The next Total War: Warhammer 3 update will let your dwarves play tall by delving greedily and deep

rockpapershotgun.com:

Any gags I could make about an update that lets Total War: Warhammer 3’s dawi play tall are far too obvious for the discerning comedic palette that brought you such bangers as that time I just wrote “(penis)” a bunch so the Overkill’s Walking Dead page wouldn’t quote me out of context, so let’s just dive right in to the details. The strategy game’s 5.2 update is on the horizon, and tagging along with it are the first of the “extra bits” the team teased in June. I’m very excited about them. They sit somewhere between the usual patch fare of stat tweaks and errata, and the weightier faction facelifts that come alongside paid DLC. They’re also focused right where Immortal Empires needs them the most: depth, rather than width. In the dawi’s case, quite literally.

You can find the full breakdown of the three headline features here. But, broadly, there are updates for both chaos and the dwarves, plus “unusual locations” - a sort of fleshed-out set of landmarks which you’ll discover as you explore the map. One of the examples given is a Bretonnian holy site called “Grail Knight’s Grave”. Initially, owning the settlement gives a small bonus to control and corruption, as well as some holy horse-fanciers for your garrison. When control is over 75, any characters in the region have a chance to gain a tantalising mystery trait. The blog doesn’t reveal this trait, but I hope it’s cow-buchet related.

There are a few more teasers shown off, but I’m mainly enthusiastic about what design director Mitchell Heastie has to say here. He’s “a huge fan of worldbuilding content in games,” and says that he’s “always wanted to make the world feel a bit more alive - this is hopefully a start to doing more for both of those things.” Again, Immortal Empires is already irresponsibly massive and stuffed with more units than any reasonable person can keep track of. It’s these fertile embellishments that elevate it from a map to a world.

Next up is a rework to chaos cults, long maligned for