Due Live on 28/07/16

Update 2 is designed to add further polish and tweaks, fixes some notable gameplay issues and brings our second pass at unit rebalancing. Some notable changes include UI scaling for high-resolution displays, performance enhancements and visual improvements for NVIDIA users, and the introduction of the new Siege Attacker trait, enabling armies with Siege Attacker units to immediately initiate sieges without building dedicated siege equipment.

A huge level of customisation is now available in Custom and Multiplayer battles. When building your army you can now choose individual spells, items and abilities for your characters. These additions will increase their cost, but provide a level of granularity, individuality, and can skew their battlefield role to suit your playstyle.





New Content

A host of new free content is made available via this update, including the Empire Amber Wizard hero, The Lore of Beasts, The Beastmen as new and terrifying AI-opponent in the Grand Campaign, and four new Custom and Multiplayer battle maps. Sarthorael The Everchosen, the Chaos Lord of Change, is also now available to use as a Legendary Lord in custom and multiplayer battles. Full details on this content can be found in our Free Content Update Blog.

Factions

Chaos Warriors

Sigvald will no longer bleed when the Blood Effects are enabled

When Chaos Warriors respawn, they now correctly respawn in a state of war against with the same factions as their vassals

The Chaos Invasion and Doom Tides events can now no longer occur on the same turn, which previously prevented Archaon from entering play

The Chaos Invasion event will now not be shown repeatedly

When AI-controlled Chaos Invasion event occurs, Norscan factions will no longer war among themselves

Script alteration to ensure Chaos Invasion event doesn't happen too late or not at all

Azazel The Despoiler now displays correctly in the Chaos Tomb Blade quest UI

Subjugation now correctly contributes to Sigvald The Magnificent's unlock requirements

Fixed an issue where seams were showing on Chaos Spawn

Chaos Spawn claw animations improved





Greenskins

When Azhag dons the Crown Of Sorcery, it cannot be removed!

Orc Boar Boy Big 'Uns Unit Info now displays Anti-Large since dey 'av bigga choppas than da boyz

Savage Orcs now use more torso variants

Unit transfer fightiness bonus is now applied more consistently

Greenskins Shaman's Hovel building now correctly affects recruitment slots

Fixed a bug where fightiness wouldn't always increase after a victory

Army size for Waaagh armies will now display correctly in the Campaign forces panel





Dwarfs

Fixed an issue where the Organ Gun would have to turn 360 degrees before moving

Dwarfs now consistently raise shields to protect from incoming projectiles

Gold Sickness trait now restricted to Dwarfs only

Ironbreaker's blasting charges now no longer move to model's other hand when in idle pose

Ungrim Ironfist's armour piercing bonus from his Dragon Slayer ability will no longer clip into the Weapon strength text on the Unit Details panel

Steam from Gyrocopters will no longer change colour during Subterranean Battles





Vampire Counts

Blood Knights and Black Coach added to Raise Dead pool

Improvements made to tooltip text explaining Raise Dead feature in the Campaign

Rival Necromancer event now restricted to Vampire Counts

Blood Knights no longer clip through their mounts

Fixed an issue where seams were showing on Zombie units on low graphic settings

Fixed a bug where Mannfred was not given Unique Items after winning Quest Battles

Fixed a bug where the Necromancers leg would clip through his tunic during his death animation in battle





Empire

Fixed a bug where the Luminark of Hysh would take 3x the amount of damage as each entity on the model was taking damage from the same source

Empire halberd thrusting animations realigned





Battle

General

Fixed a bug where enemy units would remain hidden until around 10m away

Fixed an issue that prevented cumulative resistance caps applying, enabling some units to become immune to damage

Limited use items will now display the remaining duration whilst active in Battles

Updated the rallying Battle mechanic to require units to have more than 0 Leadership before they are able to rally

Fixed an exploit that would allow the player to use ranged attacks without expending any ammunition in Battles

Unit card health indicators will now display correctly when fighting battles with a very large amount of units

Fixed an issue where unit cards were not being deselected if the player moves the mouse off of them whilst the unit is taking damage

Fixed a bug where explosion damage was not being applied to all entities

Camera mode now uses standard camera setting when loading in to campaign quest battles

Default deployment zone sizes adjusted for custom battles

Defenders in Ambush Battles will no longer briefly see the terrain and enemy army before the screen blacks out

Improved Battle AI behaviour when the entire opposed army consists of a single Lord





UI

UI scaling slider now available in options to support high-resolution (e.g. 4K) displays

Units with magical or flaming ranged attacks (such as Irondrakes or Flame Cannons) will now have this property displayed on their Unit Info panel

Battle tooltips will no longer flicker when refreshing abilities are being applied, for example Chaos Warhound's Poison! debuff

Pressing the ESC key whilst in Cinematic mode will now exit Cinematic mode

Updated the UI when spectating/watching a replay to no longer display unnecessary UI elements

Unit markers in battle (e.g. when dragging formations) are now visible on top of passable shallow water

Improved text for objectives during several Quest Battles





Abilities/Spells

Spell casters in Siege Battles will no longer attempt to use projectile spells on units if their line of sight is blocked by walls or gates

Changed Direct Damage spell damage-chance to factor in duration and frequency

Fixed an exploit in Battles that allowed the player to cast multiple magic missile spells without having enough available mana

Spell miscast chance now working accurately



Improved some of the targeting visualisation / effects for unit abilities in battle

Improved targeting UI for several spells

Rebalanced several upgraded spells that could potentially kill Lords in one or two casts

Blasting Charge VFX will no longer float in mid-air when attacking Giants with them

Upgraded Soulblight now has the increased effect duration applied

Standard variant of Wind Blast spell will no longer do more damage than the upgraded variant

Tweaked effects of upgraded version of Transmutation of Lead





Maps

Updated Burial Mound of Grudsnik map to fix an issue with inaccessible terrain.

Collision areas cleaned on Karak Ungor

Snow effects will now play at the maximum camera height on snowy battlefields.

Stretched textures fixed on Crooked Fang Fort

In the quest battle 'Armour of Morkar' terrain in outfield now longer has a slight gap

Improved the height map on several maps to fix rare terrain issues, e.g. Mount Gunbad





Siege

Some characters and units now have a 'Siege Attacker' trait. Armies containing such characters and units may attack a city immediately without building siege equipment. The following all bear this trait:

Kholek Suneater

Lord of Change

Dragon Ogre Shaggoth

Gorebull

Cygor

Minotaurs (all variants)

Bretonnian Field Trebuchet

Hellcannon

Giants (all variants)

Cannon

Flame Cannon

Grudge Thrower

Organ Gun

Great Cannon

Helblaster Volley gun

Helstorm Rocket Battery

Mortar

Luminark of Hysh

Steam Tank

Doom Diver Catapult

Goblin Rock Lobber

Arachnarok Spider

Varghulf



Fixed a bug where a unit carrying a battering ram would stop for a long time before engaging the gate

Improvements to sieging AI army with artillery heavy composition

Units that allow the armies to start a Siege Battle during Campaign without siege equipment now have the 'Siege Attacker' unit ability

Siege battles at Dietershafen will no longer display 'The Threat from the North' on the pre-battle loading screen.

Siege equipment now has camera collision across all factions

Lords now no longer occasionally fall through the ladder and die after climbing to the top of it

Fixed a bug where Vanguard units who started a battle mounted in siege equipment lost their Vanguard UI icon

Fixed a rare issue that could cause garrison armies to not appear during Siege Battles

Fixed an issue that would cause garrisons to appear as reinforcements during Siege or sally out Battles





Campaign

General

Diplomacy statistics now update correctly upon faction death and re-emergence

'Hinder Settlement' objectives now abort correctly when the target settlement has been razed

Capturing cities of your race type containing prebuilt buildings which unlock legendary lords for recruitment now enables their recruitment

Fixed an issue that would cause the Autoresolver to always treat the player as the attacker in Battles, even if they are the defender

Attitudes between factions will now be displayed correctly on the Campaign Tactical Overview map when using the Attitude filter

Reinforcements in The Eye of Sheerian Quest Battle will no longer appear immediately after starting the battle

Fixed an issue where turns until population surplus would calculate incorrectly if growth is negative

Fixed an issue that would cause rebellions to not trigger despite the player having enough negative public order to reach -100 on the next turn

Horde factions that have been wiped out now have a cooldown period before they can respawn

Fixed a bug where a garrisoned Greenskin army could be incorrectly selected and moved

Achievement 'Jack of All Trades, Master of Some' now triggers correctly

Confederation cooldown period now prevents Confederation effectively





UI

Loading screens will now correctly display if the player launches the game via the Continue Campaign button on the Launcher

Fixed an issue where overlapping settlement and army banners would cause the settlement names to appear incorrectly

Fixed tooltip incorrectly stating building is damaged

'XP Gained' messages should no longer appear for max-level characters

Recruit hero tooltips now explain which building can be built to increase hero capacity

User no longer gets the blood UI layout for the blood events even when he has the blood effects deactivated

War coordination system will now deselect correctly if the player opens up another panel whilst choosing a target

Raze Settlement UI now displays correctly

Ruined settlements are now named correctly in event panels which reference them

Fixed an issue with flickering icons for embedded Heroes when panning the camera on the Campaign map

Fixed a bug which occasionally caused the stance button / UI icon to disappear on the campaign map when transitioning from sea to land

Settlement nameplates will now display correctly on the campaign map when using Eyefinity

Fixed an issue with overlapping post-Battle UI popups when attacking Chaos





AI

Improved the Campaign AI to make it less inclined to send armies an extremely long distance away to attack hostile hordes.

Fixed bug where rebels would successfully attack a settlement and neither capture nor raze it





Multiplayer

Campaign

Difficulty setting can no longer be changed during the lobby when resuming a Multiplayer Campaign from a save

Fixed a bug where players would be unable to load Multiplayer Campaign saves if both players were in different languages

Fixed a crash that could occur in Multiplayer Campaign if a player assassinates a character whilst the other player has that character's details panel open

Fixed a Multiplayer Campaign battle issue where the player would not have control of units summoned by spells if another player was spectating the battle

Fixed a rare desync that could occur during replays from Multiplayer Campaign Battles

Fixed a softlock in cooperative Multiplayer Campaigns where one player could declare war on another other player's Waaagh armies

Fixed an issue in MP campaign where the share control option appears as white square

Fixed an issue that allowed players to play as AI during a co-op Multiplayer Campaign

Pre-battle screens during Multiplayer Campaigns will now correctly display a timer if an army is attacked multiple times in the same turn





Battle

Unit abilities, spells and items can now be added/subtracted for lords and heroes in custom and multiplayer battles. This allows the player to experience more expansive key characters for high micro-management, skew their role in battle by selecting certain complimentary actives/passives or create more lean characters with low micro-management for alternative army-wide tactics.

Each character has a base cost, which includes inherent attributes, but not abilities, spell and items.

When an ability, spell or item is added, the cost of the character increases

There is a slight decay in cost of abilities when added, taking into account that the player can only cast/interact with one ability at a time.

Legendary lords are given relevant quest battle reward items, allowing the player to experience a taste of what can be won in their campaign play-through.

Magical characters are given a selection of single-use scrolls and non-magical characters a selection of single-use potions.





Multiplayer Quick Battle lobby will now display the correct tooltip on the Start Battle/Ready button

Multiplayer Quick Battles will no longer automatically queue for a new match on the post-battle results screen

Multiplayer Quick Battles will now always use Large unit size

Fixed a rare softlock that could occur in Multiplayer lobbies if a player changes faction at the exact same time another player joins the lobby

Lords in Multiplayer Battles will now display the name of the Lord, and the name of the player in the tooltip

Multiplayer Battle loading screens will no longer show information about units from opponent's army

Multiplayer Battles will no longer display a message saying the AI is taking control if the Battle ends due to a player leaving.

Quick Battle lobby timer now resets back to 60 second when a player changes faction and clicks "Ready".





Technical

A variety of isolated crash instances have been fixed





DX12

Please note our DX12 implementation is still in beta, and investigations with issues are ongoing

Fixed a crash caused by changing graphics options when running in DX12 with Nvidia SLI

Nvidia DX12 performance improvements

Fixed flickering issue when running the game on Nvidia cards in DX12

DX12 now enabled on Nvidia 950m and 960m





Graphics

Multiple performance improvements for high-spec systems with Blood Effects enabled

Fix for missing shadows

Tree billboard scaling improved

Metal tint values tweaked to avoid armour appearing black on certain unit models

Fixed porthole for lord of change

Advanced Graphics option will now show how many GPUs are active when the player has a multi-GPU system

Fixed an issue with flickering graphics on the Campaign map when using an NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti

Giblets will no longer appear on the Low graphics preset with Blood Effects enabled

Wind of Death icon clarified in tooltip

Call of the Beastmen theme added

Water added to parchment maps for all campaigns





Audio

Chaos Marauder units are now using all their VO

Fixed a bug where some of the Advisor's audio was not played

Fixed a bug where Vampire lords were not playing VO

Fixed a bug where creating a garrison was triggering the wrong VO

Fixed an issue where the correct Chaos audio wasn't playing during the campaign





Other

Fixed an issue with the Game Guide that could occur when the window was resized to a very small window.

Communiteam have been further buffed against trolls and have a flame resistance when in threads

Updated the Game Guide and Help Pages to fix some links which were not displaying correctly.

Made multiple corrections to the Game Guide

Improved some Russian translations

Added money bag icons to make in-game purchasing easier. Buy it all, you know you want to!





Balancing

General

Charge defence mass bonus increased

Dwarf mass increased

All artillery units firing arc increased/improved

All artillery units Speed increased

All artillery units turn speed increased

Maximum of 4 Heroes in multiplayer battles

Lords & Heroes Cost reduction for multiplayer

Decrease to miscast explosion damage

Rebalance of unit abilities and upgraded abilities

Rebalance of winds of magic costs

Rebalance of combat potential for unit abilities and spells

Rebalance of effect area of some unit abilities and spells

Tweak to cinder charge explosion delay

Fixes for various context triggers and stat bugs for unit abilities and spells

Various updates to unit ability and spell bullet texts

Improved unit ability and spell targeting visuals and mechanics





Units

Dwarfs

Gyrocopter

- Gyrocopter Bomb damage increased



Gyrobomber

- Gyrobomber Bomb damage increased

- Increased Missile Damage

- Reduced recruitment cost

- Increased Health

- Increased Missile Damage

- Increased Armour-Piercing Missile Damage



Slayers

- Decreased Speed

- Decreased recruitment cost

- Increased Melee Defence

- Increased Health

- Increased Armour-Piercing Damage

- Decreased Weapon Damage.





Flame Cannon

- Reduced recruitment cost

- Increased range

- Firing arc fix allows for fire from behind infantry line

- Increased Armour-Piercing Damage

- Decreased Explosive Base Damage





Grudge Thrower

- Decreased recruitment cost

- Increased Accuracy





Irondrakes

- Decreased recruitment cost

- Increased acceleration

- Increased firing arc

- Increased turn speed

- Increased reload speed



Quarrellers (Great Weapons)

- Reduced recruitment cost





Warriors of Chaos

Archaon

- Reduced recruitment cost



Chosen

- Increased Melee Defence

- Increased HP

- Increased Melee Attack



Chosen (Great Weapons)

- Increased Weapon Damage

- Increased Armour-Piercing Damage

- Increased Melee Attack



Dragon Ogres

- Increased Health

- Decreased Melee Attack

- Increased Melee Defence

- Weapon Strength includes Anti-Large Damage.

- Reduced Armour-Piercing Damage



Kholek

- Decreased Weapon Strength

- Weapon Strength includes Anti-Large Damage.

- Decreased Charge Bonus



Dragon Ogre Shaggoth

- Decreased Weapon Strength

- Weapon Strength includes Anti-Large Damage.

- Decreased Charge Bonus

- Decreased recruitment cost





Chaos Knights

- Increased Melee Defence





Empire

Demigryph Knights (Halberds)

- Decreased Armour-Piercing Damage

- Decreased Bonus versus large



General of the Empire

- Decreased Health whilst on Griffon

- Increased recruitment cost for Griffon



Steam Tank

- Decreased Speed

- Decreased Steam Gun ammunition



Helblaster Volley Gun

- Increased Range

- Decreased recruitment cost



Helstorm Rocket Battery

- Increased Range

- Decreased Accuracy

- Decreased Reload Speed

- Decreased Cost





Greenskins

Rock Lobber

- Increased Range



Doom Diver Catapult

- Increased recruitment cost



Night Goblins (All)

- Increased Leadership



Trolls

- Increased Leadership



Savage Orc Big Uns

- Decreased recruitment cost



Savage Orc Boar Boyz

- Decreased recruitment cost



Orc Warboss

- Decreased recruitment cost for Wyvern mount.



Black Orcs

- Increased Cost



Arachnarok

- Decreased Armour-Piercing Damage

Goblin Big Boss

- All mount options have the Encourage ability





Vampire Counts

Blood Knights

- Speed decreased



Mannfred von Carstein

- Increased all mounts recruitment costs



Grave Guard (Great Weapons)

- Increased recruitment cost





Brettonia

Grail Knights

- Increased Melee Defence



Trebuchet

- Increased Range