Total War: Warhammer 3 Lords of the End Times: Which Lord to Buy First

If you are new to Total War: Warhammer III and buying a single Lords of the End Times pack, Creative Assembly's own recommendation is Boris Todbringer; if you want the most content for $8.99, PC Gamer's pick is Nagash. Any of the four packs unlocks the Immortal Empires campaign on its own, without owning the base game.

This guide is built on Creative Assembly's Update 9.0 release notes, new-player FAQ and Hotfix 9.0.1 notes (published on Steam between 24 and 26 September 2026), the four packs' Steam store pages, coverage from PC Gamer and GamesRadar+, and Steam review data we read on 26 September 2026. Checked against Hotfix 9.0.1 (26 September 2026). The Steam review figures date from two days after launch and are labelled as such.

What does one Lords of the End Times pack get you?

Each of the four packs costs $8.99 on Steam, and each store page states that buying it grants access to Immortal Empires and that owning Total War: Warhammer III is not required. According to Creative Assembly's FAQ for new players, a single pack gives you:

• That Legendary Lord, with their new units and campaign features.
• A core unit roster from that lord's race, plus the Free-LC tied to that race.
• The Immortal Empires campaign and the Warhammer III Prologue campaign.
• Bretonnia as a free playable race, with its four Legendary Lords.

What you do not get is everything else. Free-LC released over the past decade is tied to owning the race it belongs to, so buying Thanquol unlocks Skaven freebies but not, say, High Elf ones. Every race still appears in your campaign as AI factions you can fight or ally with; ownership only decides who you can play.

How do the four Legendary Lords compare?

Which lord is best for a first campaign?

Boris Todbringer. Creative Assembly says so directly in its FAQ: his campaign is about fighting off invaders and earning the blessings of the wolf god Ulric, and the Empire roster mixes infantry, cavalry, artillery and magic, which makes it a good way to learn the core battle systems.

PC Gamer's Sean Martin adds a useful caveat: the Empire never received a free Legendary Lord, so beyond Bretonnia, Boris is the only campaign that pack gives you. You can still confederate Karl Franz, Elspeth von Draken and other Empire lords you meet, as long as they survive until you reach them.

The catch is how players have received him. His pack is the only one of the four below 50% positive on Steam, and the most-upvoted negative English reviews all make the same complaint: the Teutogen Guard, his headline elite infantry, were weakened before launch and are losing fights to cheaper Empire units. That is a balance argument rather than a broken campaign. Hotfix 9.0.1 did not change unit balance, and while Creative Assembly says a balance-focused patch is coming, it has not named the Teutogen Guard.

Which pack gives you the most for $8.99?

Nagash. Creative Assembly's FAQ says he offers more content than any other single character released across the trilogy, and his store page confirms he can raise units from the Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts and Vampire Coast rosters. Buying him also unlocks Neferata, a new free Legendary Lord who arrives with the Vampire Counts rework in Update 9.0.

The price of all that power is a hard opening. GamesRadar+'s Andrew Brown, who played the campaign before launch, describes Nagash starting surrounded by hostile factions, with his Books scattered across the world and his Mortarchs acting on their own. In his account Nagash can only push in one direction at a time, and handing other fronts to subordinates tends to go wrong. His headline still calls it "the most fun I've had in 1000 hours' playtime".

Early Steam reviews back the value argument: Nagash is the best-rated pack of the four, at 74% positive. A few negative reviews report that quest battles for the new factions fail in multiplayer campaigns, so co-op groups may want to wait for a patch before planning a Nagash run. Hotfix 9.0.1 did not list a fix for this; the multiplayer issues Creative Assembly has acknowledged so far are covered below.

Who should pick Thanquol or the Glottkin?

Thanquol is for players who want Skaven mischief with a twist. His Masterplans let him raise hidden armies, perform dark rituals and stage heists, and his store page warns that plans can run into complications and setbacks. Once unlocked, riding the Rat Ogre Boneripper makes him far tougher than a normal spellcaster. Skaven buyers also get Tretch Craventail as a free Legendary Lord, and PC Gamer notes you can confederate Ikit Claw, Queek Headtaker, Throt, Skrolk and Snikch if they survive until you reach them.

Update 9.0 also ties the rest of the Skaven to his new units: Throt's and Ikit Claw's mechanics now buff or upgrade Stormfiends, and Lord Skrolk's faction effects buff Pusbags and the Cauldron of a Thousand Poxes, all three new in Thanquol's pack. Skaven technologies no longer need buildings as prerequisites, either.

The Glottkin are the pack PC Gamer advises against as a first purchase. Warriors of Chaos do not play like a traditional faction, and they cannot confederate other Warriors of Chaos factions, so you cannot collect extra lords along the way. Their pitch is corruption: according to the store page, conquered settlements become Gardens of Corruption that spread Plagues and give the Glottkin a higher proportion of Nurgle daemon units than any other Warriors of Chaos faction. Their Steam sample is the smallest of the four, at 70 reviews.

What do Steam players say so far?

The packs are two days old, so treat these numbers as a first impression. We read Steam's review totals for each pack in all languages on 26 September 2026 at 08:05 UTC, then sorted the English negative reviews by helpfulness to find the most common complaint.

The base game is being reviewed more kindly since the update than over its lifetime: 260 of the 296 reviews posted since the launch on 24 September (88%) are positive, against 72% across all 149,139 reviews. Steam counted 61,943 people playing at 08:08 UTC on 26 September, and the game climbed from 68th to 26th in Steam's weekly most-played chart.

What changed in Hotfix 9.0.1?

Creative Assembly released Hotfix 9.0.1 on 26 September 2026, two days after the packs launched. It is a bug-fix release with no balance changes, but several fixes touch the new content directly:

• Nagash: the Black Pyramid endgame scenario can no longer trigger while you are playing as Nagash.
• Boris Todbringer: keybinds no longer stop working after you dismiss a narrative event.
• Neferata: fixes for her Web of Power menu, including a crash when hovering over Events and WASD input stopping while the menu is open.
• Vermintide: the endgame no longer completes automatically on reaching 100% Knowledge without winning the final battle.
• Campaign: settlements no longer become untargetable when Underling armies expire or are disbanded mid-siege, and a rare crash tied to the Wounded trait is fixed.

The same notes list known issues that Creative Assembly is investigating for a second hotfix, promised for the following week:

• Thanquol's narrative does not trigger in multiplayer, so he cannot unlock his underlings there. The planned fix adds an alternative way to unlock them in multiplayer.
• Nagash owners without the Tomb Kings DLC cannot currently access the Bone Giant.
• Entering a Sea Lane or portal while holding a Book of Nagash temporarily removes its sigils.
• Gotrek and Felix's quest battle can fail to end after a very quick victory in which every enemy routs.

On balance, the notes say a balance-focused patch is still being finalised "to be released in the next few weeks", and that player feedback on the new units' roles is being read. No unit is named, so the Teutogen Guard complaints above still describe the current version of Boris's pack. We will update this section when the next hotfix and the balance patch land.

What changed for everyone in Update 9.0?

Update 9.0 is free and arrived alongside the DLC, so it applies whether or not you buy a pack. These are the changes most likely to affect a campaign, from the official release notes:

• End-turn times are up to 30% shorter, thanks to a batch of CPU optimisations.
• The campaign AI recruits more decisively and should clump around settlements less; on Hard and above it fields more elite units.
• Regiments of Renown are capped per army: two by default, rising to three, four and five with rank, or four, six and eight for Legendary Lords.
• Wound-recovery reductions have been cut across the game, and a new optional Escalating Wounds setting keeps characters who die repeatedly out of action for longer.
• The Books of Nagash are now carried by lords: they can be stolen, traded between your own armies, locked in your capital or destroyed.
• Archaon can subjugate defeated Chaos Legendary Lords and, after his short victory, become the Lord of the End Times, giving up conquest for bonuses from Devastated provinces.
• Defeated daemonic factions can now respawn in heavily corrupted provinces, and Vampire Counts get new skill trees, Blood Decrees and Zombie Dragon landmarks.

So which one should you buy?

1. New to Total War: Boris Todbringer, Creative Assembly's own pick, with the Teutogen Guard caveat above.
2. Want the most content per dollar: Nagash, who also brings Neferata. Until the next hotfix, Nagash owners without the Tomb Kings DLC cannot access the Bone Giant.
3. Already love Skaven, or want a campaign built on schemes: Thanquol.
4. Want to spread Nurgle's gifts and don't mind an unconventional faction: the Glottkin, ideally not as your only pack.
5. Want all four: the bundle, at $30.56.

Whichever you choose, Bretonnia comes free, so every pack gives you at least two races to learn on. We will update this guide as Creative Assembly patches the new lords; our Total War: Warhammer III hub collects everything else we publish on the game.