The Realms of Chaos in Total War: Warhammer III present the player with diverse goals and problems to overcome. To complete the campaign, players will need to venture into the realms of each of the four chaos gods, Khorne, Nurgle, Slaanesh, and Tzeentch, and collect the souls of their favored demon princes. Once all four souls have been collected, the Forge of Souls can be accessed, Be'lakor confronted, and Ursun either saved, consumed or interrogated.
Each Realm of Chaos must be accessed through rifts that appear across the map during a rift phase. Only the faction leader can through these rifts, but left unattended, they will allow demon armies from the chaos realms to invade. The faction leader can also use these rifts to teleport to another rift present on the main campaign map as a sort of limited fast travel in Total War: Warhammer 3, which can be very useful to rapidly travel long distances or surprise enemies. Rifts in the player's home territory that are not used to enter the chaos realms should be closed, which requires fighting a battle and can be done by any army.
When a player's army enters one of the Realms of Chaos, they will have to race the other factions to claim the realm's daemon prince soul. The player will receive an alert when another faction enters a Realm of Chaos and when they claim that realm's soul. If another faction claims the soul first, the player will be ejected from the realm and unable to reenter until the next rift phase. Because this is a zero-sum game, it is often worth declaring war on competing factions and destroying their leader's army in the chaos realms, preventing them from completing the survival battle in Total War: Warhammer 3 and outpacing the player. Lords will also suffer lasting debuff effects from remaining in the chaos realms too long, so the speed is advisable. At the end of each chaos realm, the player will have to fight a survival battle, one of the most hyped new features of Total War: Warhammer III. Survival battles require the player to hold out against waves of daemons while taking objectives to draw out the favored daemon princes. These battles can be extremely difficult early in the game, and players should prepare the best single army before entering a Chaos Realm.
Realms of Chaos Mechanics in Total War: Warhammer 3
Khorne's Realm Mechanics in Total War: Warhammer 3
Khorne's realm has the most straightforward goal of reaching the favored daemon prince (different from the Daemon Prince who leads Chaos Undivided). The player's army will have a new bar visible above it, marked with the symbol of Khorne. This bar represents slaughter and can be filled by fighting the armies scattered across Khorne's realm. Once the bar has been filled, players can claim the Khorne daemon's soul. Along the way, boons in the form of powerful weapons can be found throughout the realm. While the Daemon Prince that leads Chaos undivided cannot use these weapons as they are not part of his customization system, any other hero or lord can. When the player enters another chaos god's realm, these weapons will be lost.
Nurgle's Realm Mechanics in Total War: Warhammer 3
Nurgle, featured in the Warhammer 40k: Chaos Gate - Daemon Hunters trailer, has a realm that can be difficult to master because the player's army will suffer attrition while inside at every turn. Before confronting the realm's favored daemon prince, the faction leader must acquire a boon of Nurgle, which provides immunity to the effects of his realm. Finding the boon will require traveling far across the map while taking attrition and being attacked by Nurgle's armies. Nurgle's boons are mostly focused on healing to offset the effects of the plague lord's domain. Players can also mostly avoid attrition and even get some healing by traveling at half speed and ending their turn in the encamped stance. Though this will significantly slow down their progress, it will help keep their army alive.
Slaanesh's Realm Mechanics in Total War: Warhammer 3
The realm of the Dark Prince of all things excessive, Slaanesh, is made of a series of concentric circles leading to the tower of Slaanesh at the bottom. The circles are traversed through portals, and each time the player es through a portal, they will be offered significant boons such as money, faction buffs, and lord levels in exchange for leaving the realm. If the bribe is taken, the army will be ejected and unable to reenter Slaanesh's real during the current rift phase. It can be very difficult to catch up with or intercept enemy armies before they reach the bottom because of the confined pathways through the portals, so players should use the forced march stance through the area as much as possible. If it seems like another faction is going to beat them to the punch, players may want to cut their losses and take one of the available boons.
Tzeentch's Realm Mechanics in Total War: Warhammer 3
In Tzeentch, the trickster god's realm, payers will find a broken landscape that must be traversed through portals to reach the Impossible Fortress where Tzeench's favored daemon prince resides. The trick is that players won't know which portals are connected, at least not first. By defeating local armies and picking up Tzeetch's boons, sigils showing which portals are connected will slowly reveal the correct path to the player. It is also possible, though ill-advised, to randomly jump through portals. Each move through a portal ends the army's movement for the turn, so a miss-jump can significantly set back the player's progress. This also means enemy armies are extremely hard to catch up with, even in the forced march stance. Since Tzeentch offers no second place rewards like Slaanesh, it is probably a waste of time if the player is not the first to enter the realm.
Delving into the chaos realms can be a very difficult task, even more so for players unfamiliar with each realm's challenges. By learning the mechanics of each realm, the path to the daemon princes and the race against rival factions is made significantly easier. Even with this knowledge, the skill of the player as a general and the quality of their army will be the determining factor in their success during the survival battles at the end of each realm.
Total War: Warhammer 3 is available on PC, Mac, and Linux.
