Total War: Warhammer III Realm of Chaos Guide: Surviving the Dark Ritual

The Realm of Chaos campaign doesn't end with a big conquest map. It ends with a race. Ursun the bear god is chained in the Forge of Souls, Be'lakor is eating his power, and every major faction on the map wants to get there first. To open the way, you need four daemon souls, and the only way to get them is to walk into the Chaos gods' own backyards and take them.

The catch is that you're not doing this alone. The AI factions want the same four souls, they'll muscle into the same areas, and if one of them collects all four before you do, you get one last chance to jump them outside the Forge. So the whole campaign is really about timing: when to step into a rift, what to grab while you're in there, and how to keep your home provinces from burning while your best army is off in hell.

How the Realm of Chaos Portals Work

Everything starts with Ursun roaring in pain. At some point early on, usually around turn 30 to 35, the first Chaos Rifts tear open across the map. From then on they come back on a cycle. Here's the rhythm:

| Thing | What happens | | --- | --- | | First rifts | Around turn 30-35 | | Cycle length | New rift wave every 25 to 35 turns | | How long they stay open | 15 turns, then they seal on their own | | Cooldown | Roughly 10 turns before the next wave can start |

A few things about the rifts that the game does a poor job of explaining:

Each province gets one rift, in the same spot every time. The location is fixed, so after the first wave you know exactly where the next one will pop in your home territory. That's free intel - you can park an army next to it before it opens.

The rift's color doesn't lock you into anything. Rifts come in Khorne, Slaanesh, Nurgle, and Tzeentch flavors, but the color only tells you what kind of corruption and daemon forces will leak out of it. When you walk in, you pick any of the four areas to visit. A red rift can drop you in Tzeentch's maze if that's the soul you need.

Only your faction leader can go through. Not your second lord, not a hero, just the one army with your Legendary Lord in it. That's a big deal, because it means the army you bring is the army you fight with. There's no tag-teaming.

You get one soul per rift phase. Once you claim a soul, you're teleported back to the rift you entered from and the rest of the rifts stop letting you in for that wave. You can't clear two areas in one go, so don't try to plan for it.

Rifts are also free travel. Entering one lets you pop out at any other rift you can see. On a map this size, that's a genuinely fast way to move your leader army from one end of the world to the other, and it works even if you have no interest in the domains that cycle.

You can close them. Move any army onto a rift and pick "Close Rift" to fight the daemon force guarding it, or use a hero action to seal it quietly. More on why you'd bother in the incursions section below.

If the timer runs out while you're still inside a domain, you're not kicked out - you can finish what you started. Just don't dawdle, because the negatives stack up the longer you stay (more on that in a bit).

One more wrinkle. When any faction, including you, grabs its fourth soul, the rifts reopen right away. If it was an AI faction, you get an interception quest: beat their army outside the Forge of Souls and they're turned back. Since patch 1.1, losing that fight strips the enemy lord of every soul they were carrying, which forces them to start the whole soul hunt over. That's your safety net if you fall behind on souls, so keep it in your back pocket.

Navigating Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch, and Slaanesh Realms

Each god's domain is its own little puzzle with its own rules. Most players settle on the order Khorne, then Slaanesh, then Nurgle, then Tzeentch, and that ordering is about right - it goes from simplest to meanest, and it front-loads the ones where being fast matters most.

Khorne: the Blood God's Domain

Khorne's area is the most honest one. There's a red meter over your army, and it fills as you smash the rogue armies wandering around. Roughly four wins fills it. Once it's full, the Brass Citadel in the middle unlocks and you go challenge the Gatekeeper for his soul.

The trap here is that the AI clears this one fast. Multiple daemon warbands can jump you in a single turn, and a rival lord who's left alone can fill their meter in a couple of turns. So the usual advice is backwards from what you'd expect: hunt the other faction leaders first, then mop up the neutral armies at your leisure.

There are four unique weapons, one in each corner of the map, and each comes with a full replenish for your army. Grabbing one makes a unit unbreakable. Nice, but they vanish the moment you enter a different god's domain, so treat them as a loaner rather than a prize.

Replenishment here is basically encamp stance or nothing. If you're hurt, camp and heal instead of pushing into the next fight.

For the battles themselves, bring a solid infantry line (Bloodletters shred light infantry) and armor-piercing ranged to crack the armored Chaos Warriors and to put damage into a Bloodthirster.

Slaanesh: the Dark Prince's Domain

This one is shaped like a target - concentric rings, and you descend toward the tower in the middle through a gate on each ring. Mechanically it's simple. Strategically it's a pain, because if a rival lord entered before you, the layout makes catching them nearly impossible. You basically need to be first in, or hope the patrolling Slaaneshi armies bleed them.

The famous part is the bribes. Every gate you pass through, Slaanesh offers you something to just leave: gold, permanent lord levels, faction buffs. Take a deal and you're ejected, done for that rift phase. The offers get better the deeper you go, and the final gate's offer is famous for a reason - the Dark Prince's Paramour, an ancillary that gives +25 control in every province you own. That more or less switches off rebellions and Chaos uprisings for the rest of the campaign, and it can come bundled with either 45,000 or 90,000 gold depending on the roll.

So there's a real argument for hitting Slaanesh on the first rift wave and eating the final bribe instead of taking the soul early on. You'll have to come back for the soul eventually, but control that good buys you corrupted provinces and cheap garrisons all game. Your call on the timing - just know the option exists.

The run down takes a good seven turns even when nothing blocks you, so don't leave this one for last if you can help it. If a rival's clearly going to beat you to the bottom, cut your losses and take whatever bribe is on the table rather than walking away with nothing.

In a fight, Slaanesh's stuff is fast and hits hard. Focus down the big single entities and chariots before they hit your line, and bring cavalry of your own to hold the flanks.

Nurgle: the Garden

Nurgle's domain is a cross-country march. You walk from one end to the other, and when you reach the far side you unlock the fight with the Gardener for his soul.

The catch is attrition. Every turn in the garden chips your army, and Nurgle's forces block the paths on top of that. The white circles scattered around are your friends - stepping into one heals your army and grants resistance to the attrition for a while.

The fix most people use is encamp stance. Moving camped is half speed, but it stops the attrition entirely and lets you heal. Slow and boring, sure, but it works. Anything that cuts attrition damage - an ancillary, a lord skill line - is worth slotting before you go in. A healer in the army earns their pay here too.

For the battles, Nurgle's units are slow and mostly unarmored, but they've got physical resistance, fat health pools, and regeneration. Magic damage cuts through the physical resistance, and fire damage slows the regen, so artillery and magic do serious work. Just bring something to swat the Plague Drones and Rot Flies, or they'll land on your guns all day.

Tzeentch: the Impossible Fortress

This is the one people complain about. The map is broken into floating islands linked by portals, and you don't know which portal connects to which island. Jump through one and your movement for the turn is spent, so a wrong guess costs you a full turn.

To learn the network, you do two things: beat the armies here and pick "reveal teleport sigil" when dealing with the captives, or step into the white circles for a boon of Tzeentch. Each reveal shows sigils above two linked portals. It's a process of elimination - keep notes on which portal goes where, and watch where rival armies pop out if they're moving through too, since their movement teaches you the map for free.

The nasty part is that the AI doesn't really puzzle it out the way you do, so a rival that entered before you will usually beat you to the Impossible Fortress and the Librarian's soul. There's no consolation prize here like Slaanesh's bribes. The accepted play is to leave Tzeentch for last and hope the AI factions have already grabbed their Tzeentch soul, which leaves you room to make mistakes.

In a fight, don't blob up. Tzeentch brings spells and a wall of ranged fire that punishes clumped infantry, plus flying units like Doom Knights that eat ranged units. Answer with your own ranged firepower, spread out, and use heavy cavalry to run down the Pink and Blue Horrors.

The Soul Battle at the End

Whoever's soul you're after, the finale is a survival battle, and all four follow the same shape: attack, capture a point, then fortify and hold against a wave. That repeats three times, getting uglier each round, and the third one brings the daemon prince straight at you from the front rather than the flanks.

You pay for everything with defensive supplies, earned by capturing points and killing things. Supplies buy magic towers at the marked spots, unit upgrades, healing, ammunition, and reserve units that get stronger each phase. The vortex button pulls a badly wounded unit out to your reserve so it comes back later at full strength - cheap way to save a favorite.

Two habits win these. First, don't rush the capture. Line up where you want to defend first, because you only get about a minute between grabbing a point and the counterattack. Second, click the button at the strategic point after capping it so your reinforcements spawn there instead of a phase back.

Managing Chaos Favor and Realm-Specific Buffs

"Chaos favor" is really three separate economies, and it helps to keep them straight in your head.

The Boons You Find Lying Around

The white circles in each domain give a perk themed to that god when you walk through them. Nurgle's lean toward healing and attrition protection. Tzeentch's include research boosts and portal sigil reveals. Khorne's corners hold those unbreakable weapons plus a full heal. They're free, they're on your way, and there's rarely a reason to skip one.

The Bribes

Slaanesh's gate offers are the only ones that ask you to trade the soul for power, and they're the only ones worth thinking hard about. Gold scales from petty to 45,000 or 90,000 at the bottom, the permanent lord levels are real, and the Dark Prince's Paramour is about as close to a run-winner as an ancillary gets. Early rift waves, when you can't realistically win four survival battles anyway, are the classic time to cash out.

Just remember the weapons and most of these perks don't travel. Khorne's blade dissolves when you step into Nurgle's garden. Souls and whatever you banked at Slaanesh's gates are what stick.

The Negative Traits

Here's the tax on all of it. Every turn your lord spends inside a domain, there's a chance they pick up a negative trait specific to that god. Traits have levels, and a fully leveled one can hit your whole faction - Khorne's can tank control or leadership everywhere. Lingering is how you end up marching a cursed lord around for thirty turns.

Ways out:

• Win the survival battle. Since patch 1.1, finishing a domain's battle clears that domain's traits off your lord. One more reason not to enter a domain half-cocked.
• Garrison the lord in a settlement with a building from the protection chain, which gives you a shot at removing a trait each turn. A province capital works too, at about a 50 percent chance per turn. Doing both at once is the fast version.
• If you're playing a Chaos faction, your lord is immune to their own patron's traits. Skarbrand can camp in Khorne's domain all day.

The clean habit: get in, do the objective, win the battle, get out. Treat each domain like a timed errand, not a place to explore.

Handling Enemy Chaos Incursions on the Main Map

While you're off soul hunting, the rifts are making a mess back home. Two things leak out of every open rift: corruption and daemons.

The corruption is the quieter problem. Each rift pumps out its god's corruption into the province, and multiple rifts in one region can swing the balance hard. Creeping corruption means unrest, and unrest means rebellions - which is exactly the wrong thing to come home to.

The daemons are the loud problem. An open rift spawns forces on a timer - by the game files, agents start showing up after about two turns and a full daemon army after about five. Left alone, a rift in the middle of your territory will keep producing armies that wander off toward your nearest settlement. They're not endless, but they're persistent, and fighting the same fight four times gets old.

So the standing orders for each rift wave are pretty simple:

• Close rifts in or near your own provinces. Any army can do it, not just your leader. Fight the guarding force, or spend a hero action to shut it without a battle.
• Leave distant rifts alone if you like. One in the far corner of the map, in land you don't care about, is somebody else's problem.
• Build the protection chain. The protection buildings (the torch line) don't just help cleanse traits - having one in a province stops rifts from spawning there at all. Dropping one on your capital province means never fighting an incursion at home again. That's probably the single best investment in this campaign.
• Keep a home army. Your leader is the only one allowed into the domains, so have a second decent stack for closing rifts and swatting whatever crawled out before you left.

The rifts cut both ways, though. Since entering one lets you exit at any other rift in vision, a rift near your frontier and a rift near a rival's capital make a handy shortcut for your own armies. Use the enemy's door against them.

And keep an eye on the destination list when you enter a rift. If you don't commit your lord right away, little faction markers appear next to each god's domain showing who's already inside. Choose somewhere unclaimed when you can - contesting a domain someone else started is usually wasted turns.

Preparing Your Army Before Entering the Ritual

Since only your leader's army goes in, and each survival battle is three phases of fighting with no auto-resolve safety net at the end of the campaign, this is the part where you spend real money.

Bring one good stack, not two okay ones. Full health before you step in, replenished, with any red-line combat skills your lord has access to taken care of. If the army's beat up, heal it first - the domains will do the wounding for you.

Tailor the roster to where you're going.

| Domain | What to bring | | --- | --- | | Khorne | Solid infantry line, armor-piercing ranged for Chaos Warriors and the Bloodthirster | | Slaanesh | Ranged focus fire, cavalry to guard flanks against fast hitters | | Nurgle | Artillery and magic damage, fire where possible, plus flyers or ranged to drop Plague Drones | | Tzeentch | Spread-out formation, your own strong ranged, heavy cav to run down Horrors |

A healer caster is never a bad pick, and in Nurgle's garden it's close to mandatory. Artillery earns a slot almost everywhere - it can bait an enemy into attacking you on your terms during a survival battle's attack phase, which cuts your losses a lot.

Prep your traits and buildings before the wave. Get a protection building up in the province you'll stage from, so your lord can purge any negative traits the moment they're back. If your faction has attrition reduction anywhere in its kit, take it before Nurgle.

Know when you're going. Rifts give you 15 turns, and a domain run plus a three-phase battle eats most of that. Don't enter on turn 14 of a wave. Enter early, ideally the same turn the rifts open, so you're first in and the soul is unclaimed.

Save some cash for the survival battle. Supplies in the battle buy towers, healing, and reserves, but the reserve options each phase get better, and spending freely in phase one leaves you thin in phase three when the daemon prince walks at you from the front. Bank a little.

For the endgame, plan around the Forge of Souls. After your fourth soul you get 40 turns to reach and beat Be'lakor, the rifts stop closing on their own, and that fight can't be auto-resolved. Unlike every domain so far, his army pulls from all four god rosters at once and the pressure never lets up between phases - fresh spawns keep appearing behind you the whole way across the island. Magic towers and a rearguard you're willing to sacrifice buy you the space to burn Be'lakor down. Focus your toughest units and all your damage on him, drop the wave counter to zero, and you don't have to wipe the map.

Last concrete thing worth knowing: the fourth soul is the only one that starts the clock. If you've got three souls and a weak army, you can sit on it for a wave, recruit, rebuild, and take the last one fresh. A lot of players lose that final battle because they walked in with whatever survived the Librarian.