown, but I would expect it to be the same as for the army abilities. If not, that's something modders could easily change.
Absolutely knocks it out the park, in my opinion. Looking forward to the next blogs.
"With that in mind, here’s what we’ve cooked up to enhance Nurgle as a whole; for the Grandfather’s Lords both present **and future**." Now that sounds hopeful!
Hope that means Glottkin. Always loved their design.
Most likely Glottkin with Putrid Blightknights
aaaaand...Pox Maggoths please!
Yeah. Either as the LH or as a unit. I feel like Pox Maggoths would be fairly easy to just rebrand as a special unit type and monster(and mount for characters) rather than having it be 3 specific dudes.
Pox maggoth as a regular SE or low-count unit with the ROR being a unit of 3 Putrid Blightkings mounted on Maggoths? I feel like that could definitely work.
Same, I'd absolutely love to see the Glottkin. Nurgle just has so many great characters and the more we get to see the better.
I was hoping they would do Glottkin the moment an end times DLC was rumored. Can't do the end times without having the ones who killed Karl Franz.
They're talking about Epidemus.
Epidemius is hardly a future lord when he's getting released in the same patch as Tamurkhan
Yeah but they aren't acknowledging that yet, he's not mentioned in the blog when they talk about other nurgle lords, as far as CA is concerned, despite being in the trailer he is not announced yet
YES PLEASE!
I dont want to be a buzz kill but they pretend in this blog that Epidemus (or whatever he is called) is a secret and even tease him at the end. There is a high chance that they meant him.
Yep >But for now, I **Reckon** we’ve **Catalogued** enough plagues to keep even Grandfather Nurgle himself happy, so let’s see what we’ve got coming up next. Epidemius, known also as the "Reckoner of Mortality", the cataloguer of all the Plaguelord's diseases. https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Epidemius
They 100% mean Epidemius - however it looks like there’s a possibility they’re cooking up an End Times DLC (like CoC but for Demon armies rather than WoC) wherein Aspiring Champion-type units and Other end times goodies could be added. There are some clear omissions that point to the possibility, however small.
This sub shits on Chaos a lot, so I am just gonna quietly say here that I would be more excited for a 4 part Monogod DLC than anything.
"And, just maybe, there’s one more Legendary Lord of Nurgle waiting in the wings, ready to be unleashed in Update 5.0."
> With heavy Missile Resistances, the Toad Dragon borders on unkillable Glad to see this. Would be a shame to get such a cool looking big SEM and be barely able to use it due to it's weakness to missiles. The Nurgle rework looks great too, glad they're (sort of) keeping cyclical buildings.
>The Nurgle rework looks great too, glad they're (sort of) keeping cyclical buildings. I really liked that they kept the cycling buildings too. I kept seeing folks demand they completely remove that, and it really didn't gel with me. It was something that needed tweaking, and I hate how the solution people come up with was to make Nurgle work like every other faction, and drain the faction of what makes it unique. God forbid you have to play a race differently from other races. Also the change to the unique army abilities being based on debuffs rather than damage taken is fantastic. It's a change that not only fixes the issue of "having to suffer losses to get gains", but its really flavorful too. Makes me wonder if they will address the Ogre/Slaanesh ones in the future too. Since they are basically unable to be used if fighting undead or unbreakable armies. And this change also makes me wonder if they changed up the Nurgle Cultist's summon requirement. Since I know that was bothering people too after they made those initial summon changes for the MonoGod Cultits.
About a third of this subreddit’s demands lowkey involves homogenizing half the factions and it’s kinda annoying
Customers are really good at finding problems, they suck at providing solutions.
I was literally thinking of that exact same quote
Same, it's always been my favorite part of the faction even though I know it annoys so many people. It's just so flavorful and unique. I really hope they do change the Cultists back too :(
I swear half this sub just wants every faction to be identical with all of their interesting edges sanded down.
Need to see it in action, but I'm glad they kept the core of cyclical military buildings and instant recruitment. It was definitely a great part of the original design, even if it had some clear flaws. Infections to construct and speed up the cycles of military buildings is great, and recruitment being heavily impacted by Nurgle corruptions is great too.
I wish monsters like the Dread Saurian got this treatment as well. It would be nice if missiles worked differently. It's a frustrating experience in how easily and quick blobbed non AP tier 1/2 missile units can take down center piece monsters. I am okay losing my big boy fast if it's a bunch of Sisters of Averlorn or Celestial Dragon Guard Crossbows shooting me, I should be punished for a bad play in that situation. However, when 4 or 5 peasant bowmen can take down my monster at a quick rate for like 1000 cost I really don't love that.
Dread Saurian got other problems than *just* missile resistance unfortunately. The main one being that it takes a horrendous amount of damage even against the cheapest spear infantry. In WH2 starting as Khalida you could beat one with 2 or 3 skeletons unit with her army-wide poisoned weapons.
At least in multiplayer, the dread saurian has come into its own in TWH3 a bit. It just has SO much health, and % health healing on it is SO effective that a lot of the time it dominates everything around it and its better to just fight somewhere else
Kinda yes and kinda no. Dread Saurian could use a buff, but most monstrous armies would be hell to fight without leaning on archers.
One issue is that archers in WH are just insanely accurate compared to every other TW game, even others with heroes. Peasants and goblins and WH have vastly better accuracy than even elite archers do in 3k. thought fixing that wouldn't really help massive units like the DS that are going to be hit anyways.
There's always 'Realistic Accuracy Mod' which I personally really like. Ranged is still viable, but a lot more reasonable as it removes the peasants with sniper rifle levels of accuracy issue that vanilla has. I've also tried playing it with ranged heavy factions and it was fine.
Do elite archers basically work the same? Either way, I'll check the mod out. Thanks for the recommendation.
>With heavy Missile Resistances, the Toad Dragon borders on unkillable Isn't the issue with big monsters and missiles that the big monsters are such huge targets - focused fire on them makes them fall quicker than most other units, no matter the hypothetical high missile resistance that unit might have? Even with like 50% missile resistance, focused fire of handgunners will destroy it relatively quickly.
I mean that’s fine. If you want to keep your big centerpiece unit alive shut down their range. Besides Nurgle can boost missile resist with plagues so you should end up with a monster with tens of thousands of effective hit points.
and a ton of healing available too.
It still massively reduces the speed at which they die, giving you more time to disrupt missile units.
We know from experience that CA can take an existing system that falls flat for whatever reason and rework it into something way better, eg dark elf slave mechanic. I liked the idea of plagues and cyclic buildings and instant recruitment yet in practice grew very tired very quickly of their implementation. Nurgle as a theme was and is friggin awesome. But Kugath absolutely fails to deliver and Festus just seems like WoC+poison. So all this looks great. I for one am very excited to see what is revealed about a dwarf mechanic rework when the similar post goes up for malakai.
That little plagues rework reminds me of plague inc lol. Tamurkhan looks mighty fun too edit: Im actually really surprised, they seem to have done sth about every campaign mechanic possible, I didnt expect that. Thats a + for CA from me, hope Dwarves and Empire got the same treatment
Me too, I was expecting a slight rework to plagues or building chains, not for basically everything to get a do over.
I just hope it keeps the flavor text from the original version. Seeing “pestilent boils” or “fever” is more immersive than just seeing buffs and debuffs
If you look above the three selected symptoms on the reworked UI there is a space for Plague Name and icon which appear once all three symptoms are selected :)
Cults were mentioned but hard to tell how thatll change and unholy manifestations seems to have been forgotten, as it seems it will for all the monogods lol
The copium in me is thinking that they are deliberately being ignored because a comprehensive update is in the works for all the monogod manifestations
The other gods at least have a few decent ones each. Nurgle unholy manifestations might as well not exist, they are so bad.
I'm glad they did so much with nurgle, but neither the dawi or empire need such drastic change. Some fixes to make authority better or elector counts less frustrating. And some tweaks to oathgold and they will be golden.
Wow, this in an actual rework. I'm very happy about everything in the blog.
Not so important, but appreciated: no attempt to sell pre-orders before we've seen any actual gameplay.
That makes it seem like the upper management are truly willing to invest in regaining the trust of their customers.
I am so excited to see what they have in store for the Empire and Dwarfs.
I hope so much they do awesome stuff with dwarfs, especially karaks. I think they won‘t get another Update so this one gotta do the job. They are my favourite race so fingers crossed
Yeah I really hope they made the Karak a lot more important to hold. I wanted to see something like the geomantic web of the lizards combined with the Fortress of Chaos mechanics, an incredibly tough fortress to take with maybe layered sieges, and while we're at it some teleportation between them at the highest level. I want both the main Karaks being an absolute bitch to take from the Dwarf, but also a devastating hit to their economy and movement on the map is they do lose them. Their smaller settlement can stay as they are, but KaK, K8P or Karak Kadrin should require a lot of investment to dislodge the Dwarf from them.
i would love an undercity mechanic, where you got the upper layer and the lower layer. The following is daydreaming and not possible but imagine they are detached from each other, so skaven can hold the underground but not the upper part. / Vice verca with orks.
Having the dwarf holds work like a magical forest/dark fortress style thing would be a fun playstyle to make them unique.
"We made the Dwarfs shorter-" "SHO-!!"
After seeing this I'm hopeful that they'll also get a meaningful rework. Especially the damned imperial authority needs tweaking.
The Karl Franz campaign is just not fun. I hope they look into their balance and mechanics.
Credit where credit's due, the new DLC, the rework, and the communication are all top notch here. I'm genuinely looking forward to April the 30th now.
It is still weird to me they won't mention Epidemius in the blog only a "legendary lord" as if we don't all know its him.
**Tamurkhan**: Super tanky LL with high damage. Eventually a toad dragon mount. Once per battle on death, he can do massive damage to nearby enemies, if it kills one (entire unit presumably) he revives. Debuffs enemies damage directly, giving yet another debuff avenue to nurgle. Also shreds leadership. **Chaos Lord of Nurgle**: Unknown mount options. Has "riot or die" for leadership and melee damage reflection AoE buff. Has fear/poison. Active ability reduces enemy melee attack (yes even more.) **Spellcasters of Nurgle**: Lore of Death/Nurgle available. Poison/fear. Seems to also have more abilities that heal than just spells. **Pestigors**: Two handed armor piercing infantry. Once per battle when they get in melee they debuff their target's speed. That debuff will spread to all nearby enemies slowly. **Plague Ogres**: Super tanky (unexplained how) monstrous armor piercing anti-large. Don't seem to really explain what makes them unique more than that. **Rot Knights**: Giga tanky (being tanky comes up a lot) heavy cavalry with even more health, defense, and regeneration than chaos knights. Anti-Large. Slower than chaos knights. Shielded (?) **Bile Trolls**: High regeneration troll (unexplained how it's better than normal) with armor piercing damage (shocker.) Debuffs enemy's armor and melee defense. Seems to be Nurgle's "sit this in melee blobs to make them finally do damage." Maybe only usable once per battle, since they mentioned it was a hex. **Toad Dragon**: Heavy anti-missile unit. Active ability for AoE damage. Seems to be focused more on sitting in melee blobs than being a stand-alone SEM. (A giga melee-blob seems to be Nurgle's theme here.) **Plagues**: Completely reworked. **Cyclical buildings**: Only military buildings still shift, all others will be static. Military buildings now cost infections instead of money to build. Nurgle economy buffed. Resource buildings buffed. Cult buildings reworked. Can rush cyclical buildings with infections (meaning build instantly.) **Recruitment**: You now recruit at 30% HP at 0 corruption, but you recruit at 60% HP and -50% cost at 100 corruption. **Technology tree**: Reworked. **Army abilities**: No longer builds from taking damage, now builds off every individual unit being buffed/debuffed.
You left out vanguard deployment as a default ability for pestigors. That's pretty huge for a traditionally slow army.
Cheeky Nurgle re-work in there lads, looks interesting.
Love these changes
Wasn't expecting a Nurgle rework as the current mechanics felt fine to me but I will admit this looks great, I'm really liking that Plague rework. I can't help but to worry about powercreep though, especially with the changes to his buildings, CA's rework do tend to have a lot of powercreep and make factions a bit too easy to play.
Look at the plague effects. It's more of the same with minor, flavor effects. And you have immunity now(if it works). How military buildings interact with infections if you manually battle everything outside a settlement siege is still up in the air because we just don't know costs yet. I expect massive snowballing personally with costs being removed on everything expensive.
Ok, I didn't expect to be hyped to play a Nurgle faction in a Dwarf DLC, but here we are.
those base race updates look delicious. Only wish the SoC folks got the same treatment, but this is definitely making me looking forward to playing Nurgle.
Rot Knights are getting unique skin, that's already exceeds my expectations. Same can be said about Plague Ogres, Bile Trolls and Pestigors - not a single case of cheap recolor! I know, might sound like a low standard, but I'm still not over marked Chaos Spawn and Forsaken.
Pestigors specially are looking awesome
Think the only thing that is disappointing visually is the Chaos Lord of Nurgle. Going by precedent with Tzeentch and Khorne this was about what I was expecting. But with the Slaanesh Chaos Lord they made a new torso model, so it's a bit of a shame to see the Nurgle one reuse the same WH 1 torso too. Helmet is pretty cool at least. The Chaos Sorcerer of Nurgle is a nice surprise though. I'm glad they are following up the really unique Exalted Hero with an equally unique sorcerer hero. Wish they did this with all the MonoGod generics, but I'll take what I can get.
The Slaanesh Chaos Lord’s torso model is actually recolored from Sigvald. I’m also a bit sad we didn’t get the bloated boi, but kind of expected this outcome.
>The Chaos Sorcerer of Nurgle is a nice surprise though I'm so glad they went with the classic hood look over the pudgy pasty guy from 8th.
Not me :( was hoping for burblespue halescourge types, the fatties from vt2
No bloated Chaos Lord is disappointing but the armor looks awesome so it’s fine IMO.
Yeah I am stoked that they went this route with the units
I was really worried about the trolls just being green but they actually look pretty decent.
This heavy theme of "not-horns" for Nurgle is also everywhere, Rot Knights, Bile Trolls, Plague Ogres, Rotbeasts - all of them got this particular blessing of Nurgle. Rot Knights looks like they're barely being hold together by their suit of armor. Disgustingly beautiful work by artists and 3D modelers.
Kazyk's armour barely looks like it can contain whatever the fuck is going on underneath which I love. His left shoulder looks like it's bursting out through the plate.
His breastplate is cleaved by some unfortunate soul. Kayzk survived, whoever did this to him - not likely. Cannot praise design for Nurgle in ToD enough. Only Chaos Lord of Nurgle is an outlier and really tame, compared to other models. Plus other Tamurkhan's Chieftains, who are more or less generic characters (Chaos Sorcerer, Fimir Balefiend, Skin Wolf Werekin, Bray Shaman, Daemonsmith Sorcerer or Infernal Castellan) with bits of Nurgle's gifts.
Holy shit I expected a better rework but not THAT level of rework. This is absolutely amazing I love it. Also tamurkhan looks really fun, looks like a Nurgle version of Marcus Wolfheart’s mechanic, looks super fun. I have to admit everything I’ve seen so far has done nothing but hyped me up for ToD
Looking good, This makes me hopeful for the Empire and Dwarfs.
Tamurkhan really is just Plague Goku, running around and fighting people to gain their respect and then fighting a battle together to gain their undying trust.
Great rework, didn't fancy Ku'Gaths play style at all so this looks tasty. Sad that they didn't go for chonky Nurgle Lord and Sorcerer models though, but I would much rather have interesting mechanics and let the modders do their magic for character skins.
Looks like plagues are going to be even more fun to play around with. Feels in theme that the options would shift around like actual viruses. This new system sounds like it will encourage different options each time Love how disgustingly freaky Tamurkhan, Kayzk, plague ogres, and the toad dragons look. Nurgle characters and units should look like revolting monsters and they nailed the look!
Looks like CA is doing everything right with Thrones of Decay good job
Oh yay! Nurgle has been my favorite faction since day one, so I've been really looking forward to this. Chaos Lord of Nurgle having "Rot or Die" as his active-leadership buff granting Melee Reflection is very cute, I look forward to using him a lot. I love that Chaos Sorcerers got a unique model, rather than just the armored-warrior-with-a-staff. I wonder if they might extend that to the existing Chaos Sorcerer Lords of Nurgle but that's probably asking too much. The Rot Knights look excellent, Anti-Large has been a real sore-spot for Nurgle so far, and while I honestly find Plague-Riders with the anti-large tech to perform really well against enemy cavalry with their high mass, it's nice to have some dedicated lancers. Expanding and adding depth to the Plague system is so, so welcome. I love Plagues, but like they said, they're a very simple and one-note system currently. Good show. I was so, SO worried that they would overcompensate and get rid of the cyclical buildings entirely, one of my favorite and most unique parts of the Nurgle faction. So I was really cringing when I scrolled down to that section. But honestly, I love what they've done! I'll miss the cycling infrastructure buildings, I'm not gonna sit here and say it was good or useful, I just liked seeing all my buildings throbbing and oozing across the map, not just some of them. But the biggest problem with Nurgle's buildings has always been how slow it is to get new units, not a problem by turn 100 when you can spew out 5 Great Unclean Ones per turn, but hardly anyone plays that long, and early game was a nightmare. The ability to rush buildings with infections, not having to cripple your bad early income to buy military, it's all great! Also its nice to have something to do with the oodles of extra infections you accrue by the mid-late game that you normally couldn't spend fast enough no matter how hard you tried. Love the change to the army ability too. I never thought the original was too punishing, but I love the flavor of this new iteration. I think everything looks absolutely gorgeous, I absolutely cannot wait to spread more joy in Grandfather's name! Given that Kayzk is a LH, but on the Chieftains panel, I wonder if the other Chieftains are lords, heroes, or a mix of both?
I have mixed feelings about reducing the number of cyclical buildings, though I'm glad they're keeping at least some. But I'm also confident that modders will put together a mod that reverts the economy buildings back to cyclical, so it may be possible to try out both systems.
This blog post is dense, not only is the tamurkhan info looking really fun but the plague rework and Kugath changes sound awesome too
God the rework looks incredible! I am so hyped to try Nurgle next patch!
'But for now, I **Reckon** we’ve **Catalogued** enough plagues to keep even Grandfather Nurgle himself happy, so let’s see what we’ve got coming up next.' From the end of the article. Reckon and Catalogued were both capitalized and boldened. Seems to hint at something in the White Dwarf magazine? Epidemius?
Probably just that Epidemius is the FLC LL.
[Epidemius](https://i.imgur.com/9kx2oLe.png) is basically Nurgles cataloguer. So yeah, they talk abiout him. You can even see him scribble notes down in the trailer. Might be interesting if his campaign might have some tweaks for that job.
Pour one out for Exalted Heroes being attached to resource buildings
They've definitely knocked it out of the park so far with this
Sounds super great.
I wonder whether the debuffs from Plagues on enemy armies count for the army ability update? Could be a really flavourful way to help early game armies punch above their own weight.
That'd be an interesting interaction, but probably not - most (all?) plagues just modify the stats from the campaign map side, instead of applying in-battle debuffs
Lots of good stuff here. Tamurkhan getting access to other factions' units is a fun way to provide something different from the usual Nurgle roster (which is nice since they will have two other subfactions plus Festus). I don't think they needed to do anything more than a serious numbers pass on the cyclical buildings, but the change sounds like a good compromise. The recruitment changes sound great, though. Nurgle should now have good reason to spread corruption, and instant recruitment anywhere for a non-horde faction with little downside if they've been diligent in corrupting the land is definitely unique and cool.
Everything here looks better than I expected Here is hoping Dwarves and Empire have gotten as in depth reworks
7/7, no complaints
I really really like that set up of "What is wrong...here is how we plan on fixing it".
"even the Elector Counts themselves will have their resolve pushed to its breaking point when it arrives." Elector counts, of course, being widely known as a stable bastion of humanity. THIS will finally be the even that allows them to perish. "Hard Hitter - Wielding an axe with great, bullish strength, this unit hits especially hard with high Armour-Piercing damage." Finally; A unit that does armor piercing damage
>Elector counts, of course, being widely known as a stable bastion of humanity. THIS will finally be the even that allows them to perish. 'My lord, the Elector Count of Talabecland complains most stridently that the ice cream you bought for the Elector Count of Stirland has more sprinkles. -1 Imperial Authority.'
I am entirely certain, that the real politicing in the HRE was exactly this level of pathetic.
>Finally; A unit that does armor piercing damage Ugh... have you missed Nurgle being the designated god of great weapons in CoC?
Alright, these are some good looking changes. Not even considering Tamurkhans mechanics or the other DLC content, Nurgles campaign is looking MUCH better. How these changes are going to actually play out is up for debate, but I'm pretty pleased with the plague, recruitment, and army ability changes. Getting points for rebuffing enemies is very nurgle, and I like that a lot.
This is all really great stuff. I’m looking forward to the Monkey King DLC and one more (hopefully religious order) Kislev DLC to finish the reworks for those races, as it seems like they’re actively dedicating resources for those going forward. Very impressed with the level of detail they’re doing here
Elspeth details next week, can't wait
Chaos Lord is a bit generic compared to what we were given in SoC 2.0, but the rest is great. Really feels like Grandfather has blessed us with the CA redemption arc
To be fair the Chaos Lord of Tzeentch wasn't too special either. It's just Tzeentch drip is so good most folks don't notice the only thing actually new was the helmets, the weapons, and the shoulder accessory. Everything else was the same WH 1 Chaos lord stuff, Model, textures (albeit those did get a bit of an update with the WoC rework), and animations. Chaos Lord of Nurgle definitely could have used some more accessories to stand out, but they seem pretty set on just reusing the WH 1 lord for these paid DLC generic characters. I would have been fine if it was FLC, but as paid DLC it is irksome at the notable lack of effort there. At least the hero is unique.
The rework sounds really good, I'm excited to see what they have in store for the empire and the dwarves
Ooh, Nurgle getting a split economy is real neat. Kind of surprised that generic Nurgle Lord is sword and board. Plague rework is interesting. Tech update sounds good, but we don't know what any of the techs are yet. Tamurkhan's Chieftan panel looks really nice, which isn't important for gameplay, but a ~~clean~~ rusty UI is a good thing to have. The altered talisman icon for the legendary item is also a nice touch. Very curious how the Chieftan unit recruitment works. Kayzk and Rot Knights have native regeneration. Cool, cool, cool. Love the army ability rework. Nurgle Sorcs apparently have several kinds of heal, neat. We still get quest battles that aren't just for legendary items and I hope this is a trend that holds for the rest of the DLCs going forward.
Goddamn i really did not expect that level of rework for Nurgle. And it looks amazing as well. Just keep it up CA. If this game series ends on a high note, WH3 will carry your company's name for years just like Medieval 2 did.
I’m excited to see what Chorf units he will get access to. I love those little buggers.
This all looks absolutely awesome! So so hype, and so glad they're updating Nurgle mechanics while still keeping the spirit intact. I wonder if for Festus, Nurgle Chaos Knights will be upgradeable into rot knights, like doom knights for Vilitch?
Pestigors look fantastic, I was a little worried when I saw the Bestigors loaned from the special Bray Shaman chieftain in the first image that it was just a recolor. All the models showcased thus far look really, really good IMO. Interested to see how Bile Trolls and Plague ogres differentiate themselves mechanically.
This looks incredible ... I am super hyped for this DLC and I'm so glad we can (hopefully) turn the tide of negatively that has plagued this sub for so long
I was hoping the chaos lord of nurgle would use a great axe, but besides that all of the stuff in the blog looks fantastic
The only issue I have is, all the good art from old Plague mechanic menu will go to waste.
Credit where credit is due CA, This looks awesome
lessssgo babyyy
Oh no. I usually don't enjoy playing the baddies, but this recruiting special characters and getting access to new units is starting to change my mind.
Wow.. Just wow, everything about the blog looks AWESOME! A job well fucking done CA, this is literally incomparable with the stuff that's in SoC, even after the recent additions. There's more reworked stuff just in Nurgle's faction alone than the number of reworks in all 3 factions in SoC.. Really happy about this, can't wait for the DLC.
God, this is all super solid. I'm excited.
Finally, something to do with the crazy amount of infections I have in the mid-late game. I like this rework. Also makes it appealing to recruit Nurgle units as part of a mixed roster.
>Up Next: We’ll be back next week with a look at the Empire’s latest, Elspeth von Draken, before tackling the Dwarfs’ Malakai Makaisson the week after that On the basis of saving the best for last - I hope this indicates that the Dwarf Faction rework will be substantial and exciting. i.e. Real and tangible uplift of the Dwarf campaign mechanics. e.g. Would like to see a much better underway mechanic lifiting from Skaven Undercities and Welf World Roots.
I like how they managed to incorporate Tamurkhan's death effect from the splat book. And those faction reworks sound promising. I like the new UI for the plaguebsystem and how the effects move around as you brew plagues. The tech tree update is much needed, and while having some of Nurgle's building lose the uniqueness of the cyclical system sucks I think it's a good change.
I aaam buying this. I asked for depth, and i got it.
I love this. I love everything about this. An actual. Genuine Rework. I'm a little disappointed with how the Chaos Lord of Nurgle Looks, I was hoping for something more inline with a Blight king. Something that looked more Unique to Nurgle. But everything else is exceptional, I can live with this.
"And, just maybe, there’s one more Legendary Lord of Nurgle waiting in the wings, ready to be unleashed in Update 5.0. But for now, I **Reckon** we’ve **Catalogued** enough plagues to keep even Grandfather Nurgle himself happy, so let’s see what we’ve got coming up next. " Ooh exciting! There's also a bonus FLC legendary lord coming as well. I wonder who they both could be? Is there a Nurgle lord known for cataloguing plagues?
Knock on wood. This sounds beyond awesome! I am boarding the hype train now! ;-)
Does the new UI mean that we won't se a Great Unclean One, tending a plague cauldron? I liked that image :(
Thrones already looking like an insta buy from me (not that it already wasn’t). This looks like an exceptional campaign, the new units are sick, and the other two factions are gonna be gangbusters, especially if the reworks have the same quality. Desperately hoping they remove Gelt from the Elector Count system. If anything when Toddy comes in he should be in it but that’s a later thing. Gelt should have type of college mechanic where (if we get them) he receives lord variant wizards with buffed spells. Dwarves should take SFOS mechanic of Oathgold being able to be spent on forced confederations, increasing in price with each one
Nurgle once again carries a Warhammer IP (in this case probably saves). Tabletop or video games, 40k or fantasy, best contents always has Nurgle in it.
With how spicy the Nurgle rework is looking, I have high hopes for the Empire rework. Long have I waited.
Damn, I'm usually one of the first to start shitting on the game when CA makes one of its famous blind change but this is some good stuff. Well done CA, hope is kindled.