Total War: Warhammer 2 – Rakarth Is Here, Unleash The Beast

Get ready to go Beast Mode with the latest new free legendary lord, available now for Total War: Warhammer 2. Come meet Rakarth the Beastmaster.

A big new update has dropped for Total War: Warhammer 2 that introduces the beastly new legendary lord Rakarth, but it also provides some major updates for Dark Elves, Skaven, and more. See what units got buffed, nerfed, or rebalanced below!

via Creative Assembly

The first big change is to the Forge of Daith, which now gives you much better choice of what you can forge, giving you agency over what items they can Unlock/Upgrade/Reforge and in what order.

Next are major Dark Elf Updates:

DEATH NIGHT EFFECTS:

• Level 1:
  • +2 Chaos Corruption (all provinces)
  • -4 public order (all provinces)
  • Starting Vigour for Crone Hellebron: Winded
  • Active Blood Voyages will take severe attrition damage from desertion
• Level 2
  • -2 public order (all provinces)
  • Active Blood Voyages will take moderate attrition damage from desertion
• Level 3
  • +5% Physical Resistance for Crone Hellebron, Witch Elves, Sisters of Slaughter, Death Hags, Khainite Assassins, and Har Ganeth Executioners
  • -25% vigour loss reduction for Crone Hellebron, Witch Elves, Sisters of Slaughter, Death Hags, Khainite Assassins, and Har Ganeth Executioners
  • +2 Public Order (all provinces)
  • +5 leadership (all armies)
  • Active Blood Voyages will take light attrition damage from desertion
• Level 4
  • +10% Physical Resistance for Crone Hellebron, Witch Elves, Sisters of Slaughter, Death Hags, Khainite Assassins, and Har Ganeth Executioners
  • -50% vigour loss reduction for Crone Hellebron, Witch Elves, Sisters of Slaughter, Death Hags, Khainite Assassins, and Har Ganeth Executioners
  • On turn start, chance for Lords to gain +1 loyalty
  • +4 Public Order (all provinces)
  • +10 leadership (all armies)
  • Active Blood Voyages will take no attrition damage from desertion
• Level 5
  • +20% Physical Resistance for Crone Hellebron, Witch Elves, Sisters of Slaughter, Death Hags, Khainite Assassins, and Har Ganeth Executioners
  • Perfect Vigour for Crone Hellebron, Witch Elves, Sisters of Slaughter, Death Hags, Khainite Assassins, and Har Ganeth Executioners
  • On turn start, chance for Lords to gain +2 loyalty
  • +6 Public Order (all provinces)
  • +10 leadership (all armies)
  • All your armies, and those of the Blood Voyage, will replenish slowly even in enemy territory.
• All of these effects are also shared with the Blood Voyage

BLOOD VOYAGE

• Now has greatly increased movement range
• No longer Unbreakable, but instead receives force-wide Perfect Vigour and additional benefits depending upon Hellebron’s current Death Night level.
• No longer unable to replenish

SKILLS

• Greatest Bride of Khaine (innate)
  • Now grants +10% Weapon Strength to Witch Elves, Sisters of Slaughter, and Har Ganeth Executioners
• Champion of Khaine
  • Now grants +10% Missile Resistance to Witch Elves and Har Ganeth Executioners

LOKHIR FELLHEART

New Unique Agent – The Blessed Dread

• Lokhir’s starting Black Ark is now a bespoke special agent type
  • It has the following special benefits:
    • Unique innate trait for its Admiral, Kraken’s Claw, which provides increased base Black Ark growth
    • Unique two-level landmark building, Tower of the Blessed Dread, which grants the Blessed Dread increased movement and additional bonuses to nearby armies
  • The variant model previously applied to all Black Arks in Lokhir’s faction will now just be applied to this one. As before, the Ark’s appearance will change as its main building tree is upgraded.

RITES UPDATE

• The Rite of Anath Raema has been re-worked.
  • Now grants the following for 5 turns:
    • +50% sacking income
    • +50% razing income
    • +10 Black Ark Growth
    • +20% movement range
  • Most of the previous effects of this Rite have been incorporated into Lokhir’s personal skill tree

SKILLS

• Krakenlord (Innate Trait):
  • New effect: Causes Fear for Corsairs units (Lord’s Army)
  • New effect: Immunity to Deep Sea, Storm and Reef attrition (Lord’s army)
• Bound By Blood:
  • New effect: +5 public order (local province)
  • New effect: +5 to favoured corruption  (local province)
  • Effect removed: +1 lord recruit rank (all provinces)
• Corsair Noble:
  • New Effect: +100% armour-piercing missile damage for Corsairs (Lord’s Army)
• Ahead of the Tide
  • New effect: Vanguard Deployment for Corsairs (Lord’s Army)
  • New effect: Stalk for Corsairs (Lord’s Army)
• Master of the Blessed Dread:
  • New effect: +1 uses for Black Ark bombardment abilities (Lord’s Army)
• Patriarch of the Fellhearts
  • Lord Recruit Rank bonus increased from +3 to +5
  • New effect: -75% Rite Cost for Sacrifice to Anath Raema and Sacrifice to Mathlann
  • New effect: +8 Melee Attack when fighting at sea (Lord’s Army)

MORATHI

• Dark Manipulator (Innate Trait): now provides -50% cost and -5 cooldown to Sacrifice to Hekarti

SUPREME SORCERESSES

• New Skill available at level 10: Student of the Dark Tower
  • -50% vigour loss reduction (self)
  • -10% cooldown to all spells (self)
  • Bound Spell: Arnzipal’s Black Horror
• Supreme Sorceresses now benefit from any recruit rank or experience bonuses granted to regular Sorceresses, including those from the Sacrifice to Hekarti

HIGH BEASTMASTERS

• ‘Whiplash’ ability now available without skill point investment in campaign. Old ‘Whiplash’ ability replaced with ‘Kindle the Fury’

OTHER

• Corsair and Kharybdiss units now have innate immunity to Deep Sea and Reef attrition
• All buildings in the Cult of Khaine and Hired Killers chains have had their main settlement level requirement reduced by one level. Their costs and effects have been adjusted accordingly
• The cooldown for Black Ark bombardment army abilities will no longer increase in duration as the ability is upgraded
• Reduced movement cost for entering raiding stance from 50% to 25% for all Dark Elf factions
• Tweak the Black Ark map to improve line of sight and pathfinding
• Technology changes:
  • ‘Driven by Vengeance’ technology now grants +4 Melee Attack to Bleakswords, Dreadspears, and Black Ark Corsairs
  • ‘Naval Training’ technology now grants +4 Melee Attack to all forces when fighting at sea

BUG FIXES

• Sacrifice to Hekarti now affects Sorceresses of all Lores
• Black Arks no longer have the immortality skill in their tree – they already received this by default, so spending a point on the skill had no additional effect.
• Black Ark defensive forces will now spawn correctly on the high ground when the Black Ark is attacked.
  • There may be some edge cases where attacking a non-Black Ark force with a Black Ark will result in incorrect spawn positions. We will continue to investigate this issue further.

The Skaven have also seen some big changes as well:

• Stalk Stance now reduces Ambush Success Chance by 15%
  • This does not affect the Beastman equivalent
• Various stances will now affect Ambush Defence Chance
  • Forced March: -25%
  • Besieging: +100%
  • Underway/Worldroots/Beastpaths: +25%
  • Encampment Stance: +75%.

• Clan Warriors:
  • Now provides Untainted instead of Skaven Corruption
• Assassins chain:
  • Now provides Untainted instead of Skaven Corruption
• Order chain:
  • Now provides Untainted instead of Skaven Corruption
• Plagues chain
  • Local Skaven corruption reduced from 2/4/6 to 2/3/4
  • Adjacent regions Skaven corruption reduced from 1/2/4 to 1/1/2
• The Shattered Tower (Skavenblight landmark)
  • Reduced factionwide adjacent regions Skaven corruption effect from 6 to 3
• Efficient Planning provincial edict:
  • Public Order effect increased from 2 to 3
  • Untainted effect increased from 1 to 2

MENACE BELOW

• Skaven forces will no longer receive an undocumented ‘bonus’ charge of Menace Below from Skaven Corruption or similar effects, such as Queek’s Lord trait
  • Queek’s Lord Effect has been updated to compensate
• Purchasing the first level of Menace Below in the pre-battle screen will now always grant the stated number of additional charges
  • Previously, if another effect granting Menace Below charges was active then the first level of the ability would have no effect
• Fixed an issue where the ‘Warrens’ undercity chain would not grant additional charges if no other Menace Below-granting effects were present

OTHER

• Minor Skaven factions will no longer perform the Scheme of DOOOOM! or the Pestilent Scheme
• AI Skaven factions are less likely to take skills that boost Ambush Success chance
• Removed hidden modifiers to Plague duration and infectivity that only existed when playing on Hard difficulty
• Clan Pestilens units will no longer take attrition damage from Skaven plagues (all Skaven factions)
• Clan Pestilens units will now receive vigour loss reduction when afflicted by Plagues (Clan Pestilens only)
• Reduced baseline number of charges of the Skaven Warpbomb army ability to 1. Additional charges can be gained by upgrading the garrison building in major settlements
• Skaven will now use a walled settlement map when defending Empire Forts and High Elven gates
  • We will be investigating allowing them access to fort-specific maps in a future update

And that’s just the start. For a full list of all changes, click below.

Check out the latest patch

Summon the elector-counts once more

Author: J.R. Zambrano

Bell of Lost Souls Staff Writer and DM, J.R. covers RPGs of all stripes and on occasion eats sandwiches. You can ask him about either at [email protected]