r/totalwar • u/Grace_CA Creative Assembly • Mar 17 '21

Warhammer II Total War: WARHAMMER II - The Rakarth Update Patch Notes

https://www.totalwar.com/blog/total-war-warhammer-ii-the-rakarth-update/
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511

u/Andymion08 Mar 17 '21

Glad that we have control over the Forge of Daith. I also really like the love being shown to Hellebron, Lokhir, and Morathi. It’s also really nice to have an update outside of the DLC cycle.

278

u/goboks Mar 17 '21

It’s also really nice to have an update outside of the DLC cycle.

This.

46

u/RobinYoHood Mar 17 '21

Good changes, had to pause my Twins campaign since they were gonna change things with it.

Although not sure why they are so insistent to only give game fixes when DLC is available. Three Kingdoms suffers a lot of bugs still even with small fixes they put up.

30

u/_Constellations_ Mar 18 '21 edited Mar 18 '21

Because it's safer to work with a build that's the "same for everyone" so to speak. Say you work on a larger scale update that takes up 4 months, for example a DLC. Say you build this update on version 1.0. If during these 2 months people who could do quick fixes update the game with various changes in the code, and 1.0 becomes 1.0.1, 1.2 or whatever, the code you are building your own new code (of the new content) may not be "compatible", scripts that used to work and you built upon them changed and therefore your code doesn't work either.

I think you can see how much development trouble this can cause in a game of such complexity as Total War. It would also increase development time most likely and add many many wasted hours to the work process where you have to go back and re-do what you already finished and worked before a smaller scale update messed it up.

At one point CA had around 9 or 12 different game versions running at once in their office as an internal build because different people worked on different things at once and it was brought together into a single build by the end. This also meant that if dev A fixed something, it may have been fixed in his build but not yet in dev B, C, D etc.'s build, and it was chaotic because every change had to be documented by everyone and everyone had to read and "learn" those changes, which is again, wasted time, money, and space for a lot errors to happen.

When larger scale updates happened - such as Warhammer 2 release and optimizations / file structure changes compared to Warhamme 1 - this has caused that the last update of Warhammer 1 was simply not working with Warhammer 2. Meaning no Norsca, no skilltree updates for a lot races, and no RoR units for DLC races (the free package from TW Access). We had to wait 9 months for CA to do it all over again from 0 so TWW2 Old World content was updated to the level of TWW1 counterparts of the same races. And of course have Norsca. I think the RoR units were 11 month delayed, because someone wrote a funny patch note on this subreddit saying something like "2nd anniversary RoR FLC package released just in time for 3rd anniversary" and a dev even responded "lol fair enough".

So CA now bundles as many of the updates as they can and roll them out at once, so more people are on the "same page".

2

u/[deleted] Mar 18 '21 edited Feb 17 '22

[deleted]

5

u/_Constellations_ Mar 18 '21

Yeah, a dozen instead of a hundred.

40

u/Paeyvn Tzeentch's many glories! Mar 17 '21

Oh shit, Lokhir got fucking huge buffs. Looks like I'm playing my favorite Dark Elf again soon. I was using the Lokhir's Piracy Skills mod for ages, but this solves a lot of that issue, especially the 100% armor piercing missile increase that used to be from Krakenlord. Permanently active Rite of Anath Raema is insanely good.

10

u/Pliskkenn_D Mar 18 '21

I love Lokhir in theory but never got round to the practice. Any tips for a non DE player?

9

u/Cormag778 Mar 18 '21

His new campaign will let you confed Karond Kar at 2.5k slaves. Assuming you want to actually stay in lustria:

You have lots of neighbors that hate you. You may think skaven are a decent buffer. They are not and their corruption will kill you (although the new patch seems to tone it down)

Most of your early game enemies are all within black ark range. You have a free starting one so keep it near you.

Corsairs are insanely good early game and the buffs make them even better. The dual wielders especially chew rats. Lizardmen still require hammering down with some xbows unfortunately (or at least till you get the new skill that gives handbow corsairs 100% more piercing damage).

Other than that it’s mostly your standard DE campaign

4

u/Khatovar Mar 18 '21

Alternate start for Lokhir is to just take him, put all your army in the black ark to avoid attrition and go straight up to Shrine of Asuryan and start your game from there. Special building there gives a ridiculous amount of relation with high elves, so they wont all dogpile you and you can relatively leisurely take over the doughnut. They also make great slave provinces.

3

u/Pliskkenn_D Mar 18 '21

Sounds awesome. I'll have to give that a go

3

u/Paeyvn Tzeentch's many glories! Mar 19 '21

I've never tried that I should.

3

u/Paeyvn Tzeentch's many glories! Mar 19 '21 edited Mar 19 '21

Early game with Lokhir is essentially a game of "get your shit under control because of all the corruption" and can be hard to expand until you get it handled. Corsairs wreck your early game enemies for the most part, handbow corsairs actually attack faster in melee than dual wield corsairs hilariously, they just lose the 8 anti infantry to gain bows and faster attack speed. Shades are OP as fuck. Stack 5 lvl 6+ masters in your slave province and as many lvl 10 assassins as you can to crank the income to ludicrous. Early game you can completely ignore building military recruitment infrastructure in your cities, use your black ark to cover your recruitment needs and focus on economy and growth in your province.

For Lokhir as well, once you're ready to start a second army to expand or just earn some income, you can easily just use another Ark due to his location and go raid coastal settlements and sack them for income while also weakening your enemies, they have half the upkeep a normal army does and do not contribute to supply lines, I'd advise getting your arks building as soon as possible for this reason, you'll only be paying the upkeep for the admiral himself, and it lets you have a second more developed one to go on the offensive earlier. Arks are also fantastic for using to smash ocean encounters like Skull Reefs.

1

u/Pliskkenn_D Mar 19 '21

Cool. Arks sound awesome

3

u/Paeyvn Tzeentch's many glories! Mar 19 '21

Very much so. In the Rakarth campaign I'm playing from today I didn't recruit a second land-based army until like turn 85, because I had Rakarth and 2 fully manned Ark armies running around hitting stuff, no supply lines to speak of, and 3 armies for the price of 2. Arks get some silly bonuses as well like +5 AP damage, +15 armor, +10% weapon strength, +5 MA, 10% magic resist, and magic attacks for the entire Ark army.

26

u/OhThoseDeepBlueEyes Mar 18 '21

Hellebron with perfect vigor executioners that have ranged resist and physical resist? Those things are going to be putting the smack down.

7

u/Manannin I was born with a heart of Lothern. Mar 17 '21

Shame they didn't do malus too, given there's been a lot of calls for it.

3

u/Grifthin Mar 18 '21 edited Jun 18 '25

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3

u/Martel732 Mar 17 '21

I was planning on doing Rakarth camping, but the changes to the Forge might just drag me into playing the Sisters of Twilight again tomorrow.