Total War: WARHAMMER III has shipped three paid content releases in the last twelve months, and the three are not interchangeable: one is a four-lord pack at the top of the price ladder, one is a single character for a quarter of the price, and one is a 2025 pack whose main factionfaction. An in-game group or nation players can align with or fight against, with its own goals and reputation system. has since had its economy rebuilt by a patch. This site already carries a walkthrough of Nagash’s campaign and a digest of Patch 9.0.4. What neither does is read the releases as a schedule and a price list: which factions the recent packs served, where the power creep sits pack by pack rather than in the abstract, how much post-launch repair each one cost, and what a new buyer should open with now that a single lord pack unlocks the sandbox campaign.
All of it assumes the live retail build on Steam — Patch 9.0.4, released 15 October 2026 — and prices as fetched on 2026-10-29 from the US storefront in USD. This piece makes no claim about a public beta or test branch, because I did not fetch one.
What this covers: the last twelve months of paid Total War: WARHAMMER III content — Lords of the End Times (24 September 2026), the Bhashiva Character Pack (21 May 2026) and Tides of Torment (4 December 2025) — with prices, faction coverage, the 21-day patch chain that followed the September pack, and a buying order. Why it matters: any Lords of the End Times lord grants Immortal Empires without owning Total War: WARHAMMER I, II or III, which invalidates the old “buy the base game first” default; and the four lords in that pack are sold at one price but are not equal in scope. Who should care: new players choosing a first $8.99 purchase, returning players deciding which pack to add, and anyone tracking how much of each release had to be repaired after launch.
The build this assumes, and the next one
Patch 9.0.4 is the current build. Creative Assembly’s own notes for it close with: “Our intention is to have a 9.0.5 release within the next few weeks which, alongside various fixes and adjustments, should include some improvements to Victory Objectives with the goal of making them more relevant and impactful.” That is an intention dated 15 October, not a date — and by the most recent post in the official Steam announcement feed (26 October 2026, an Everchosen tournament notice) no 9.0.5 had been announced. If you are troubleshooting a Nagash run, 9.0.4 is the build to check your numbers against.
Worth noting that 9.0.5 would not be the first pass at victory conditions. Hotfix 9.0.2 on 1 October already adjusted them “for Legendary Lords who can change their start position”, with CA adding: “We spotted this in your pre-release feedback, but weren’t able to get them in the full 9.0 release.”
Creative Assembly framed the September pack itself as “the biggest DLC that we’ve ever released in the series 10-year history”. That is the studio’s characterisation, not a measurement, and this piece does not try to verify it — but the price structure does support the scale claim, because the pack is four separate $8.99 products rather than one.
What the last three packs added, and what they cost
| Release | Store date | Price (USD, 2026-10-29) | Factions served | Sold as |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lords of the End Times — Nagash | 2026-09-24 | $8.99 | Undead Legions (units drawn from Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts and Vampire Coast) | individual lord |
| Lords of the End Times — Thanquol | 2026-09-24 | $8.99 | Skaven (Clan Scruten) | individual lord |
| Lords of the End Times — Boris Todbringer | 2026-09-24 | $8.99 | Empire (Middenland) | individual lord |
| Lords of the End Times — The Glottkin | 2026-09-24 | $8.99 | Warriors of Chaos / Nurgle | individual lord |
| Lords of the End Times — bundle | 2026-09-24 | $30.56 | all four of the above | bundle, 15% off $35.96 |
| Bhashiva — Character Pack | 2026-05-21 | $4.99 | Grand Cathay (Shang-Yang) | single character |
| Tides of Torment — Sayl | 2025-12-04 | $8.99 | Dolgan Tribe | individual lord |
| Tides of Torment — Aislinn | 2025-12-04 | $8.99 | High Elves (Sea Patrol) | individual lord |
| Tides of Torment — Dechala | 2025-12-04 | $8.99 | Slaanesh (The Tormentors) | individual lord |
The faction spread across those releases is wide: Undead, Skaven, Empire, Nurgle-aligned Warriors of Chaos, Grand Cathay, High Elves and Slaanesh. What it is not is even. Dwarfs, Kislev, Tzeentch, Khorne, Orcs and Goblins, Bretonnia, Lizardmen, Dark Elves and Wood Elves do not appear in the store listings above — which matters if your interest is one of those rosters, because the cadence gives no signal about when that interest is served. The next pack is undated, and no roadmap with a date appeared in the official announcement feed I fetched.
The release intervals are unusually readable for a live-service title: 4 December 2025 to 21 May 2026 is 168 days, 21 May to 24 September is 126 days, and 24 September to 29 October is 35 days — two paid releases in 2026, both inside the last six months.
Twenty-one days of repair
The more useful cadence number is not the gap between packs but the gap between a pack and the build that holds it. Lords of the End Times launched on 24 September; four builds followed inside three weeks.
| Build | Date | Days after 9.0 | What it did |
|---|---|---|---|
| Update 9.0 | 2026-09-24 | 0 | Shipped with the pack: free Legendary Lord Neferata, a Vampire Counts rework, endgame content, magic-lore updates, and a Slaanesh building-chain rebuild |
| Hotfix 9.0.1 | 2026-09-26 | 2 | Neferata’s Web of Power menu (hover crashes, WASD input loss), settlement targeting, assorted crashes |
| Hotfix 9.0.2 | 2026-10-01 | 7 | Enabled Thanquol’s mechanics in multiplayer campaigns, fixed a Skaven endgame softlock, adjusted victory conditions for lords who change start position |
| Patch 9.0.3 | 2026-10-09 | 15 | Nagash campaign updates from feedback, tweaks to the pack’s factions “to address some unintended behaviour”, battle balance including Lore of Nehekhara |
| Patch 9.0.4 | 2026-10-15 | 21 | Nagash campaign optimisation, skill and Sigil corrections, UI and VFX fixes, late-turn freeze fix |
| 9.0.5 | intended only | — | Victory Objectives improvements (CA statement of intent, 2026-10-15) |
Two items in that table are the honest cost of the cadence. Thanquol’s campaign mechanics did not work in multiplayer campaigns until day seven. And the victory-condition work CA says it wanted for 9.0 did not make the release — the studio said so itself.
Power creep, pack by pack
The general version of the power-creep argument is unfalsifiable. The per-pack version is not, because the store pages state the scope of each lord in their own words.
Nagash is the clearest case in the set. The store text says he “can raise units from the complete range of Undead rosters, including Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts and Vampire Coast units, making his armies uniquely flexible in battle depending on their composition.” Three separate race rosters in one army is not an incremental lord; it is roster consolidation. The corrective arrived in 9.0.4, which cut the Pinnacle of Servitude skill’s recruit-rank bonus from its previous value down to 1 (the note does not state the old figure), extended it to Grave Call recruits, and fixed a Black Pyramid Sigil that “could cause Heroes to gain multiple stacks of the Guardian ability”. Not every 9.0.4 change went one way: the same patch reduced Screaming Skull Catapults’ homing-ability trigger time “from 3s to 2s”, which is a buff.
The Glottkin is the creep-by-exception case. Four Legendary Heroes ship in the pack — Gutrot Spume, Morbidex Twiceborn, Bloab Rotspawned and Orghotts Daemonspew — and the campaign feature is explicitly comparative: Gardens of Corruption “grant the Glottkin access to a higher proportion of Daemonic Nurgle units than any other Warriors of Chaos faction”. A pack whose selling point is outperforming the other factions in its own race is creep by definition, though a narrow one.
Thanquol is breadth plus a spell. He “can recruit units from across the entire Skaven roster”, gains “the infamous Dreaded Thirteenth spell”, and rides Boneripper as a legendary mount. The balancing mechanism is the Masterplans system, which the store describes as subject to complications and setbacks. Whether that check works in practice is not something a store page can tell you.
Boris Todbringer is the mildest of the four and costs the same. His access is “troops from across the Empire roster” plus a Middenland unit list — Teutogen Guard, Knights of the White Wolf, Knights Panther, Celestial Hurricanum — and his campaign loop is Fervour feeding the Great Temple of Ulric’s six Sanctuaries. No cross-race roster, no “higher than any other faction” claim. At $8.99 he is priced identically to Nagash, which is the single most actionable finding here: the four lords are one price and four different amounts of content, so buy the faction you will actually play rather than assuming parity.
Bhashiva is the inverse case, and the cheapest thing on the page. At $4.99 the Character Pack adds one Legendary Lord for Grand Cathay, and it carries an access clause rather than a scope claim: buyers “will also gain access to the core Grand Cathay roster if they do not already own any other associated Grand Cathay content.” That is a discount on entry, not a creep on power.
Tides of Torment’s creep was economic, and it has already been corrected. Update 9.0 rebuilt Slaanesh’s building chains, and the release notes name the pack as the reason: “Since the release of Tides of Torment, we’ve seen plenty of feedback on Slaanesh’s buildings surrounding recruitment. The common theme is that elite units are recruited too early, with Chosen being a primary example, meaning a lot of foot infantry are made redundant early on.” The fix rebuilt the chains for N’Kari, The Masque and Dechala, adding new Tier 3 and Tier 4 buildings that push Chosen later. If you read a Slaanesh build guide written between December 2025 and September 2026, its recruitment order is out of date.
The player count that follows the pack
The launch did move the population, and the numbers are public. Steam Charts records September 2026 at an average of 33,473.69 concurrent players with a peak of 102,170, and its rolling 30-day row at an average of 42,123.28 with a peak of 84,700; the live counter read 39,936 when I fetched it, against a 24-hour peak of 40,099 and an all-time peak of 166,519 from the 2022 launch window. The Steam Web API’s current-player endpoint returned 40,231 in the same fetch. That is a game in its fifth year holding roughly double its mid-2025 monthly averages, which the monthly table puts in the 19,000–22,400 range.
The cadence is not the only variable there — a 15% bundle discount and a September release both help — but the correlation is worth stating precisely: the population moved with the pack, not with the patch chain.
What to buy first
| If you are | Buy this | Price (2026-10-29) | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| New, and you own none of the trilogy | Any single Lords of the End Times lord | $8.99 | The store text for each states the purchase “grants access to the Immortal Empires campaign. Total War: WARHAMMER III ownership is not required.” |
| New, and all four lords appeal | The Lords of the End Times bundle | $30.56 | 15% off the $35.96 sum of the four SKUs, or about $7.64 per lord |
| Grand Cathay, on a budget | Bhashiva Character Pack | $4.99 | Cheapest SKU on the page, and it includes the core Cathay roster if you own no other Cathay content |
| High Elves, Slaanesh or the Dolgan Tribe | The matching Tides of Torment lord | $8.99 each | The Slaanesh chains were rebuilt in Update 9.0, so Dechala’s economy is current rather than as-shipped |
| An owner of WARHAMMER I or II only | The WARHAMMER III Upgrade Pack | $59.99 | 8 factions, 10 Legendary Lords, the Realm of Chaos campaign and its multiplayer variants |
| Starting completely cold, want the original campaign too | Total War: WARHAMMER III | $59.99 | 8 factions and 10 lords, priced the same as the upgrade pack on the day of fetching |
Two caveats on that table. The base game and the upgrade pack carried no discount when I fetched them, both at $59.99 — but the 1 October post in the announcement feed was an autumn sale, so the storefront price is a moving figure and the $59.99 here is a snapshot, not a floor. And the Bhashiva listing does not carry the Immortal Empires access clause that the Lords of the End Times listings do; I am not asserting it either way.
What is not confirmed
The next paid release has no name, no date and no announced faction. Creative Assembly has not published a dated roadmap in the official Steam feed through 26 October 2026, so the honest description of the next pack is “undated”. 9.0.5 exists as a stated intention from 15 October with one named subject — Victory Objectives — and nothing more. Whether the 15% bundle discount is permanent is not stated on the bundle page. And the “biggest DLC in the series’ 10-year history” line is Creative Assembly’s description of its own product, which this piece repeats as attribution rather than as fact.
For the longer view, the studio has said the next Warhammer title, Total War: Warhammer 40,000, will ship in 2027 as one “bedrock” game rather than a trilogy — a different answer to the same cadence problem. Until that lands, WARHAMMER III’s schedule is the one to read, and the read is this: fewer, larger, individually-priced releases, and — in the one case where the pack was large enough to need it — three weeks of repair behind it. The next one is undated.