Total War: Warhammer II — Beastmen rework and Herdstones guide

Rewards of Dread upgrades and Favor

Dread is a key resource when you play as the Beastmen in Total War: Warhammer II. It increases based on the number of enemy units that you kill, certain buildings (i.e., the Heads on Spikes chain for horde armies and the Shamanic Challenges chain for Herdstones), razed settlements, and via events or missions. Taurox also gains dread from his Rampage mechanic.

Unit caps

There are three main uses of the Dread resource when you open the Rewards of Dread screen. The first panel is for unit caps. This lets you increase the limit of recruitable units across your entire faction. The better the unit, the more Dread points are needed.

Remember, you still have to unlock them via Marks of Ruination. Additionally, an individual army has to have the proper buildings constructed so it can recruit these units. Still, you can get the building improvements for your main lord, recruit the troops, then transfer them to supporting armies.

Lords and heroes

The next panel is for legendary lords and heroes. Here, you can have the other Beastmen legendary lords join your faction (not through the usual diplo-confederation means). The lords will be available via the recruitment pool and they’ll retain their levels and skills assuming you’re playing Mortal Empires. However, if you’re playing the Vortex campaign as Taurox, then the three other LLs will be level 1 since they’re not part of that campaign.

Similarly, this is also the panel where you get to increase the caps for Beastmen heroes. You’ve got the Wargor, Gorebull, and Bray-Shaman to help bolster your forces.

Upgrades

The last panel that uses Dread is for upgrades. On the left-hand side, the column lets you raise Herdstones that are at a higher level. For the other upgrades (going from left to right), the top row allows for newly-fielded horde armies to start with certain buildings already constructed. Meanwhile, the bottom row increases the recruitment rank of all lords and heroes. Sadly, this bonus does not apply to legendary lords, so guys like Khazrak and Malagor might still be at level one even though you’ve purchased the level 15 upgrade.

Finally, the upgrade at the center increases your army capacity by +1. You can keep buying this upgrade if you wish to field more forces in Total War: Warhammer II‘s campaign. Just remember that you need to amass more Marks of Ruination to hit rank 7 on your progress bar.

Favor item shop

The final panel in the Rewards of Dread screen actually has items that cost Favor. Similar to gold, Favor is readily gained whenever you win battles or raze settlements. It’s just not used to recruit or pay for unit upkeeps. Instead, Favor is used for army and Herdstone settlement buildings, as well as the items on this page.

Perhaps the most useful one here is Champion’s Essence which gives +10% ward save, +20 melee attack, and the “Drunken Bravado” passive. This perk is always active on a unit that has the item equipped, providing +4 leadership, “Perfect Vigor,” and HP regeneration.

All right, let’s move on to the next part of our guide. It’s time to talk about the Challenges of the Dark Gods, the Beastmen tech tree.