Our guide to Total War: Warhammer 3 DLC gives you the rundown on all the expansion content available for the definitive Warhammer fantasy strategy game, including the free Immortal Empires expansion, an epic game mode straddling the entire Warhammer world, and new race expansions
Total War: Warhammer 3 is one of the best Warhammer fantasy games and one of the best Total War games, truly an epic culmination to an ambitious series. If it’s anything like its predecessors it will build a huge library of DLC, each pack adding new factions, new units, and new legendary lords – all of which you’ll be able to find in this guide.
Creative Assembly published a DLC roadmap for Total War: Warhammer 3 on May 9 2023.
Total War: Warhammer 3 – Shadows of Change
Total War: Warhammer 3 – Shadows of Change will release on August 31. It adds new legendary Lords, heroes, and unique campaign mechanics for Tzeentch, Cathay, and Kislev. It will accompany patch 4.0 which includes a free Legendary Hero of Tzeentch, Aekold Helbrass, as well as updates for the three Total War: Warhammer 3 races that feature in the DLC.
Here’s what each faction gets in the Total War: Warhammer 3 – Shadows of Change DLC:
Tzeentch
The Changeling is a new Legendary Lord of Tzeentch who “doesn’t seek to conquer the map”, but is intent on fomenting schemes throughout the world. Those start with a ‘Minor Scheme’, like “building cults within enemy cities”, which grow in to “Grand Schemes”, like tricking characters into attacking each other. To win, you’ll need to execute an “Ultimate Scheme” that throws the world into ruin.
| Unit | Type | Abilities |
| The Blue Scribes | Legendary heroes | Flying spellcaster |
| Tzaangors | Infantry | Hit and run, gain power from spells cast nearby |
| Cockatrice | Flying monster | Acid and poison AOE attacks |
| Mutalith Vortex Beast | Monster | Magical attacks |
Grand Cathay
The new Grand Cathay Legendary Lord Yuan Bo is a “talented spymaster, powerful spellcaster, and ferocious warrior”. His campaign focuses on empowering the Wu Xing Compass to “strengthen different regions of Cathay”, and his control over “Matters of State” allows him to influence diplomacy, move armies through enemy territory, control unrest, and rush construction.
| Unit | Type | Abilities |
| Jade Lion | Monster | Recharges winds of magic mid-battle |
| Jet Lion | Monster | Buffs friendly spellcasters, makes enemy spellcasters miscast |
| Onyx crowmen | Flying infantry | Melee specialists |
| Celestial General | Lord | Melee specialist |
Kislev
Mother Ostankya is a new Kislev Legendary Lord who “harnesses nature’s wrath to create potent hexes and incantations”. Her campaign aims to “collect forbidden Hexes” by slaying their guardians, and will see her combine trinkets from defeated foes in her Witch’s Hut to “create powerful incantations”. If said hut doesn’t walk around on chicken legs, we riot.
| Unit | Type | Abilities |
| Hag witch | Legendary Hero | Chariot-mounted spellcaster |
| Elemental Incarnate of Beasts | Giant monster | Channels Lore of Beasts magic |
| The Things in the Woods | Warbeasts | Fast infantry killers, work best in forests |
| Akshina Rangers | Infantry | Skirmishers, work best in forests, can “hide in plain site” |
Total War: Warhammer 3 – Thrones of Decay
Also revealed May 9 2023, Total War: Warhammer 3 – Thrones of Decay will add Legendary Lords and new campaigns to Nurgle, the Emprie, and the Dwarfs, as well as a new Legendary Hero and ‘other perks’. At the same time, patch 5.0 will update the Nurgle, Empire, and Dwarf races, add an as-yet-unrevealed Legendary Hero for free, and ‘The Nemesis Crown’ legendary artefact.
Unrevealed Total War: Warhammer 3 DLC
Spring 2024 will bring both patch 6.0 and as-yet unrevealed Total War: Warhammer 3 DLC. According to Creative Assembly’s Steam announcement on May 9, this will “expand three of the game’s races, introduce new Legendary Lords, a new Legendary Hero, and game improvements galore”. Slaanesh or Khorne are sure to feature – or possibly both of them!
Total War: Warhammer 3 – Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs
Total War: Warhammer 3 – Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs released on April 13. The Chaos Dwarfs are a truly deep cut of Warhammer lore, an offshoot of the sturdy mountain-dwelling folk who worship the Chaos entity Hashut. Like the Dwarven kingdoms they’re smiths without equal – but they pour their talents into daemonically infused war machines, some of which you can see in the teaser trailer.
Creative Assembly’s blog post introducing the faction explains the core of the Chaos Dwarf experience. The Chaos Dwarf economy is underpinned by slave labour, acquired by defeating enemy armies in battle. Slaves then harvest the raw materials the Chaos Dwarfs need for their advanced structures and outlandish war engines.
The Chaos Dwarfs have access to military trade convoys – they’re similar to Grand Cathay’s Ivory road convoys, letting you dispatch a Lord with a wagon train full of money, labourers, or raw materials, to trade them with a distant settlement – assuming they arrive in one piece.
In battle, the Chaos Dwarfs enjoy unique units, like bull centaurs and bale taurus, K’daai flameborn fire elementals, the steam-engine like Iron Daemon traction engines and the huge Dreadquake Mortars and other artillery pieces they can haul, not to mention the blank-masked infantry of the Legions of Azgorrh.
The Chaos Dwarfs ultimate unit is a huge, daemon-possessed war engine that called a K’daai Destroyer. Although Games Workshop’s Specialist Design Studio invented the K’Daai Destroyer as part of the Monstrous Arcanum book, they never put a model into production.
Total War: Warhammer 3: Immortal Empires
Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires is a mega campaign mode that takes place across the entire Warhammer world, involving every single faction from all three Total War: Warhammer games. When this mode was first released you needed to own all three games to unlock it, but Creative Assembly has since made it available to everyone with a copy of Total War: Warhammer 3.
Note that this only gives you access to the play mode, not the races and Legendary Lords from previous games. Those will still show up as enemy factions for you to face, but if you want to play as the Skaven, High Elves, Orcs, Dwarves, or any of the other races that starred in an earlier game, you’ll need to buy that game or the respective DLC.
Total War: Warhammer 3 – Champions of Chaos
Total War: Warhammer 3 – Champions of Chaos adds legendary lords for each of the Chaos Gods. Khorne has the dark valkyrie Valkia the Bloody, Nurgle has the affable plague-brewing Festus the Leechlord, Tzeentch has the nefarious Vilitch the Curseling, and Slaanesh has Azazel Prince of Damnation.
Azazel is quite a deep lore cut – their last tabletop model was released during 5th edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle, about twenty years ago.
All these lords can be used in both Immortal Empires and the main Realm of Chaos campaign, but they don’t follow the main game’s Ursun storyline. Instead they have their own chaotic mechanics, which include elevating your units on the Path to Glory that sees them rise from lowly marauders into warriors and eventually Chaos chosen.
Total War: Warhammer 3 – Ogre Kingdoms
Total War: Warhammer 3 – Ogre Kingdoms is the game’s first race pack, adding the gluttonous ogres to the map to the east of the Mountains of Mourne.
The two Legendary Lords are Greesus Goldtooth, an inordinately obese and wealthy Ogre warlord pushed into battle on a cart laden with plunder, and Skrag the Slaughterer, greatest of the ‘Butcher’ priests who worship the Ogre’s hungry god ‘The Maw’.
Ogres are all about meat. They have plenty of it themselves, an army of huge bruisers that crash into enemy lines like cavalry. They’re also ravenously hungry. Killing enemies yields a tithe of meat that you can use to pay for your army’s upkeep, or send back to the Great Maw, a vast crevasse that is the physical manifestation of the Ogre’s ever-hungering god – which may reward their offerings with special bonuses.
Total War: Warhammer 3 – Blood for the Blood God III
Total War: Warhammer 3 – Blood for the Blood God III adds gorier gore effects to the game, like more blood spurts, dismemberments, and blood plastering combatants. This pack is free if you bought either of the previous Blood for the Blood God packs.
We have no problem with the “train set” model of DLC that the Total War: Warhammer series uses – if each individual component is a nice, self-contained addition to your setup, it doesn’t really matter how theoretically expensive it would be to collect everything. But this one really feels like it should be free. Still, if you want more gore, this is the DLC for you.
Total War: Warhammer 3 and DLC from earlier games
Any DLC you buy from any of the Total War: Warhammer games is available to use in the Total War: Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires campaign, even if you don’t own the base game that it came from, or even the faction DLC it was part of.
For example, the Beastmen were added as a playable faction in the Total War: Warhammer – Call of the Beastmen DLC, but you don’t need to own this pack if you want to play as the massive minotaur Taurox in the Immortal Empires campaign – just get Total War: Warhammer 2 – The Silence and the Fury.
Our guide to Total War Warhammer III factions and races has a handy table that tells you which DLC to get if you want to play as a particular Warhammer race. If you still need to get the skinny on the core game, check out our full Total War Warhammer 3 review. Or, if you fancy widening your strategic horizons from Warhammer, try one of the other gems in our guide to the very best grand strategy games on PC.