Free Legendary Lords locked?Check your Warhammer III race ownership

If free Legendary Lords are locked in Total War: Warhammer III, check whether you own content for their race on the same storefront as your game. Most Free-LC Lords unlock automatically through race ownership. Having access to the Immortal Empires map does not unlock every Lord, and buying an unrelated race does not satisfy that requirement.

This guide covers Immortal Empires on PC under the ownership rules following Update 9.0 and Lords of the End Times, released on 24 September 2026. Start with the Lord you actually want to play: the useful checks are their race, the content already in your library, and where you own it. Bretonnia has a separate free-access rule.

Match the free Lord to an owned race

SEGA's current new-player FAQ says race-linked Free-LC unlocks automatically when you own a game or DLC granting access to that race. You do not necessarily need the older base game. For High Elf Lords such as Imrik and Alith Anar, for example, SEGA lists Warhammer II, The Queen & the Crone, The Warden & the Paunch, or Sea Lord Aislinn from Tides of Torment as qualifying content.

Check your existing purchases before adding another pack. The older DLC ownership table provides several useful examples of free Lords attached to more than one release. These are alternative qualifying products, not a list you must buy in full:

Owning The Prophet & the Warlock is particularly useful as a check: SEGA lists its Lizardmen and Skaven content separately, with the associated free Lords alongside each race. Owning one High Elf pack does not, by contrast, unlock free Lizardmen or Skaven Lords. Follow the race granted by the product rather than assuming that every free entry belongs to every player.

Separate campaign access from Lord access

Immortal Empires contains races and Legendary Lords you do not own. They can still appear as AI factions to fight, ally with or negotiate with. That presence does not grant you their playable campaign.

This distinction also matters if Warhammer III appeared in your library after you bought Warhammer I or II. Creative Assembly's access update, effective from 4 December 2025, added the III application for Immortal Empires and The Lost God. Launch Immortal Empires through that application. The additional original III content is a separate entitlement supplied by the Warhammer III Upgrade Pack.

Lords of the End Times provides another entry route: owning an individual pack grants campaign access without a base game. PC Gamer reported that change before release; SEGA's current FAQ confirms what the entry includes. It does not make unrelated Free-LC available. Check the relevant race even when the map itself opens normally.

Check Bretonnia and Neferata separately

Bretonnia is the broad exception. SEGA says every player with Immortal Empires access receives its playable race and four Legendary Lords for free. You should not need to buy a High Elf, Vampire Counts or other race pack just to gain that Bretonnian access.

For Neferata, use the Vampire Counts ownership rule. The free Lord arrived alongside the End Times update. SEGA also explicitly confirms that purchasing Nagash unlocks Neferata for free. That is a documented route; it does not mean purchasing any one of the other End Times Lords grants her too.

Check the storefront before reporting a missing unlock

SEGA requires the relevant content to be owned on the same game client: Steam, Epic, or Microsoft/Game Pass. A qualifying purchase on Epic does not satisfy the Steam copy's ownership check. Compare where you own the game and qualifying product before treating a locked Lord as a fault.

SEGA's ownership page says race-linked free content is automatically added, while also retaining a note about claiming free DLC through the corresponding older game's storefront page. Start with the ownership check; a free store listing cannot replace a missing race entitlement. Separate content granted through a CA Account is outside this race-linked Lord checklist.

Once the qualifying ownership is in place, check whether the Lord is available to start an Immortal Empires campaign. If the entitlement matches and the Lord remains locked, use SEGA Support rather than buying the same content again. Include the Lord's name, qualifying product and storefront so the missing entitlement can be identified; this guide does not establish a universal fix for an ownership-recognition fault.