This guide covers four things players ask about most: how to unlock the mode in the current version, the difference between having access and having a roster, what Update 9.0 changed underneath the campaign, and how to survive your first 30 turns in a sandbox that has no story to hold your hand.
What Immortal Empires actually is
WARHAMMER III ships with two campaigns, and they are not the same kind of game:
- Realm of Chaos — the narrative campaign. A portal opens in the north, four Chaos realms hand out souls, and the objective list tells you what to do next. It is short by Total War standards and it teaches the systems in order.
- Immortal Empires — the sandbox. The campaign maps of WARHAMMER I, II and III are stitched into one continuous world, every race that you own content for is on it, and nobody assigns you objectives beyond your faction's victory conditions. It is the mode most players eventually live in.
The important consequence: Immortal Empires is not a longer version of Realm of Chaos. There is no soul race, no portal deadline, and no sequence of missions moving you across the map. You choose a direction, you take ground, and the campaign ends when you decide it does — or when an end-game scenario decides it for you (see what Update 9.0 changed).
How to unlock Immortal Empires now
There are three legitimate routes. They all give access to the same map; they differ in which factions you can actually play on it.
| Route | What you get | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|
| Own Total War: WARHAMMER III | Immortal Empires plus the WARHAMMER III races and the Realm of Chaos campaign. | Anyone who wants the full game as sold. |
| Own WARHAMMER I or II | Immortal Empires inside WARHAMMER III, plus the races of the older title you own. Reported to work on supported storefronts. | Returning players who still have an old copy installed in their library. |
| Buy any one Lords of the End Times lord (Nagash, Thanquol, Boris Todbringer or the Glottkin) | Immortal Empires, that lord's faction and its core roster, that race's associated free content, and the WARHAMMER III prologue — without owning any base game. | Anyone who wants the sandbox at the lowest entry price and does not care about Realm of Chaos. |
Two things the marketing line does not spell out:
- Access is not the same as roster. The map is one thing; the playable factions on it are another. Owning WARHAMMER I adds its races to Immortal Empires, owning a DLC adds that DLC's lords and units. A single End Times pack gets you into the sandbox with that pack's faction — not with the other sixty-odd.
- The DLC route is reported to exclude Realms of Chaos. Launch coverage of the September change described the unlocked content as Immortal Empires plus the prologue, not the narrative campaign. If the souls race matters to you, that is the argument for owning WARHAMMER III itself.
Pricing as launched: the four lords are sold individually (launch coverage quoted $8.99 each) with a bundle discount if you take all four. Regional pricing varies — check your own store page rather than a converted number.
If you already own WARHAMMER III and are only missing lords, do not buy anything yet: the free Update 9.0 content (Neferata, the Vampire Counts rework, the new end-game scenarios) requires no purchase at all. See our Neferata and Vampire Counts rework guide.
What Update 9.0 changed under the campaign
Update 9.0 shipped free on 24 September 2026 alongside Lords of the End Times. The paid packs are characters; the patch changed the shape of a long campaign. The parts that matter before turn 1:
| Change | Why it matters in Immortal Empires |
|---|---|
| Three new End Game Scenarios: Chaos Invasion, Vermintide, Nagash Rises | Late campaigns now end against a designed final threat instead of trailing off. Each has its own mechanics, cinematics and world-state effects. They can be disabled or customised during campaign setup. |
| Older endgame threats reclassified as Crisis Scenarios | Events such as A Grudge Too Far and The Wild Hunt are now framed as disruptive mid-game crises rather than the finale. |
| Victory conditions overhauled | Short and long victory objectives were revised for many factions. Read your faction's conditions before you commit to a direction — the old "conquer these eight provinces" route may no longer be it. |
| Archaon campaign rework | Defeating eligible Chaos Legendary Lords lets him subjugate and field them. After his short victory he can declare himself Lord of the End Times — an irreversible switch to razing and spreading Devastation instead of conquest. |
| New Dark Fortresses and battle maps | Locations including the Black Pyramid, Karaz-a-Karak, Khemri, Kislev, Lothern, Naggarond and Nagashizzar became Dark Fortresses; Middenheim, the Black Pyramid and Nagashizzar were added as battle maps. |
| End-turn processing and AI recruitment | Creative Assembly reported roughly a 30% cut in end-turn time and a rework of how the campaign AI recruits, aimed at the long-running "armies clumping around settlements" complaint. |
Patch 9.0.3 followed on 9 October 2026 with Nagash economy and Sigil generation changes, a Lore of Nehekhara pass, wider unit and spell balance, and a long bug-fix list — including a fix for a crash in the Vampire Counts confederation panel and a fix that stopped Corpses and Blood from refunding more than units cost.
Practical detail people learn the hard way: major patches break mods. If you run a large overhaul, expect to wait for the author to update before a new campaign behaves. Our WH3 mods hub has the compatibility guidance.
Before you press start: the setup checklist
- Read the end-game scenario options. You can leave the new scenarios on, customise them, or turn them off. If you want an uninterrupted sandbox, this is the one setting to change — and it is much easier to set now than to discover at turn 150.
- Pick difficulty deliberately. Campaign and battle difficulty are separate. Raising battle difficulty buffs enemy melee stats, which quietly punishes melee-heavy factions more than ranged ones.
- Check your faction's victory conditions in the campaign panel before turn 1, because 9.0 rewrote many of them.
- Mods: settle the list first. Load order problems look like campaign bugs. Test one change at a time.
- Save before crisis windows. Keep a manual save from roughly 20 turns before you expect a scenario or crisis to fire, so you can replay a bad roll without restarting.
Your first 30 turns in a sandbox
The beginner rule still applies — one war, one core province, one main army — but the sandbox punishes drift harder than the narrative campaign, because nothing is steering you. A sequence that works for most starts:
- Turns 1–5: finish your starting province. Province completion bonuses are the cheapest income in the game, and a complete province is also a defensible one.
- Turns 5–10: one income building per safe settlement, one growth building in the capital. Then sign non-aggression pacts and trade deals with everyone who is not already hostile — trade income is passive and does not require an army.
- Turns 10–20: pick one direction of expansion and make it the direction your army can retreat from. Fight the single enemy that blocks your region; ignore the tempting undefended settlement three provinces away.
- Turns 20–30: consolidate into a second full army, then decide whether you are playing tall (few provinces, high tier) or wide (many provinces, low tier). Doing both at once is how campaigns stall.
If you have not played WARHAMMER III before, do a short Realm of Chaos run first — the systems are taught there in order. Our beginner's guide covers the first 20 turns in more detail, and the faction guide explains which starts are forgiving.
What "winning" looks like now
Immortal Empires has always had two endings: the victory screen, and the point where you get bored. Update 9.0 tries to fix the second one. A campaign now typically runs:
- Early game: survive and consolidate one region.
- Mid game: Crisis Scenarios fire and disrupt the map — this is where most campaigns get interesting or die.
- Late game: one End Game Scenario becomes the campaign's finale, with its own mechanics and victory condition.
- After: you can keep playing. Razed territory from a scenario cannot be recolonised until the threat is beaten, which turns the aftermath into a land rush.
If you would rather not be interrupted, disable the scenarios and play it as a pure sandbox — that is an intended option, not a cheat.
Mistakes that end Immortal Empires runs
- Buying the whole trilogy "to be safe". Buy the access route you need, then add the races you actually want to play.
- Expanding in three directions. The map is huge; your army is not. Two fronts is already a stretch before turn 50.
- Ignoring the end-game setting. Finding out at turn 150 that a scenario you did not want is incoming is avoidable.
- Fielding elite units without the economy. Upkeep is what kills sandbox campaigns, not battles.
- Starting a new campaign the week of a major patch with a big mod list. Wait for the mod updates or play unmodded.
- Chasing a fleeing army across the map while your capital is unwalled.
Illustration: original AI concept art of a campaign war table, made for this guide.
Fact boundary: compiled on 28 October 2026 from Creative Assembly's Update 9.0 / patch 9.0.3 notes and public launch coverage of Lords of the End Times (24 September 2026). Prices, storefront rules and balance numbers are as reported at that date and can change. Warhammer Guide has not tested these steps in-game; treat turn counts and difficulty advice as experience guidelines, not fixed rules.
Next steps: unlock the mode with the WH3 DLC and unlocks guide, choose a start with the faction guide, plan the finale with our end game scenarios guide, or read the Neferata and Vampire Counts rework guide. Picking a race? The Grand Cathay guide and the Kislev guide cover two Order sides in detail.
