Ultimate Guide - Dwarves - Thorek

Tips & Trips for the Dwarves

Resources

Rune & Banner Reference List:
https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/ogovwz/all_of_the_new_dwarf_character_and_banner_runes/



Vortex Artifact Locations:
https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/po283y/some_people_found_the_me_artifact_map_for_thorek/


Mortal Empires Artifact Locations:
https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/pntas3/i_made_a_quick_reference_guide_for_all_artifact/

Mortal Empires starting turns guide by u/ThoreksAnvilMilkers:
https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwarhammer/comments/or54dr/thorek_ironbrow_mortal_empires_guide/

Quote:
"Keep an eye on your oathgold early on. Thorek benefits greatly from the +50 armor rune, and the Master rune of spite. if you can afford one, get the master rune of spite first. Also, his anvil of doom is excellent. Once he reaches 200+ armor, normal arrows will not affect him, which is usually a weakness for large mounts."

Permanent Gotrek & Felix Trick

In my walkthrough I recommend getting Gotrek & Felix, which is a good idea even if you only get them for the 30 turns you are supposed to have them for, but there is a way to get them permanently!

At the top of your screen there is a bar and on the right it displays campaign-impacting events. Keep an eye on the counter for Gotrek & Felix as it ticks down from 30 to 1.

On Turn 0 of Gotrek & Felix's stay, a cutscene will play and they will depart your faction, and it will be many many turns before you can re-recruit them. But if you reload a save at the start of that turn before the cutscene procs, the game will forget to proc that cutscene and without that cutscene they do not depart your faction, so you now get to keep them permanently!

On Legendary this is easy, Legendary saves your game at the start of the turn before any events pop, so just reload the save and mission accomplished.

On lower campaign difficulties, as soon as the AI finishes its turns, you need to spam Control + S to create an autosave. This becomes easy if hopefully a notification pops up immediately at the start of this turn, do not click it to acknowledge it yet, hit Control + S and you will create the autosave, then click to acknowledge the alert and then the cutscene should proc, and then just hit Control + L to reload your autosave, and check and see if Gotrek & Felix are still with you.


Important Note - If Gotrek gets wounded, I found that I could not re-recruit him normally once he became available again because he is not either of the 2 lord types. But I found a work around:

You recruit a lord, then use "Replace Lord" to have Gotrek replace that lord. Boom you got him back.

Also note that this appears to not work in reverse, I had sent Gotrek across the world to discover the High Elves but then I was unable to use Replace Lord on Gotrek to replace him with a regular lord in order to disband that lord so that I could re-recruit Gotrek back home, I had to get Gotrek killed in order to accomplish this. So heads up.

Obtaining the Artifacts

You only need 5 of the Artifacts to unlock The Lost Vault final battle.

You can obtain the artifacts by occupying a settlement (possibly just sacking it but I'd have to go back and double check), by searching the ruin if the settlement was razed, or via Military Alliance with the faction that controls the settlement.

Essentials

Quick Note - NEVER sack a Tier 5 settlement, always occupy. The AI gets huge growth bonuses, and it is a legit strategy to let the AI build up settlements you want to Tier 5 and then capture them to get a Tier 4 settlement. Only sack settlement that are only Tier 1 or Tier 2 since you'll have to start at Tier 1 anyway.

Buildings

In your Major Settlements, you want:

Tier 1 - Barley Field
Tier 2 - Walls

Reasons for this are:

1) Dwarves have deplorably low Growth, you need as much Growth as possible if you hope to reach even Tier 3 settlements sometime this century.

2) Once you have walls in your Major Settlement, you do not need to worry about Public Order or Rebellions, in fact, you WANT rebellions! Why?


First off, if you own the Major Settlement, the Rebellion will always occur at the Major Settlement.

Because the 2nd post-battle loot option is +20 growth for 2 turns (and other perks but those are just bonuses). Don't recruit a lord to help defend a walled settlement, this is important, if you auto-resolve with a lord leading your defense, the rebels will be destroyed first time. If a rebellion reaches full 20 stack and attacks, if you sally out and beat them (either auto-resolve or manual), typically they won't be entirely wiped out, they will retreat and regroup for another attack. Fight them again, and hopefully the army won't be fully destroyed yet again. They'll attack a third time, this time probably being wiped out.

This means you have 6 turns of +20 growth or 120 Growth, on top of whatever your Growth buildings are providing each turn. This is a way to power-grow your settlement to higher tiers faster.

If you really want to cheese this, LegendofTotalWar showed how to farm a rebellion over and over. You kill the enemy lord and wipe out most of the army BUT making sure to leaving a couple of remaining units (ideally melee infantry) with enough units not to be wiped out. What will happen is the next turn the AI will recruit a new lord and attack again. If you keep killing the lord but not his couple of remaining melee infantry units, the AI will keep recruiting new lords and attacking you and you can kill the new lords over and over again, farming that +Growth boost over and over.

THIS works with using a Lord as well, and is a way you can level a Lord up. Just remember that the +Growth follows the Lord if he leaves the province, whereas the +Growth stays with the garrison if the garrison was not lead by a Lord.


3) Walls will discourage the AI from attacking you and if they do, you have a MUCH better chance of winning with Dwarves behind walls plus walls add more troops to your Garrison so you are also better at sallying forth against the attacking army (which is important because a besieged settlement is lost income while it is besieged). This is essential because finances prohibit you from running too many armies early on, so if you want to expand you need to be able to leave behind your settlements without worrying they will get ganked while you are gone.

RESEARCH!

Before you fight any battle, turn off your research, then fight the battle. Hopefully you will be rewarded with an Archivist or Student follower. Each give +10% research rate. The Archivist can be given to Lords & Heroes, the Student only to Heroes. The Archivist effect applies even if the Lord is disbanded. So that means if you recruit an Ancestor Blood - Grungni lord and give him an Archivist and then disband him, you will still be getting +15% Research Rate added in your Technology Tree. A Grungni Hero with Archivist and Student followers will add +25% Research Rate.

This strategy is essential because there are so many techs you want as Dwarves and you want them now, it takes way too long to get enough Engineer Workshops and Engineers spamming Steal Research (which is expensive in gold plus Engineers are powerful additions to your armies).

GRUNGNI

Besides being super beneficial for Research Rate, the Grungni trait also reduces construction costs by -15% in local region (not local region, not province). Get as many Lords & Heroes with this trait as you can. Thorek or a Grungni lord with a 3+ Grungni heroes and the -10% Construction Cost technology can save you thousands of Gold on building up your settlements.

Dwarf Doomstack

According to LegendofTotalWar, a decent (7/10) Dwarf doomstack is using Bugmans Rangers. They are like Quarrellers with 160 range but with better accuracy (apparently 30 accuracy like Thunderers, whereas Quarrellers have 20), they have Stalk which is effective against the AI, they have Expert Charge Defense so they can take a charge, and they have Regeneration so they self heal to an extent. And you can get them relatively early on by building a Rangers building and a Drinking Hall. The problem is they take 2 turns to recruit and you start with only 3 local recruitment slots. It can take forever to get a full stack of them. A good use for Gotrek would be to be the recruiting Lord until you have a full stack and THEN recruit your new lord that you plan to give the army to.

https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/os2x4a/thanes_granting_snipe_to_rangers_is_hilarious/

Note that I don't know if the Thane grants Snipe to Bugman's Rangers in addition to regular Rangers.

Campaign Walkthrough

Tip: If you have the mod "No Degradation - Persistent Summons" on, turn it off before you start a Dwarves campaign. Dwarves don't have summons and the Skaven Clanrats summon could cause you a defeat if they are able to stick around.


Turn 1: You start at Thrice-Cursed Peak. Do NOT start your research yet. Attack and defeat the starting enemy army of Clan Mange, and then attack and occupy the Mine of the Bearded Skulls. Hopefully you get "Student" and "Archivist" followers from your victories. Make sure they are on your Lords and Heroes. Start research Khazid Subsidies because you need to get Heavy Quernstones and after that you need to get Autonomy of the Holds. Build a Barley Field in Mind of Bearded Skulls for growth and build a Refectory in Thrice-Cursed Peaks in order to get Gotrek & Felix. Recruit Dwarf Warriors.

Turn 2: In order to confederate Spine of Sotek Dwarves, you need to win 2 battles against Skaven. Underway over to Subatuun.

Turn 3: There should be a Skaven Lord outside of Subatuun, attack him and Subatuun's defense will reinforce him. Win the battle, the lord will run away, then you can attack Subatuun an win for your 2nd victory (you can occupy it or you can use it as a sack city to level your lords). Confederate the Spine of Sotek Dwarves, choosing the "Up to Code" option that gives you 100 Oathgold. You should be able to craft Thungni's Tongs of the Runesmith now.

More importantly, you can go into The Forge and go to the "Character Runes" tab. Inscribe the "Master Rune of Gromril", the "Master Rune of Adamant", and the "Master Rune of Snorri Spangelhelm". Put those Master Runes on Thorek by going into the "Character Details" screen and equipping them in the "Character Runes" section which has 3 slots.

You also want to get the "Runes of Seeking" for your Grudge Throwers at least until Thorek can get his "Proven Tools" skill.

Build the Barley Field in Chiquibol. You may end up wanting your Clan Barracks in Caverns of the Great Bat instead of Thrice-Cursed Peak, but for now demolish it in order to build another Barley Field.

Underway Hugrim Redax's army toward Gwakmol Center.

Turn 4: Take Gwakmol Crater, give Hugrim's troops to Thorek. Use Hugrim to search Xhotl to complete the first quest step for Klad Brakak (note the 2nd step is to embed a Thane in Thorek's army), then in subsequent turns have Hugrim colonize Xhotl and Mortuary of Tzulaqua (which are both unoccupied ruins at least until Turns 6-8), then disband him.

Turn 5 onward: Once the Refectory is built the cutscene for Gotrek & Felix will proc and their icon will appear on the map. You can now demolish the Refectory in order to build the Gold Mine. You should be able to get Gotrek & Felix shortly after. Use them as your second army since they cost no upkeep.

If you did not capture Subatuun and you get a 2nd Army of Gotrek & Felix & Friends, you could use Subatuun as a sack city to level Thorek while Gotrek's army goes and captures Hualotal and then Caverns of the Mlexigaur (before Itza takes it).

TECLIS MUST DIE

In my first attempt I went east and took out Pestilens and The Blessed Dread, only for Teclis to attack me in the rear. I had to revert to a much earlier save to adjust my strategy. That strategy became kill Teclis. Do it.

Also note that if you capture Teclis' capital Great Turtle Isle, and then a rebellion occurs (which it will, note that it is a Hostile Climate) and if the rebels win, Teclis' faction will be resurrected. If you try to hold it you will need to leave an army there for many turns until you can build walls in the settlement. Therefore I recommend occupying then abandoning it so it is a ruin.

In my campaign I became buddies with Cult of Sotek who destroyed Court of Lybaras for me after I destroyed Sentinels of Xeti on my way to taking out Teclis. However, I think I should have avoided diplomacy with them and taken Cult of Sotek out after taking out Teclis. I particularly think this because I was unable to trade with the High Elves because I did not have a Port connected to my capital, because Cult of Sotek held settlements between my territory and Chupayotl, and because apparently The Blood Hall isn't connected to the mainland and therefore not to my capital. If you all of South Lustria then your capital should be connected to at least 1 port and you should be able to trade with other factions once you discover them.

I think you should take The Blood Hall, Caverns of the Mlexigaur & Hualotal, Xhotl, Mortuary of Tzulaqua, and Marks of the Old Ones, and everything south of those settlements.

You can ally with Itza who can keep Ikit Claw and other northern factions off your bum-bum.

I highly recommend that you do not "Join War" against Ikit Claw via Itza just to make Itza like you more, like I did... and then Ikit bee-lined straight for me with an army of Ratling Guns... yeah, I had to back up a few turns again because of that mistake. Basically don't go to war with Ikit until you are ready to fight him.

TECHNOLOGY

Once I got the two Growth tech, I got Masterwork Crossbows and Volley Fire.

If you have no intention of trying to get trade with the High Elves on Ulthuan or initiate diplomacy with the Dwarves in the Southlands (Africa), then research the income boosting tech next.

If you would want to trade with the High Elves and potentially confederate the other Dwarves on the map, get the Dwarfen Emissaries and High King's Authority tech after getting the Growth tech and Volley Fire. Then you'll probably want to send Felix to discover the Bretonnians in the Southlands and then north to discover all the High Elves.

Lord Skills

RED LINE

The Red line on the Dwarves is actually good to use because they don't have monsters, so you don't feel like you are wasting points buffing early game units only to fill your Legendary Lord with a full stack of dinosaurs later (looking at you Lizardmen).

Honestly, you could max out Axe Lord, Tactician, Thunderer, and even Grimnir's Heirs, get Rally, and then get each of the 2nd Tier Red Line skills (I personally don't think I'd get Stand Your Ground).

If you do an army of Rangers and artillery, or Lord & Heroes as Tanks + Quarrelers + Artillery, then you could just do Tactician + Thunderer + Dawi Firepower + Morgrim's Favoured.

BLUE LINE

Blue line can be ignored except for Route Marcher, but if you do decide to go down it, here are the best choice:

Router Marcher > Max "Miner's Instinct" and only 1 point in "Wall Breaker" > Iron-Willed > Lightning Strike

You can stop at Lightning Strike, but Inspirational Leader is excellent for Casualty Replenishment since Dwarf Heroes don't have "Replenish Troops", and Unflappable is fantastic for its 80% Ambush Defense Chance and, combined with Miner's Instinct, 70% to Intercept Underway, Beast-paths or World-Roots armies.

Given the Archivist/Student followers, it's probably not worth wasting a point in Enquiring Mind, especially since it will be a useful skillpoint once all Technology is researched.


If Route Marcher is a given, then ideal Blue Line composition would be 6 points to get Lightning Strike, or 12 points to get LS + Inspirational Leader & Unflappable.

YELLOW LINE

Obstinacy is always good for the reduce Vigor Loss.

On Rune Lords, I'd ignore Dampening. I'd probably save Rune of Hearth & Home for after I'd gotten other more important skills.

Wardbreaker is excellent for reducing enemy defense against missiles.


Otherwise Dwarf Lords are pretty straightforward, the Dwarf Lord is a combat beast once buffed while the Runelord is an excellent support lord, nuking enemies with Rune of Wrath & Ruin.

Hero Skills

ENGINEER

Increase Mobility
Break Open the Gates! and every skill after it.

I'm open to suggestions on whether Dead Eye or Grudge-Raker is better, I'm leaning Dead Eye. Dead Eye has Ballistic Calibration but the -30 armor of Bare Essentials kind of sucks. Going Grudge-Raker might allow the Engineer to help the Lord and other heroes tank up front.

RUNESMITH

The Runesmith is super except for Sharpen Weapons or Harden Armour. Each skill gives a 5% boost upon embedding in army that is boosted to 10% when you max out the skill. You can max both skills, but you have to choose what effect will apply when you embed the hero in an army (this impacts Scouting as well, choosing to Sharpen Weapons means not "Scouting" so no boost to magic item drop chance.


And if you embedded your Runesmith before you got Sharpen Weapons, you need to un-embed your Runesmith and then embed him again to select Sharpen Weapons as the buff he applies!


Given this info, and since Dwarves already have excellent armour, I would max out Sharpen Weapons only and have your Runesmith apply Sharpen Weapons to army.

THANE

https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/os2x4a/thanes_granting_snipe_to_rangers_is_hilarious/

The Thane is super straightforward except for which unique skill to choose. If you LOVE Hammerers then Keeper of the Gate would be good, but otherwise ignore that completely.

Ironbeard is useful if you are going to have a few Thanes tank while Irondrakes roast the enemy bunched up around them.

Otherwise, Wanderer is probably the best skill to choose because the Thane gets Vanguard Deployment and Stalk on himself, and he grants Snipe to Rangers units (not sure if Bugmans Ranger too or not).

See the link above for how broken that could potentially be.

Reddit Questions Unanswered

Below is a question I asked on Reddit that didn't get much response other than that the Master Rune of Spite was awesome. Saving it for now until I decide what to do later:


What are the Best Runes and Forge Items for Thorek and Dwarves?

I found a list of what the runes are, but my Google-fu failed me to find a thread on this subject.

EDIT: I confirmed that you have to choose between having your Runesmith apply "Sharpen Weapons" or "Harden Armour" to your army, so you should only put skill points into Sharpen Weapons or Harden Armour on a single Runesmith, not both. Same applies to "Scouting", so no point in investing skill points in Scouting either. And you need to move your Runesmith out of the army and back into it in order to have him apply Sharpen Weapons instead of Scouting, since he would have been applying Scouting when you first put him in the army.

On Thorek it seems obvious to me that the Master Runes (which you can only get 1 of each) that give +50 Armor, +20% Health, and +25 Melee Attack will be best on Thorek himself.

The Runes of Seeking are fantastic on the Grudge Throwers, they basically don't miss.

EDIT: I just realized Thorek gets "Proven Tools" which gives all the Grudge Throwers in Thorek's army the Rune of Seeking effect automatically. So I should probably take the Runes of Seeking out of his Banner Slots and give his Grudge Throwers the Runes of Burning and the Master Rune of Immolation?

For the Ironbreakers, I originally put the Master Banner of +8 Melee Attack, and thought about putting the +10% Ward Save on them, but I think that the Master Rune of Valaya (Perfect Vigor) is best, because they only seem to really take damage once they get tired.

I like the Runes of Sanctuary on my Dwarf Warriors for the 15% Physical Resistance.

On a Lord other than Thorek, the Ancestor Runes (-25% Vigor Loss) combined with Obstinacy (-15% Vigor Loss) would equal -40% Vigor Loss Reduction for 3 units.

And, the Ancestor Runes also say "Entities cannot die while ability is active" and "Unbreakable". It almost sounds like an invulnerable unit one health reaches less than 25%, is that what it means?

Does the Rune of Stoicism give its +8 Bonus vs Large to missile units as well as melee units, or no?

Forge Items - The Best Forge Items as far as I can see:

Weapon: Ironwarden's Hammer

Armour: Ironwarden's Shield (I was going to say Gatekeeper's Helm but their Armour is already ridiculously high and they need more Melee Defense, Gatekeeper's is good though)

Talismans: Does the health regeneration on Old Guard's Tankard stack with Ironwarden's Tankard? If yes then probably that, maybe the Vanguard Talisman if needed, but nothing of them are as good as the Talisman of Preservation (17% Ward Save)

Enchanted: Ironwarden's Tankard (health regen) hands down

[sumdaga]

@MinMaxRex thank you for you replies! The number of runes that can be given to lords and heroes, unfortunately, does not increase. In my own thought process, the assignment of runes seems somewhat situational and dependent on the Lord himself. I am about to attempt my completion of the long campaign with Ungrim Ironfist who is that last Dawi lord that I haven't completed that with so I will make a note of what runes I feel like end up being best and try to share that.

[MinMaxRex]

@Sumdaga continued - I think those were the ones you only get 1 of, so I'm curious if the cap is raised so you could put one on each LL.

There is a thread on Reddit about what runes are best to use for artillery, do a google search for like "Best Dwarf Runes Reddit" or "Best Dwarf Runes for Artillery Reddit" and see what you find. Also threads like those will probably have people's tips for what runes are best to use on lords and whatnot.

Good luck.

[MinMaxRex]

@Sumdaga - I played the Vortex campaign only so far, and during that, I found that I was able to purchase all the runes available that I wanted very quickly, and did not have enough to equip everyone how I wanted. I think it was like a max of 3 runes per type for normals, and like max 1 Rune for a certain powerful type? I'm curious to know if they raise the limit in the Mortal Empires campaign, please let me know.

If runes are limited, honestly you'll probably have them all on your Lords before you put them on your engineers. If ME raises the rune cap, then you'll have to experiment because I don't think my engineers had any runes on them.

From the Campaign Walkthrough section: "Inscribe the "Master Rune of Gromril", the "Master Rune of Adamant", and the "Master Rune of Snorri Spangelhelm". Put those Master Runes on Thorek" or if playing ME, put those runes on the LL that you want to be the most beast in melee combat.

[sumdaga]

Also, I'm trying to figure out once all of the Dwarven LLs are confederated what the optimal runes to give to each of them once you have access to all of them in the forge. I'm trying to make up an excel to with all of the runes and legendary lord stats and weapon buffs to figure out what is best. Any feedback or edits of this guide would be lovely.

[sumdaga]

Hey, man! Thanks for taking the time to write a guide. I love the dwarves and have probably played ten ME campaigns. lol. I'm curious whether you would change up forge items from what you recommend above to something different for your engineers to max out their offensive capabilities.