What are the must-have Crusader Kings 3 DLCs?

Crusader Kings 3 can be an intimidating game to get into, or even look at. Not only is it an expansive medieval simulator with lots of overlapping mechanics, but there’s also an overwhelming dearth of different DLC you have to consider. After By God Alone, there are now thirteen different Crusader Kings 3 DLCs, not including cosmetic packs.

These are split across different expansion pack types – Major, Core, Flavour, and Events – but you don’t need all of them when you’re getting started. If you want to get ahead of the game, though – and you’re making sure to take advantage of a sale – here are the DLCs that you should get first.

Royal Court

You might think that the most important part about the Royal Court DLC would be the titular court. It’s great for roleplaying a high-ranked ruler, giving you a customisable throne room, benefits for maintaining your court, and more gameplay emphasis on artefacts. It gives you more to do with your gold, and makes your own corner of the world more alive.

That’s not why Royal Court is essential, though; it’s actually all the effects that the DLC has on the gameplay of cultures. Cultures are one of the biggest ways to differentiate areas of the world and playthroughs, and I cannot imagine playing through a game without the updates Royal Court brings.

It lets you diverge your own custom culture from existing ones, or create a hybrid culture out of your own and one of the areas you’ve conquered. It lets you see the progress of your game, and lets the world continuously change in response to changing borders.

It’s one of those big improvements that doesn’t feel flashy, but will drastically change how you play each character.

Tours and Tournaments

The base game of Crusader Kings 3 can often find itself with dead spots in between wars, where you’re building up plenty of gold, but have very little to actually do. Tours and Tournaments does an awful lot to fix this, adding in plenty of new events and activities for your characters, as well as expanded travel rules to make things more interesting and dangerous.

Most of those actual events will still end up getting pretty samey, and after your first few goes, the Tournaments can definitely overstay their welcome.

However, the ability to change and adapt normal activities to have use beyond just losing stress – such as arranging a feast or a wedding to lure an enemy into an assassination – gives excellent flexibility to your gameplay.

Roads to Power

Roads to Power provides a major overhaul to the way that Crusader Kings 3 works. A lot of it is focused on the Byzantine Empire and the new Administrative government type, which offers new alternative ways to play during your game.

Without additional DLC, you’re really limited on the kind of government types you can play, and the mechanics of the Byzantines do vary a lot from the usual Feudal characters.

Roads to Power shines because it’s something of a two-for-one on new gameplay opportunities, as it also adds the ability to just give up on being landed entirely and go out as an adventurer. You’ll influence the map in new and different ways, shaping other people’s wars, plaguing nations with crime, or just taking the opportunity to see the world.

Adding in adventurers to Crusader Kings 3 brings plenty of new opportunities for your character’s story. When faced with impossible odds against your domain, maybe you just hit the road, raise an army, and then take back what you’re owed?

It also adds the chance to have a proper rags-to-riches story, starting even lower than a count on your rise to dynastic brilliance.

Whatever area of the world you’re interested in

This might seem like a cop out, but the three DLCs listed above – each of them considered a “Major” DLC – are really the only ones that add important things to every character.

If you want the best possible game of Crusader Kings 3, you’ll ultimately want every DLC (except maybe for Legends of the Dead), but otherwise each available DLC is only really worth having if you’re interested in that area of the game.

I absolutely love the Northern Lords DLC that adds lots of new content to Scandinavia and simulates the power of the Vikings, and I think the Fate of Iberia pack makes for some interesting gameplay opportunities. However, if you’re not immediately using the new features, you might as well not have bothered picking it up.

Personally, I’d suggest starting with the Europe-focused DLC. Europe just has the most content compared to other regions, and is kind of the core CK3 experience, especially with the overhaul to Christianity with By God Alone. Then once you’re tired of the struggles of the European Kings and Byzantine Empire, move on out to other parts of the world. Saying that…

All Under Heaven

If you want more bang for your buck, then All Under Heaven is going to have to be your first port of call. It adds multiple new types of governments, including the ability to become a God-King or the Celestial government of China.

Japan is an awkward struggle of overlapping alliances and multiple government types, while China has multiple ways to rise to power and cause trouble. On top of this, you can also explore the benefits of the Silk Road and work to introduce your culture to the advanced power of gunpowder early on.

All Under Heaven does absolutely nothing for you if you don’t want to play in Asia, but of all the regional expansion packs, it’s certainly the most expansive. It shouldn’t be your first purchase by any means – and you’d probably still be surprised by how Euro-centric a lot of the events end up being – but once you’re really settled into CK3, All Under Heaven will offer the most variety.

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