Total War: WARHAMMER II. A strategy game of fantastical proportions. Strategy gaming perfected. A breath-taking campaign of exploration, expansion and conquest across a fantasy world. Turn-based civilisation management and real-time epic strategy battles with thousands of troops and monsters at your command.

High Elves Tyrion

The way multi-tiered traits work is that you have a% chance to get a point towards that trait, and it takes 2 points to give you the trait. So, after two rolls of the same trait, you actually get the trait. I believe the chance for unjust and untrustworthy are 6%, so basically you have to roll that 6% twice to get one of the traits.
7.4K WARHAMMER II Support Forum; 2.7K Total War. EVERYONE of my characters have the bloodlust trait & even if I place them in uncorrupted territory that I own.
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Nov 23, 2020 Please help Total War: WARHAMMER Wiki by fixing inaccurate or outdated information. Not to be confused with Diplomatic traits. Character traits are special character modifiers that can be obtained in the course of the campaign, depending on the character's performance.

First, this guide will assume that you own The Queen and the Crone DLC, because you really want access to the Sisters of Avelorn and being able to confederate Alarielle makes uniting Ulthuan a lot faster and easier. Also you need the DLC to access the Regiments of Renown, which you won’t need for your main armies, but they are great as emergency instant recruits for defending a settlement. Also, Handmaidens will be very important, see below. For reducing difficulty, I would argue that this DLC is as important to the High Elves as The Grim and the Grave is for the Empire, if not more so. Sisters of Avelorn shred armored units. Of course, if you love a challenge and hate paid DLC on principle, the campaign is still totally doable with adjustments, and I will make a summary at the end with some ideas for what army compositions to run if you do not have the DLC.

Second, I play on Very Hard/Very Hard (VH/VH) and this guide is meant to give you not just a high probability of winning your campaign on VH/VH, but winning as quickly and efficiently as possible. If you are completely new to Total War then I highly recommend playing High Elves as Tyrion on Normal/Normal with High Advisor Advice and doing the Introduction, as well as watching a bunch of the Youtube video guides on how to fight battles, etc. My goal is to save you from having a 300 turn campaign that you should have won by turn 180. My goal is to compile the best tips & tricks as a reference for if you take a long break and then come back to High Elves having forgot a lot of stuff.

Third, I may use the acronym LSG a lot. This shall stand for Lothern Sea Guard with Shields. LSG without shields can be useful in a pinch, but otherwise, LSG with Shields are plainly superior, so LSG shall always mean the ones with shields unless I specifically state otherwise.

Fourth, following this guide, you should not need to put any hero in any of your armies, with the possible exception of “Damage Walls”-built Loremasters of Hoeth. Having many Heroes on the Campaign map seems to be a burden on my PC and slows things down, and I have a PC that can play on Ultra settings. I have not confirmed if my PC slows down also just with lots of heroes standing around on the map un-assigned to armies, but this definitely seems to be the case when you have lots of heroes in armies. And I just find that managing heroes in armies can sometimes be quite annoying. For example, let’s say you play Mortal Empires and you have an army conquer Norsca, but now you need it down south near Karak-Eight-Peaks (K8P). Since moving the army to K8P could take 10 turns or more, it makes more sense to just disband that army and create a new one closer to the action. But if you have heroes in the army and you disband the army, you still have to move those heroes back, unless you just want to leave them in Norsca and forget about them. And that could be a terrible waste of leveled heroes.

At the bottom I include a list of the Top Tier Traits for High Elf Lords and Heroes. Reference that list for what the trait does when I tell you to recruit a Lord or Hero with a certain trait.

Lord and Hero Basics

Lords

I recommend the Campaign (Blue) Skill Line to start for all lords to start. Besides -15% recruiting cost, -23% upkeep, and +15% movement once you get to “Renowned & Feared”, the middle Blue skill gives +1 to recruitment capacity in the province. And this skill stacks, so having 4 Lords in one province would give +4 recruitment capacity. This is very important, because High Elves only have 3 base recruitment slots. Get +1 slot if your province has +75-100 Happiness and gets the “Jubilant Populace” buff. +1 from the Tier 4 Ithilmar Smith building, and +1 per Lord with that Blue Skill. So normally, you will only have 5 or 6 (Lord with blue skill) recruitment slots, meaning it will take you at least 4 turns to recruit your army. You need that +1 recruitment capacity. This recruitment limit is also why I recommend on Tyrion, choosing the line that gives +2 global recruitment capacity. The other line makes him even more of a beast in combat, but if you give him a strong army like you should then he should be tough enough anyway to tank the enemy while your army does the heavy lifting.
If building a ranged army, recruit a Princess. After the Blue line, you want to go Red Line, getting everything that improves ranged units. A Princess with the right Red Line skills can give +30% reload to ranged unit, +40% if she has the Energetic Trait. And there is a Research that gives Lothern Sea Guard +15% reload, so LSG could potentially get +45-55% reload. Punitive Trait is probably the best hands down, followed by Energetic. Ardent is good if you have an All-LSG army and Punitive is not available. And using a Prince to lead a ranged army is just fine, a Princess provides a better boost but honestly an army of LSG and Sisters of Avelorn will shred everything while the Lord just sits on their hands anyways.
If building a melee army, recruit a Prince. You want Dragon-Willed Trait if you plan to make a full army of Dragons. Red Line is not as important for the Prince.
You want to end up putting either Lord type on a Star Dragon once high enough level. Always grab the Immortal Trait as soon as you hit Level 20.

I’ll list the skills Heroes have for reference here so you have it and we can move on:
Noble – Replenish, Secure Influence, Assassinate, Assault Units, Increase Trade (Trash)
Handmaiden – Replenish, Growth, Damage Building, Hinder Replenishment
Loremaster – Damage Walls, Training, Public Order, Hinder Replenishment
Mage – Cleanse Corruption, Steal Technology, Block Army, Scouting

High Elf Lords and Heroes that cost no Influence have negative traits. Ones that have positive traits cost some influence, ones with the best positive traits cost a lot of Influence.

Lords with the Best Positive Traits cost 60 Influence
Lords with OK Positive Traits cost 15 Influence
Alaster the White Lion is the exception, he costs 30 Influence to recruit

Heroes with the Best Positive Traits cost 40 Influence
Heroes with Positive Traits cost 10 Influence

Influence and how to use Heroes part 1

Influence

High Elves have a unique resource called Influence. You can get some from random events and other junk, but not anywhere near enough, so you have to go farm it. This is what your Noble hero will be for, farming influence. Here is what you do:

The Noble can perform the “Secure Influence” action against another faction’s settlement, which earns 3 influence base for a successful “Secure Influence” action. You can put 3 skill points into the Secure Influence Skill, so each Noble can get you 6 Influence with each successful action each turn.

You are going to be using pretty much all of your Nobles to secure influence, especially at the start of your campaign. Therefore, you will not need Nobles with Top Tier (40 Influence) Traits, 10 Influence Traits will be fine (WITH THE EXCEPTION OF CONSCIENTIOUS, GET EVERY CONSCIENTIOUS NOBLE YOU SEE, EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO DISBAND ANOTHER NOBLE). You could even recruit Nobles with negative traits for no influence, especially if you are trying to recruit as many in a turn as possible to get them farming for you ASAP, up to you, but seeing negative traits annoys me so I never recruit them.

Your goal is to get 10 Nobles farming influence for you As Soon As Possible (ASAP), and I would ev

Total War Warhammer 2 Remove Negative Traits