Total War: Warhammer 3 Patch 5.3 will bring Ogre reworks and a new Vampire Counts unit

Bloodsuckers overcome their fear of pointy sticks

Creative Assembly / Sega

Creative Assembly is gearing up for the release of Patch 5.3 for Total War: Warhammer 3, which is expected to arrive in the coming week, and has finally revealed some of the things players can expect from the update.

A quick and easy highlight is the free addition of another unit, this time for the Vampire Counts. It looks like the bloodsuckers have overcome their fear of pointy sticks, as they will gain access to a Grave Guard variant with halberds. This finally provides them with a tankier anti-large infantry option.

However, the crown jewels of Patch 5.3 are the reworks being executed with the update. One of them touches the Ogre Mercenaries and brings the following changes:

• Increased the Ogre mercenary unit cap per army to 3 from 1
• Ogre mercenary pools now replenish at a rate of 1 unit every 5 turns
• The quality of mercenary units available now depends on the tier of the Ogre camp
• More mercenary units are now available from Ogre camps, including: Ogre Bulls, Ogre Bulls (Dual Weapons), Maneaters (Pistols), Mournfang Cavalry, Ogre Giant

The upcoming DLC, which will feature content for the Ogre Kingdoms, will bring a dedicated system for Mercenary Contracts, so the current one has been renamed to Bounties alongside some changes:

• Changed the 10 turn generation into a rolling objective "Bounty" system: The feature was previously only available every 10 turns which wasn’t very interactive, instead it’s now made so that Bounties are more of an interest more consistently
• All objectives are now available continually, instead of only being able to select a single one: The gameplay for Bounties is now more opportunistic in nature and you don’t have to accept a single mission but instead can tackle any and all Bounties at your leisure

Creative Assembly is also working on a big balancing round for items that was set to come out with Patch 5.3, but the developer stated that internal feedback flagged some issues with it. This is why these changes won’t make their way into players’ hands with the next update. However, Patch 5.3 will still bring 18 new generic and six new unique ancillaries into the game.

Further tree-related changes to battle maps and yet another round of battle balance changes are planned for Patch 5.3 as well.