Following last year’s expensive Shadows of Change DLC, the Total War: Warhammer 3 community’s Public Order score dropped until it was only a few turns away from outright rebellion. Redditors and YouTubers folded in a bunch of perennial complaints about bugs and update cadence and communication and how they want one specific kind of beastmen to have beaks, kicking up a stink until Creative Assembly promised to give players better value for money. Now, the studio has started to detail how that will happen with a blog post outlining some of the changes to Shadows of Change in update 4.2.
“I’ll cut straight to it,” writes game director Richard Aldridge, “we didn’t give you enough new characters and units to play with at the original release of Shadows of Change.” After the update, it’ll have two more Legendary Heroes, two more generic heroes, two more lords, six more units, and a new lore of magic—the Lore of the Hag. There will also be an extra “FreeLC” available to everyone, adding a new mount for Ice Queen Katarin—the Ice Court Sled.
The biggest addition, in terms of in-game stature, is a Legendary Hero called Saytang the Watcher. The Sentinel of the Heavens is a gigantic terracotta construct with a siege bow and wings that let him leap around the battlefield. Other additions include a Gate Master hero and two flying monsters who can double as mounts: Celestial Lions, which can be ridden by Celestial Generals, and Great Moon Birds, which can be ridden by Astromancers.
That’s a significant injection of big monsters for Cathay. “Before I end today,” Aldridge writes, “I wanted to cover an omission that you may have been hoping for in Grand Cathay’s roster update; an Elite Core Infantry unit. There is a very good reason for this and trust me we aren’t monkeying about.” That reads to me like a nod toward a future DLC adding the Monkey King to Cathay, and a reference to a “Hotpot” elsewhere in the blog is presumably hinting at Warhammer’s classic Halfling Hot Pot likewise being on the way, presumably as a mercenary unit.
“It’s important to all of us here that we get Patch 4.2 right for you,” Aldridge finishes, “so we won’t rush it out before it’s ready.” At the moment it’s loosely scheduled for a mid-February release, though a confirmation of the date will come next week in a post that also details the units being added to Tzeentch’s roster.