Total War Warhammer 3 Heroes Guide

Welcome to Total War Warhammer 3 Heroes guide. This guide will cover heroes and their usages.

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So heroes are unique in this game because they can be attached to an army functioning like a unit or operate independently from an army.

Our heroes operating independently of an army are what we will primarily cover here, making them different from all other unit types in the game.

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Intro to Total War Warhammer 3 Heroes Guide

So when heroes operate independently, they have the following attributes:

Enemy armies can’t attack them. Only enemy heroes can
They can wound and possibly kill other heroes
They have different abilities based on the type of hero they are.

So yes, they can’t be attacked by enemy armies, which is a big plus for heroes, making them great scouts.

Now, like in every strategy game, scouting is essential, and seeing beyond your settlement borders allows you to react to enemy attacks before they come.

Scouting is one vital usage of heroes, and the other is being able to wound enemy heroes operating independently of an army.

Heroes are the only way you can kill enemy heroes not attached to an army, so keeping a hero or two with your main army is a smart move to kill enemy heroes near you.

Total War Warhammer 3 Heroes: Different abilities

Now while all heroes can wound other heroes, that’s where the similarities between different types of heroes end.

Each faction has a few heroes, and they are all different from each other, but while they are different, there is a pool of offensive action they get to access.

So all heroes generally have access to a few of the abilities below (not all)

Damage Walls
Assault Units
Assault Garrison
Damage Building
Block Army
Steal Research

Now be aware that this is the list of abilities I could remember off the top of my head that doesn’t include faction-specific abilities.

Now there are other abilities available to heroes, including benefits to having them attached to a lord’s army. Still, these are usually the offensive actions they can take during a turn.

Now be aware that a hero can only use one offensive action per turn, and it ends their turn after usage. It costs income to use offensive actions, usually 250 to 500, depending on the action’s difficulty and the hero’s level.

There is also a chance that your hero can become wounded or killed if the action fails, as some of them can. Before you make an offensive action, you will see the chance of it falling.

We will now go over what each of the offensive abilities does.

Damage Walls

Damaging walls is instrumental if you are about to attack a settlement, as if the action succeeds, you will have an instant gap through which your army can get through. So damaging walls do just that. It has the chance to damage the walls of a settlement.

Damaging walls is helpful if you are about to attack an enemy settlement or it is to be attacked by an ally or another faction also waging war on your enemy.

Now, this ability has lost a bit of utility since Creative Assembly decided to give every legendary lord the siege attacker trait. However, it’s still useful, especially if you are attacking a settlement with a non-legendary lord, as it allows you to skip having to siege.

Assault Units

The assault units allow you to assault the units in an enemy lords army and damage some units (including heroes and lords) in an enemy army.

I have to say that I am very mixed about this ability as I honestly don’t see why you wouldn’t just battle against the enemy army with your army.

Players can use this ability in certain situations, such as if an enemy lord is getting too close to your territory and you don’t have a lord of yours around to intercept. You may have a hero assault the enemy lord to slow them may be down or weaken them.

This may give you some extra time for your lord to intercept, especially if the enemy is forced to encamp to replenish losses.

This works exceptionally well if you are playing with a faction that generates corruption that causes enemy attrition. Having your army assaulted by a hero and suffering attrition can weaken an army in a few turns.

If you are thinking about having multiple heroes assault the same army in the same turn, it doesn’t seem to work. Once you assault an army, the chance of assaulting them again seems so high that the game won’t let you assault the same army with a different hero.

Good on you for thinking about that. If you were, that’s awesome, as that’s the kind of strategic mastermind you want to be to play this game, and if you weren’t, well, open up that mind and bring out the inner Machiavelli.

One thing that is a bit of a disadvantage to this ability is that you can’t decide which units will take the damage as I believe that it shows you in advance before you take the action which units will take the damage you can’t pick.

So like I said, this ability seems to be better used in a weakening capacity, sort of as a guerrilla warfare tactic for dealing with a powerful enemy rather than for an aggressive tactic that you use constantly.

Also, don’t waste this ability on a weak lord, as the cost is quite substantial, so make it count. You’re better off using this ability to protect your income-producing buildings than using it aggressively on the offense.

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Assault Garrison

This assault garrison ability is similar to assault units but is for assaulting a settlement’s garrison. You can weaken an enemy settlement before attacking them with your lord, so unlike the assault unit’s ability, which is primarily used defensively, you can use this one offensively.

One exciting use of this is to use it on an enemy settlement that is about to be attacked by an ally or another faction to weaken them before they are attacked.

This ability is used the same way as the damage walls ability, but in my opinion, the damage walls ability is better. You can use these two in combination with each other (not tested).

Damage Buildings

The damage building’s ability is an interesting ability that is best used before an attack. So basically, this allows you to damage the buildings in an enemy settlement.

Now be aware that this only damages a building, not destroys it so the enemy can repair it. Still, an exciting use of this is to damage the garrison building of a settlement to take away the garrison from the settlement supplied by the building.

Block Army

The block army ability is used both offensively and defensively. Players can use it to slow down an enemy lord from getting to your territory (great combined with other movement reductions such as province edicts)

Usually, if an army wants to get away from you, they can by staying in march mode, so you will mainly be using this defensively. But you can use this offensively to keep an army from getting away. Such as if you’re trying to chase down an army.

That said, you don’t get to pick which abilities your hero gets access to, so sometimes you have to make the best of what you have.

This ability also works well with corruption-producing races that cause enemy army attrition, as slowing the enemy army down will make them suffer more.

Steal Research

Now the steal research ability is an interesting one I don’t often use as it’s usually attached to spell casters. Magic is so powerful in this game that I typically want to have spell casters attached to armies.

That said, since there is often no benefit to having more than one spell caster in an army, if you have any extra recruitment slots for spellcasters, you might use them as heroes.

In that case, having them on the edge of your provinces to keep an eye on enemy lords while stealing research might be helpful because you can also use them to wound enemy heroes in the area.

Area Control

Now I am going to cover using heroes for area control. What do I mean by area control? Now, this factor is more critical for some factions than others.

Certain factions like Skaven and Vampire Coast have this ability to build under-cities or pirate coasts in other faction settlements, and the chance of these under-cities being discovered increases the more enemy heroes are in the area.

But even if this is not the case allowing enemy heroes to stay near your settlements or lords is dangerous, as one of the enemy factions can see what their heroes see. Still, two enemy heroes can also do nasty things to your settlements, lords, and heroes and wound and potentially kill your heroes.

This is why you want to kill all enemy heroes you encounter on the map, as there is no advantage to keeping them around and plenty of disadvantages to keeping them around.

Also, if you have no heroes of your own in an area, the enemy heroes will be able to run havoc and do whatever they want unchallenged, so you need your heroes to counter enemy heroes and vice versa.

This is also one reason you should have some positive income cash flow to have money to use hero actions to protect your income-producing buildings while harassing an enemy.

Conclusion to Total War Warhammer 3 Heroes Guide

This was Part 7 of our Total War Warhammer 3 Guide for beginners covering heroes.

Also, the affiliate link to purchase Total War Warhammer 3 from Steam is here: https://sovrn.co/vouhli4

Total War Warhammer 3 Heroes Guide

Intro to Total War Warhammer 3 Heroes Guide

Total War Warhammer 3 Heroes: Different abilities

Damage Walls

Assault Units

Assault Garrison

Damage Buildings

Block Army

Steal Research

Area Control

Conclusion to Total War Warhammer 3 Heroes Guide

Links

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