Warhammer 3 Immortal Empires Guide to Imrik and the Knights of Caledor Current for Patch 4.1

This is a guide to playing Imrik and the Knights of Caledor faction on Warhammer 3's Immortal Empires campaign.

It covers advice for the first few turns, tactics, and strategy for a successful and enjoyable game.

It has been updated to account for the Chaos Dwarves DLC and associated patch and the Patch 4.1.

Why play Imrik and the Knights of Caledor Faction?

Imrik is by far my favorite High Elf legendary lord.

He's got a huge, powerful pet dragon mount, and he can obtain 5 other legendary dragons for his regiments of renown.

His starting position is precarious and challenging and therefore a lot of fun.

He can be turned into one of the tankiest lords in the game, single-handedly wrecking whole armies.

Imrik's Starting Situation

Starting Position
Imrik begins far from the Ulthuan High Elf doughnut.

He's surrounded by unfriendly and outright hostile factions, including two very active Skaven clans:

To the North is Clan Rictus led by Tretch Craventail.

To the West is Clan Mors, led by Queek Headtaker.

To the East are some Ogre clans, Vampire Counts, and Nurgle.

To the Northeast are the Chaos Dwarves faction led by Drazhoath the Ashen.


Starting units and starting traits


You begin with a Sun Dragon and a unit of Dragon Princes, which are very good startng units.

Imrik starts out the game with a horse mount and a purple unique weapon.

Even more importantly, you start with a Fire Mage, Mikaela. Her starting trait is random, and none of them are particularly great except for the Resistant trait.

The Resistant Trait gives +3 melee defence and 5% spell resistance to the entire army, along with 5% missile resistance to all infantry units.

Probably the best of the other starting traits is either "Primed" (Miscast base chance -10%; Spell Targeting Range +10%); "Fortuitous" (Missile Resistance +10%); or Resistant (Melee defense +3, Spell resistance 5%, and Missile resistance 5%. All of these resistances apply to the hero's army.)

The higher tier traits (i.e. "Incendiary" and "Protected") are not available to start.

More important than your starting trait for your Fire Mage is the starting trait for a Life Magic Archmage Lord. When I start the game, I like to check out the available Life Magic Archmages and see if there is one that has either the Protected or Incendiary traits. (You can't recruit them immediately because you don't have enough influence.)

Being the sort of obsessive compulsive person I am, I tend to restart the game until I get the traits I want at the start. You certainly don't need to do this, however.

The best traits:

Diplomacy Is Essential

Imrik is in a somewhat precarious position. While Imrik is quite strong, he can't be everywhere at once. If you expand rapidly, you will end up with enemies in all directions, and you won't be able to defend your territory. With aggressive Greenskins and Chaos Dwarves in the North, Ogres, Vampire Counts and Nurgle to the East, and Clan Mors to the West, you can easily get overwhelmed by hostile armies.

Imrik and his army can take on pretty much any enemy, however, he can't be everywhere at once. The key to a successful Imrik campaign is to only fight on one front at a time until you build up sufficient economic resources to be able to afford a second army.

It is important to expand slowly and deliberately. I generally try to hold only one full province, (The Plain of Bones,) until I get Imrik to Level 14 and his dragon mount. I will also colonize Bitter Bay and get started on building up to the unique landmark building there.

Anything I capture that is not in my home province, I give away in exchange for money and/or treaties. I try to build buffers of land held by friendly factions around my core holdings.

It's not too difficult to create a buffer on the Eastern border. After I eliminate the Clan Helhein dwarves, I will generally take out the Thunderguts Ogres in Ruin's End and Pigbarter. Trading these settlements to Helman Ghorst will get you a treaty with the Vampire Counts of the Caravan of Blue Roses. When you inevitably go to war with the Chaos Dwarves, you will likely capture the Black Fortress and The Sentinals. Trading these to Ghorst will get you a defensive alliance.

Why ally yourself with the Vampire Counts instead of Greasus Goldtooth? The Ogres of Greasus Goldtooth seem like another good option for an Eastern ally. However, the Orgres are severely underpowered, while the Vampire factions are somewhat overpowered, so Ghorst will make a stronger border bulwark compared to Greasus. Ghorst and the Caravan of Blue Roses will do a much better job of holding and defending territory. Neither Ogres nor Vampire Counts have particularly good allied unit recruitment options, but to be honest, one of my favorite reasons for having Ghorst as an ally is the fact that I can recruit Mortis Engines into my High Elf army. I've created Swordmaster of Hoeth/Mortis engine meme stacks just because it's fun.

With your Northern and Eastern borders secured, you can focus on the West and Clan Mors, which is probably your greatest long-term threat. Build up the Dwarves of Karak Azul and trade territory to them in return for an alliance.

Keep a close eye on your allies and help them out if they start to get in trouble. The stronger they are, the more secure your borders will be. When playing as Imrik, I spend at least half of my time fighting for territory that I plan to trade away to allies.

The strategy is to build tall, not wide. Focus on improving your home province, boosting growth as much as possible.

Here's an example of building a "buffer" through diplomacy. Ghorst covers my Eastern border, and also is keeping Tretch Craventail and his Skaven busy on the North. This frees me up to focus on Clan Mors in the West.

What to do in the first few turns

Use the Invocation of Eldrazor

As soon as you have won three battles, invoke the rite, Invocation of Eldrazor.

The Invocation of Eldrazor provides significant experience buffs for Imrik. You want to level him up as soon as you can, so an experience buff is a good thing. The negative for this invocation is that it gives you bad relations with other High Elves. So, you should do it in the early game, as you have not yet encountered any other High Elf factions, so the negative relations with High Elves won't affect you. Invoke this rite as soon as you can.

On the first turn, I like to build the Graves of the Dragons in the Bone Gulch and the Tier 2 military building (Rally Field) in the Fortress of Vorag.


Eliminate the Helhein Dwarves

Imrik's starting enemy is the Clan Helhein Dwarves.

They're pretty easy to crush.

Take The Bone Gulch and Ash Ridge Mountains, and you've got full control of your home province.


Eliminate The Thunderguts Ogres and Chaos Dwarves


You've got a couple of powerful enemies to the North; Tretch Craventail's Skaven, and the Chaos Dwarves in the Black Fortress.

You're going to have to fight them both sooner or later. However, I generally choose to attack the Thunderguts Ogres first. Trading the Thunderguts territory to Helman Ghorst in exchange for treaties secures your Eastern border.

After the Thunderguts Ogres are crushed, I generally move on the Black Fortress, the Chaos Dwarves' capital. It's relatively close, so you don't have to march quite so far to attack them. Sometimes, the Chaos Dwarves will beat me to it, and attack me when I'm fighting the Ogres. In this case, you can easily lose control of the Ash Ridge Mountains temporarily, while you bring Imrik back to fight the invaders.

When you are assaulting the Black Fortress, be very careful about blobbing up your forces. The Dwarves have a firey weapon that acts a lot like Ikit Claw's Skaven nuke. It's perfectly capable of wiping out five or six closely grouped units. Spread your units out, and watch carefully for the sign that the spell is being cast, and move your units out of the way.

After you've taken out the Chaos Dwarf capital of Black Fortress, you've effectively hobbled them, as they can't recruit any decent units. I then focus on doing the same thing with the skaven by taking out Tretch Craventail's capital at Crookback Mountain. (Or you can give the Chaos Dwarf territory to Ghorst and let him deal with Tretch Craventail and his Skaven.)

You do want to fight enough battles in enemy territory to satisfy the requirements of the Return of the Prince quest that allows you to confederate Caledor. However, I don't try to expand at this point. I'm generally content with trying to just hold on to my main province, The Plain of Bones.


As far as your army formation goes, focus on Lothern Sea Guard and archers.

Here's a typical early game army:

What buildings to construct? What units to recruit?

In the Fortress of Vorag, I build a Rally Field so I can get access to Lothern Sea Guard as soon as possible.
I upgrade it to the War Hall when I can, to allow for recruiting Lothern Sea Guard with Shields and Shadow Warriors. The stalk ability of the Shadow Warriors makes them very useful for sneaking up on the enemy's exposed flanks.

It's also useful to build the smith building that gives access to the Reaper Bolt Thrower artillery unit.

Other than that, I prioritize growth buildings.

The Tower of the Bloody Tooth is a unique building in the Fortress of Vorag. I don't bother building it. It provides very little benefit.

The unique landmark building in The Bone Gulch, the Graves of the Dragons, is worth building. It provides access to Dragon Princes at tier 3, and provides dragons and Dragon Princes to the Bone Gulch garrison.

Typical army composition that will take you all the way to the late game is:

3 or 4 Shadow Warriors, 5 or 6 Lothern Sea Guard, 1 Sun Dragon, 1 Dragon Princes cavalry, your Fire Mage, 2 Reaper Bolt Throwers, and the rest regular Archers.

This is a very flexible army that will be able to take down most everything that the game throws at you.

Your First Dragon Encounter

The first dragon encounter occurs on turn 10. (Watch the dragon encounter count-down timer at the top of your campaign UI to keep track of the timing of these encounters.)

When the dragon encounter occurs, a dragon marker will appear on the campaign map near Imrik's location. The dragon encounter can be triggered by moving any lord to this dragon marker.

For pretty much every dragon encounter after the first one, you should pick the "ritual of war" option.

However, for this first one, it's often a good choice to select the "Bargain with the Dragon" option to gain influence. Having this extra influence will allow you to recruit an additional Lord with a good trait. I generally will recruit a Life Magic Archmage with either the Incendiary or Protected traits. Having this Archmage gives you access to the healing spells of the Life Magic lore, which is extremely useful for healing Imrik, your Fire Dragon, and other single entities.

Very Important! You will need 2000 gold to be able to select the Bargain option and obtain the influence.

The Protected and Incendiary traits are seriously powerful, and make your Archmage a lot more dangerous. If one of these traits is not available on a Life Magic Archmage, I will generally just choose the "ritual of war" option and get the option to fight the dragon quest battle.

Your first dragon encounter happens at turn 10. Thereafter, every 15 turns you will have another encounter.

There are 5 legendary dragons in total.

For each encounter (other than maybe the first) you want to pick the Ritual of War.

The Ritual of War creates a quest battle where you have to fight the dragon and its accompanying army. You can fight this battle at any time you choose. (You don't have to fight the dragon immediately on picking the Ritual of War. You can also accumulate these quests, such that you can have all of these quests available at the same time.

Winning a dragon quest battle gives you access to the legendary dragon in your Regiments of Renown pool, It also gives you a permanent character trait and a unique magical item. There is also a temporary army buff that affects all armies in your faction.

Some of these dragon quest rewards are very powerful, providing things like perfect vigor, regeneration, extra damage, speed, etc. The Star Dragon, Ymrath the Eternal, in particular grants extremely powerful rewards (regeneration, and a powerful unique item.)

These legendary dragon quest battles can all be won with a standard mid-game army made up of Lothern Sea Guard and Archers. If you have hit level 14 and obtained Imrik's dragon mount, it's generally a good idea to dedicate Imrik to fighting the legendary dragon right away, as the legendary dragons tend to buff their allies as long as they are alive.

After you have exhausted all five of your legendary dragon encounters, every 20 turns you will have encounters with ordinary dragons. Unlike the legendary dragon encounters, choosing to fight the regular dragon will instantly transport you to the battle, rather than creating a quest battle that you can fight when you want to.

The ordinary dragon encounters can drop some very good loot, including an arcane item called, "the Amplifier" which provides +20 Winds of Magic and -30% cooldown to all spells.

The Armor of Caledor Quest Battle

This armor is extremely powerful, providing both healing and reset of ability cool-downs.

The quest battle for this armor requires fighting several armies at once, including an artillery heavy Vampire Coast army. While the quest is available quite early, you should wait until you have reached level 14 with Imrik and can mount him on his star dragon mount.

The key to winning this battle is killing the Vampire Lord who is mounted on a flying dragon. As soon as you kill him, all of your enemies disintegrate.

You don't get a chance to pre-deploy your army for this battle, so as soon as it starts, take all of your foot troops and pull them back and to the right. Set them up in a defensive posture to take out the Dark Elves that attack in the first wave.

Take your Dragon Princes and advance them to the left to attack and distract the Vampire Coast army artillery and long-range missile troops. (Watch out for the Bloated Corpse)

Use Imrik (on his Dragon) and your Sun Dragon to attack the enemy Lord. He sits still at the far edge of the battlefield until the first wave of Dark Elves is engaged. Don't bee-line directly towards him or you will get stuck fighting the flying Harpies in the first wave. Dodge left a bit to avoid the first wave flying troops, then head directly for the Vampire lord on his dragon. He will be protected by some Fell Bats, which you can mostly ignore. It's best to attack him from both the front and behind, so try to sandwich him between Imrik and your Sun Dragon.

Keep harassing the Vampire Coast artillery and missile units with your Dragon Princes to keep them from firing on Imrik and your Sun Dragon.

Eventually, you will kill the enemy lord, and his entire army will crumble.

Confederation with Caledor

Taking six settlements will trigger the option to confederate with Caledor.

This will give you a presence in the Elven Doughnut of Ulthuan.

Even if you have no desire to maintain a presence in Ulthuan, it's worth confederating to gain access to the trade opportunities with the other High Elf factions.

When the confederation trigger happens, you will be given a number of options.

Choosing the "Favors Abound" option is generally the best, as it will allow you to easily establish non-aggression pacts and trade with the other High Elves.


Mostly I have found that I am better off not expanding too much in Ulthuan. I tend to hang on to Vaul's Anvil and Tor Sethai, and don't hold any other territory. The reason why is that I can hold these territories without having to maintain an army to defend it. The other High Elves will generally be active enough in their defenses that an army is not necessary. Once you get defensive alliances with them, you can use the "Defend Target" action to have your allies defend your territories.

Often, Count Noctilus and his Vampire Coast will have taken some of the lands on the outside of the Western border of Ulthuan, North of Vaul's Anvil. I will generally fight them, take their territory, and then trade all the territory North of Tor Sethai to Tyrion or Allarielle in exchange for money and/or defensive alliances. Trying to hold more territory outside of the Vaul's Anvil province requires constant defense and the expense of maintaining an army.

Leveling Up Imrik

In order to properly level up Imrik, you have to look ahead to what sort of role he will play.

Ultimately, Imrik will turn into an absolute beast, capable of taking on large numbers of enemies, tanking whole armies, and destroying enemy lords and heroes.

By turn 40, this is what Irmik's army looks like. It's Imrik (for tanking damage dealing, and lord and hero killing,) a fire mage (for doing AOE damage,) a Life Magic Mage (for healing,) and a few Shadow Warriors (for stalking and damage dealing.) There is a rare (blue) item called Moranion's Wayshard. It imbues the "stalk" ability, rendering the bearer invisible. This is a great item for your Life Magic Mage. Having only stalking units on the ground and everything else flying makes your army very difficult to defeat. Moranion's Wayshard is randomly found by fusing green items together.



You can obviously build any kind of army you wish. Imrik can also perform well with stacks of dragons, Dragon Princes, or Sisters of Avalorn. However, I've found that buffing Imrik's own fighting skills is the most efficient. At high levels, Imrik is so tanky and so deadly, that he doesn't need much in the way of support to wreck multiple enemy stacks.

With that in mind, I tend to invest in skills that will improve Imrik's ability to fight and survive, along with some general campaign skills.

Here's what my ideal Imrik skill tree looks like at level 41. After adding Speed of Assuryan and War of Hoeth, then all of the essential skills would be covered, and there's still space for more skills as he moves to the level 50 skill cap.

Choosing to leave. A very different Imrik campaign experience

Let's face facts.

Imrik's starting position pretty much sucks. You're surrounded by nasty factions. Your provinces are not particularly rich and easily attacked. It's a grim, ugly situation.

If only there were a place where you could build a home that was free of conflict and war.

It turns out that there is such a place. South of your starting location, across the Sea of Dread, are the islands of the Eastern Elven Colonies. This is a chain of three islands inhabited by High Elves.

If you're tired of Imrik's starting position, you can just pick up and leave. Play the first three turns so you can capture the entire Plain of Bones. Recruit some Lothern Sea Guard. Then, head south across the ocean to the Elven Colonies. Use the Invocation of Isha to avoid attrition while at sea.

Capture the Tower of the Stars first. It's poorly defended. Then recruit a few archers to top up your army, and take the rest of the province. This province is very rich, with unique Elven Colony ports and valuable trade goods.


When you have established yourself in this new location, you can abandon your possessions in the Plain of Bones and you can start your adventure anew. Raid and pillage the southern chaos wastes. Go find Teclis and confederate him. Have fun. It's a completely different campaign experience.

These provinces also make a good place to conquer even if you are keeping your home territories. Once taken, they can be held with little or no investment in a defensive force.

The Vermintide End Game Crisis

Generally, in Warhammer 3, I tend to lose interest in a campaign by about turn 75 or so. By that point, my faction is generally very strong, and there is not much challenge left in the game.

However, the Vermintide endgame crisis can provide a fun and somewhat difficult challenge for Imrik. The Vermintide crisis spawns large, powerful Skaven armies, including armies for Clan Rictus (Tretch Craventail) and Clan Mors (Queek Headtaker.) These Skaven factions appear on Imrik's borders, and can cause quite a bit of trouble.

The other Skaven factions, particularly Eshin (Deathmaster Snikch) and Clan Moulder (Thrott) are also pretty strong and will often have taken over large swaths of territory when the Vermintide event occurs, so rooting them out can be pretty tough.

Bottom line is that preparing for and then dealing with the Vermintide endgame crisis can keep the interest level of a campaign up past turn 75 or so.

[Icegodz2]

Hey Bin, yes a lot of times you need one or more dlc to have access to the full roster of units . No where is it more clear than scaven. I played qweek without any real weapon teams and that wasn’t very fun. I needed half of the scaven dlc but now I have all the older stuff from 1 &2 just not warhammer 3 yet. Malikai and elsbeth make the dwarf and empire rosters feel light without them

[Binouze]

Thank you for that ! But I don’t understand how do you recruit shadow warriors. You have written : « In the Fortress of Vorag, I build a Rally Field so I can get access to Lothern Sea Guard as soon as possible. I upgrade it to the War Hall when I can, to allow for recruiting Lothern Sea Guard with Shields and Shadow Warriors. » whereas Shadow warriors aren’t available in a war hall. Were they available in 2023, in version 4.1?

Can anyone help me? I would love to have access to shadow warriors in this campagne if possible. Is it about Alith Anar DLC ?

[Franz-Himawari]

You saved my day. Thank you mate!

[Mythical9167]

This 'mostly' helped me. What interrupted this was that I took Pigbarter on turn 5 with ease but then on the end-turn phase, both Drazhoath & Ghorst declared war on me at the same time, leaving the East without a buffer as he wouldn't accept a peace treaty even while offering Pigbarter as collateral. I was essentially forced to take him out and use Greasus & Zhao Ming instead.

[UmbraPhoenix]

Once I have a foothold in Ulthuan, I prefer to focus on confederating the rest of the High Elves. If you move fast and are opportunistic, you can get Tyrion early, as he is the hardest and only one who is annoying to confederate. Control of Ulthuan makes Imrik utterly unstoppable. The wealth of Ulthuan flowing into his coffers is enough to allow you to expand more around Imrik's starting area.

[Twinny]

Brilliant advice; especially with those islands.

[🅾️rder💲]

nice

[james4ord]

Thank you! Will definitely be using some of this advice!

[DeThSoRd]

Well done, cheers mate!