Patch 6.2 is a patch released for Total War: Warhammer III on 17 June 2025. The previous patch was Patch 6.1. A hotfix for this update, Hotfix 6.2.1, released on 24 June 2025.
Introduction[]
Hey folks!
Patch 6.2 arrives in your download queues tomorrow, June 17th, and this one's packed with fresh new content for Total War: WARHAMMER III. In this update, we’re bringing key changes to Magic Items, we’re integrating the Campaign AI improvements that we trialled in our Proving Grounds these past few months, and we’re introducing a handful of new Magic Items as well as two new units: the Hobgoblin Bolt Thrower and the Blood Knights. In case you missed it, you can find a detailed deep dive on the Magic Items changes, and the fresh new content in last week's 6.2 Dev Blog.
This patch also introduces a significant tech improvement, enhancing our compression standards to enable fast decompression speeds for most files within the game packages, helping to reduce the overall size of the game on your hard disks and bringing load time improvements in the process - voodoo! To enable this change, this patch will seem unusually large, and is estimated to clock in at 55GB in your downloads, but will ironically reduce your overall install size once installed. There are also plenty of additional bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements detailed below.
Want to know more? Dig into the complete Patch Notes below, and look forward to the release of Patch 6.2 tomorrow morning, around 11 a.m BST.
See you on the battlefields!
- Adam Freeman // Head of Community
Changes not in the patch notes[]
- The Lightning Strike skill had two new effects added [TBD]
- The seats in the Tower of Zharr which grant ancillaries now only grant one every 6 turns, instead of every 3 turns.
MAGIC ITEM REWORK[]
The Magic Item system has undergone a major overhaul, aiming to unify item design, balance power levels, and reduce inventory clutter. In total some 600+ ancillaries (all items in common, uncommon and rare) have had their effects and rarity adjusted to match our new balancing paradigm.
Core Changes[]
- New Power Budget System: All items now follow a uniqueness/cost matrix to ensure rarity matches item strength.
- Balanced Rarity Tiers:
- Clearer power differences between common, uncommon, and rare items.
- Rebalanced rarity thresholds (e.g., commons now 35–50, uncommons start at 80).
- Expanded Item Effects: Added brand-new effects (e.g., generic barrier, healing cap) for more variety.
- “Status Quo" Approach: Strong items now promoted to match power tier instead of being nerfed.
Smarter Item Management[]
- Fewer but more impactful items to reduce UI overload.
- Items tailored to your current collection and playstyle for better variety.
- Item Fusing Update:
- Fused items now match category (e.g., armours fuse into armour).
- Rare → Unique fusions now possible (small success chance, risk of failure).
What we haven't done[]
- Character unique item updates
- These follow a somewhat different paradigm and have a much broader pool of effects than standard ancillaries.
- We're likely to need to make adjustments here, as some weaker uniques are likely going to struggle to match up to the new top end rares. But this will be on a more case-by-case basis going forward.
- Where possible, we'd like to focus these in on their fantasy and give them powerful thematic effects, reducing the current trend of a pile of good to have but not particularly thematically coherent stats.
- Banners
- These are planned to change, following the same paradigm as our approach to standard items in this patch, but couldn't quite make the cut-off for this release. Expect to see these in the near feature after some more fine tuning!
Banner Changes[]
- You can now equip multiple banners of the same type across characters.
New Unique Items[]
- Wyrmslayer Sword – Anti-large slayer weapon.
- Scintillating Shield – Reflects charges and magic.
- Accursed Armour – Strong defense with a curse.
- Briarsheath – Stealth-focused armour.
- The Fellblade – Upgraded to Unique tier; powerful but deadly.
- Eight Burning Books of Khorne – Risk/reward chain of ultra-rare magical books with major gameplay impact.
New Units[]
- Hobgoblin Bolt Thrower – Affordable ranged siege unit for Chaos Dwarfs.
- Blood Knights – Anti-infantry vampiric cavalry variant with high sustain.
DEV NOTE: The unit is called Blood Knights, not Blood Knights (Sword & Shield) as mistakenly written in last week’s dev blog. The old unit has been renamed to ‘Blood Knights (Lances)’ to align with our naming conventions.
COMPRESSION[]
Implemented and applied general compression with fast decompression speed for the majority of files in game packages:
- Game storage size reduced by 27%.
- Improved loading times when entering battles, with reductions ranging from 5% to 42%, depending on the battle.
- Improved loading times when entering the campaign, with an average speed improvement of 9%.
- Reorganised game packages to reduce and minimise patching time for future updates.
Can modders use compression too?
We’ve given the author of RPFM (Frodo) a heads up on how he can support the new compression method within RPFM. Compression using the Assembly Kit is available, though some files such as audio files & video files should not be compressed.
DEV NOTE: Please note that the download size of this patch is larger than usual - 55 GB (may slightly differ depending on the platform). This is due to the compression which reduces the overall game size by 27%, and the reorganization of packages aimed at faster and lighter patching for future patches and hotfixes.
CАMPAIGN AI CHANGES[]
Added two new customisation options:
- AI Strength & Threat Assessment - Default ON - When checked, campaign difficulty settings are overridden so that AI factions are always better at assessing threats based on strength and proximity of rivals, in addition to having generally increased hostility towards unknown factions. Enabling this setting is equivalent to the setup from CAI BETA 1.
- Minor Faction Potential - Default OFF - When checked, minor factions make better campaign decisions, increasing their tendency to survive longer and have a bigger impact on campaigns. Enabling this setting is equivalent to the setup from CAI BETA 2.
2D PORTHOLE UPDATE[]
As part of 6.2 we've gone through the process of regenerating 1200+ 2d portholes across the game!
Most of these were only generated during the initial implementation of units, and over time the game engine has changed significantly, going through rendering and lighting adjustments (some were generated in the bloom-y metal dark ages, and were quite shiny indeed). They were also generated in different eras of how we approach the generation process itself, how much anti-aliasing, what kind of environment lighting do we use?
All regular units (not characters, as those use a different pipeline) have now been regenerated with a unified look and quality level, featuring anti-aliasing and consistent environments.
To show it off: the original Blood Knights’ porthole is on the top and the updated version is on the bottom!
BUG FIXES[]
HIGHLIGHTS[]
- Abilities granted by effects for summoned units (Summoned Skink Priest, Krell, and Summoned Keeper of Secrets) are now properly enabled.
- Increased the Radii Ratio of units mounted on Steeds of Slaanesh (Seekers of Slaanesh, Heartseekers of Slaanesh, Hellstriders of Slaanesh, Hellstriders of Slaanesh (Hellscourges)) to slightly reduce their performance by having fewer of them fight in melee at the same time.
- Stopped effects that grant Snipe from also granting Slayer.
PERFORMANCE[]
- Fixed a potential crash upon opening a UI panel for the first time.
- Fixed a potential hardlock related to the scripted settlement tour in the Prologue Campaign.
- Added battle camera movement restrictions to prevent a potential hardlock during the unit positioning tutorial.
- Fixed a potential hardlock during the scripted skill tour guide.
- Fixed a potential softlock that could occur after teleporting the character and then declining a quest battle.
- Fixed a potential campaign crash caused by the presence of a Skaven war machine during a playthrough.
CAMPAIGN[]
GENERAL/GAMEPLAY[]
- Replaced the Vampire attrition immunity effects on Nagashizzar and the Crown of Sorcery for Azhag, as he already benefits from this as a faction effect.
- Azhag the Slaughterer’s trait, Slaughterer, now correctly grants Immunity to Psychology to his army.
- Added missing characters to the 'Tzeentch characters' category, so they are now affected by effects such as the Arrows of Destiny Gift of Chaos.
- The Chaos Lord of Tzeentch now unlocks Gate of Tzeentch from the boon Mortal Supremacy instead of Gate of Khorne.
- Grom’s trait now applies the Leadership effect only to Regular Goblins, matching the Physical Resistance effect.
- Bloodspeakers are now affected by Annihilator's Armour, as they also lead armies.
- Removed Siege Attacker from Daemon Slayer lords, as they’re not legendary characters and don’t have battering ram size axes!
- Malakai's Encamp stance now provides an Ambush Defence Chance.
- Karak Kadrin now starts with the correct treasury amount for its faction.
- ‘Pet the Female’ and ‘Feed the Male’ options now affect all Yin/Yang units rather than just a small selection.
- Norsca can now recruit the Norscan Warhounds (Poison) unit in campaign, rather than it being exclusive to custom battles.
- The Indisputable Champion boon for Chaos Lords of Tzeentch now correctly grants experience gain to Tzeentch units.
SKILLS[]
- Arkhan's skill, ‘Legions of Death’, now provides increased leadership at its second level.
- The skill ‘Bloodthirsty Charge’ now more accurately describes which units benefit from its effects.
- Resolved overlapping skills in Khargan the Crazed's skill tree.
- Added the ‘Plague Feeder’ skill to Khargan the Crazed’s skill tree.
- Added a Resistance effect to ‘Beastlord's Presence’ to mirror ‘Beastlord's Gaze’; Rakarth's later ability is now a true upgrade!
- The Daemon Prince now affects Beasts of Nurgle with the skill ‘Rancid Menagerie.’
- The Incarnate Elemental of Beasts is now affected by the Great Bray Shaman’s unique skills, ‘Bellows of the Discordant’ and ‘Hardened Pelts.’
TECHNOLOGY[]
- Cockatrices are now affected by ‘Gaze of the Dark Gods’ when playing as any Beastmen Lord.
- Empire Land Ships are now affected by the ‘Reinforced Armour Plating’ technology.
ANCILLARIES/ MAGIC ITEMS[]
- Mother Ostankya's faction, Daughters of the Forest, can now acquire the 'Priest of Taal' and 'Priest of Ursun' ancillaries.
- Stopped effects that grant Snipe from also granting Slayer.
- Warlock Engineers now have an arcane item slot.
- Sacred Incense now correctly provides missile resistance to friendly units within range.
BUILDINGS/SETTLEMENTS[]
- Nurgle outposts now provide garrison units where constructed.
- Added the Spirit Leech and Soulblight spells to the Amethyst Wizard that Elspeth can get from the ‘Amethyst College’ building.
- Pigbarter now functions correctly as a minor settlement in RoC campaigns.
- The Throne of Chaos landmark building is now available to the Daemons of Chaos.
- Added settlement effects to Konquata when occupied by Lizardmen as it previously only reduced corruption.
UI/UX[]
- The recruitment effects for the "Exotic Animal" building chain now correctly indicate where they apply.
- The Gorefeast skills for Taurox and Karanak now use the correct icon.
- The ‘Shroud of Darkness’ skill for Khainite Assassins no longer displays the Vanguard Deployment icon.
ENVIRONMENT[]
- Plagueridden, Cultists of Nurgle, and Plague Cultists now use the correct naval model when at sea.
BATTLE[]
GENERAL/GAMEPLAY/UNITS[]
- Minotaurs of Khorne & Minotaurs of Khorne (Great Weapons) now have Woodsman & Hide (forest).
- Alarielle the Radiant now has Martial Prowess when mounted on a Great Eagle, as it is not considered a monstrous mount.
- Mournhowl has been given the Strider attribute and his Weapon Strength has been adjusted to better align with that of a Werekin - after all, he is a Werekin… just not exactly. (He now has Bonus vs Infantry instead of Bonus vs Large.)
- The Mark of Slaanesh has been added to Caress, the Darkling Prince and the Mark of Tzeentch to Zarrivyk, Feathered-Prince.
- Cultist of Tzeentch on Warshrine now has the correct health value.
- Abilities granted by effects for summoned units (Summoned Skink Priest, Krell, and Summoned Keeper of Secrets) are now properly enabled.
- Fixed the Celestial General not having Fear when mounted on a Longma.
- The Druzhina can now fire while moving when mounted on a warhorse.
- Added Skirmish mode to the Druzhina on a warhose so he can fight... to run away.
- The Thundertusk and Amblepeak Greybacks now cause both Fear and Terror.
- Reduced the Melee Attack and Melee Defence of Seekers and Heartseekers of Slaanesh by 2.
- Reduced the Armour Piercing damage of Seekers of Slaanesh by 4 and increased their base Weapon Damage by 4.
- Increased the Radii Ratio of units mounted on Steeds of Slaanesh (Seekers of Slaanesh, Heartseekers of Slaanesh, Hellstriders of Slaanesh, Hellstriders of Slaanesh (Hellscourges)) to slightly reduce their performance by having fewer of them fight in melee at the same time.
- The Eshin Maneater now has the Ogre Charge attribute.
- Fixed a bug where single-entity units could stop fighting during duels.
- Grudge-Rakers for Master Engineers now match the range of the unit variant.
- Iksha's Triads now correctly gain the ‘Unspottable’ attribute when using their ability.
ENVIRONMENT/UNIT MODELS[]
- Fixed areas along the rivers on The Obsidian Path map where shallow water was too deep in some spots.
- Fixed an issue where Pestigors were noticeably taller than their counterparts aligned with other Chaos Gods.
- The Sisters of Twilight now have a defined primary uniform colour.
UI/UX[]
- Fixed some abilities that increase Winds of Magic (such as Wizardly Weapons) not displaying in the UI.
- Goblins (Spears) now have the green text indicating they are Anti-Large, as all spear infantry should.
MULTIPLAYER[]
- Blue Vipers, Dimned Sun, Skull Takerz & Top Knotz factions now have the WAAAGH army ability in Multiplayer battles.
- The Stonehorn (Harpoon Launcher) now shares the same unit cap as other Stonehorn variants.
Outro[]
We'd also like to say another big thank you to everyone who's provided us with their feedback and suggestions, as well as those who have helped to bring many of the improvements detailed above by reporting your bugs to us. As ever, if you run into any new issues after updating to 6.2 please be sure to report them over in our dedicated bug reporting sub-forum.
See you on the battlefields!
— The Total War Team
⚠ IMPORTANT[]
If you experience any issues after downloading the update, please take a moment to Verify the integrity of the game files first to ensure there were no issues when downloading. A step-by-step guide can be found in this article. If the issues persist, please visit our support site for additional troubleshooting steps and assistance.
🧱 MOD WARNING[]
Please note that user-generated mods may have compatibility issues with new game updates. If you are encountering performance or stability issues following a release, is recommended that you disable any mods you're running. If you continue to experience issues, please visit our support site for additional troubleshooting steps and assistance.