I’m pretty stoked for the Chaos Dwarf DLC that’s coming to Total War: Warhammer 3 on April 13, but that’s not the only thing to look forward to if you’re a hammer-head (a Warhammer nerd, that is, not a kind of shark). As Creative Assembly explains in the latest Total War blog, the Chaos Dwarfs will arrive alongside update 3.0 and a free add-on called Mirror of Madness.
Mirror of Madness contains a pair of game modes that will be added to the Battle menu. First is The Trials of Fate, which expands on Warhammer 3’s survival battles to make a mini-campaign in which you play a time-traveling daemon prince of Tzeentch. You’ll have to survive four battles from the history of Warhammer, then defeat Tzeentch’s faction leader Kairos Fateweaver.
It’s a kind of wave defense mode where you hold a capture point against endless enemies who get stronger the longer the fight goes on. You’ll get “unique spells and abilities” to help, and holding that capture point gives you forbidden knowledge that upgrades those spells and abilities, which include “cataclysmic powers and mighty vortexes to send your enemies ragdolling across the Realms in crazy physics-based chaos.” Scoring well in The Trials of Fate unlocks new Tzeentchian daemon parts you can bolt onto the DIY legendary lord you design when playing the Daemon Prince in either the Realm of Chaos or Immortal Empires campaign.
The second half of the Mirror of Madness is The Infinite Portal, which will sound familiar if you remember the skaven-themed Laboratory mode from Total War: Warhammer 2. It’s an experimental sandbox that lets you tweak settings and play one-off battles with resized lords and monsters, increased collision force and damage, more blood, less gravity, and other options that should make for extra chaotic clashes.
Like the Laboratory, the Mirror of Madness is a collaboration with Intel, and also like the Laboratory, which became a boss fight for your CPU if you pushed the sliders beyond a certain point, it’ll be a test of your rig’s abilities. As Creative Assembly warns, “should you crank up The Infinite Portal’s more intensive settings (such as entity scale or unit size) you may begin to notice some performance drop-off, depending on the power of your PC.”
Here are all the options you get access to in The Infinite Portal:
- Unit Size: Increases the number of soldiers per unit and their health
- Damage: Increases the damage dealt by attacks, spells, etc
- Impact Force: Increases collision impact, attack force and detonation force to send units flying
- Leadership: Increases base morale
- Winds of Magic: Increases the availability of Winds of Magic for spellcasting
- Explosions: Increases the size of explosions and vortex spells, improving their radius and detonation speed
- Vigour Cost Reduction: Increases the duration that units stay fresh, lowering the fatigue cost of actions
- Reload Time: Reduces the time it takes to reload ranged weapons
- Ammunition: Increases the total number of shots per ranged unit
- Projectile Penetration: Increases the distance projectiles can travel through enemies
- Gravity: Decreases the effect of gravity on units who are knocked into the air
- Ability Radius: Increase the effect radius of abilities
- Ability Recharge: Reduces ability recharge time
- Charge Duration: Increases the duration of the charge bonus
- Entity Scale: Increases or decreases the size of single unit entities like Lords and Monsters
- Blood Quantity: Increases or decreases the amount of blood emitted by entities emit
When the Mirror of Madness and Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs DLCs arrive with update 3.0 on April 13, it seems like Warhammer 3 will also get a decent-sized patch. Creative Assembly signs off the latest blog post by saying, “We’ll be back next week, should we survive, with the absolutely gargantuan monster of an article that is the Update 3.0 Patch Notes. Seriously… there’s so much. It’s so big. So many words. More like UPDATE THREE POINT WHOA amirite?”