Pelayan, ada beberapa Path of Exile di DLC Total War: Warhammer 3 saya

The Undead Legions don't have a tech tree. Instead, Nagash—the first and most powerful necromancer with the biggest hat and a goatee made of bones—has a personal web of enhancements called the Black Pyramid. When I saw this in the preview build I sent a screenshot to my coworkers who also had access to the preview and said, "This looks like Path of Exile."

They said the same, and so has everyone playing Nagash while streaming the Lords of the End Times DLC ahead of release. It's an unavoidable comparison when you see this multipath maze of upgrades so twisted it has its own search bar. It really does look like it came from the kind of action RPG you put 500 hours into then leave a negative review of on Steam.

While some branches are dedicated to improving specific troops and characters as well as your economy, plenty are direct buffs for Nagash himself. The nodes that connect those branches are also buffs for Nagash, so even if you dedicate yourself to activating nodes that let you summon every troop type in his expansive roster—he's got access to all three of Total War: Warhammer's undead flavors, the Tomb Kings, the Vampire Counts, and the piratical Vampire Coast—you'll inevitably be Nagashmaxxing as you go.

In no time at all Nagash becomes an absolute beast on the battlefield, casting Abyssal Swarms that create a vortex of bats, which don't harm his own troops but absolutely mince everyone else, then floating in to slice up the survivors with a sword the size of a train while his armor reflects projectiles back on whoever made the mistake of firing them.

Nodes on the Black Pyramid let me add spells to the Books of Nagash so he casts them passively, just lazily sucking the life out of enemies while also bashing them with his blade. Though to get the Books of Nagash I also have to find them out there in the world. Each of the tomes is held by a rogue army because Nagash loaned them out in the distant past and, like the world's crankiest librarian, it's time to collect.

Nagash also has to round up his mortarchs, the nine legendary lords and heroes (and one follower who acts more like an inventory item) he delegates to. These squabbling vampires, necromancers, and reanimated corpses have demands to fulfil before joining, like securing the lost fastness of Nagashizzar and activating 50 empowered sigils in the Black Pyramid. Adding them to the roster one by one feels like I'm slowly becoming Warhammer's most powerful Pokémon master.

What makes them and the Black Pyramid necessary is that when you play Nagash almost everyone hates you. Every time you perform the Ritual of Undeath to spread the Land of the Dead it comes with a diplomatic penalty because for some reason the neighbors don't like it when I turn my backyard into an ashen wasteland where the ground heaves with souls of the damned.

I have to do that to increase the cap on the number of necropolises I can build, which I need to activate more sigils on the Black Pyramid. They're also the only buildings with a decent defensive garrison, while everything else is a piddly little burial mound, mausoleum, or pirate cove that's easily taken by my enemies—who are almost everyone, because of the diplomatic penalties I keep accruing. It's a vicious cycle.

Nagash is the pointy end of an empire that is constantly on the verge of collapse, economically and diplomatically. He's a one-man army blender, but he can't be everywhere at once. After I recruit Luthor Harkon the vampire pirate as a mortarch I gain his holdings all the way over in Lustria, but both the dark elves and the skaven want to take them and if I send Nagash to help, the core of my lands will be hollowed out by the enemies we've got at home.

When the End Times come it's kind of a blessing. As the name of the DLC suggests, Lords of the End Times drops an enhanced apocalypse on your campaign—if you're not playing as Nagash there's a chance he could be yours, in which case good luck—and in my case it's Archaon and his Chaos invasion. He rocks up with five fortresses and 50 (!) roaming armies, which makes everyone else suddenly change their priorities and want to be friends. Suddenly, I'm the most popular girl in school.

Playing as Nagash is a precarious balance. You get to feel OP but also threatened, tearing up opponents when the big guy arrives but with an economy that means defensive armies are often blobs of whatever bony boys you can afford. I've loved it, but I'm also dreading having to face Nagash in my next campaign. He's going to absolutely shred me. Maybe it's not too late to send this soup back.