D&D General More Details Revealed for Forgotten Realms Digital Expansions

Pre-orders are live for the upcoming Forgotten Realms books, with one D&D Beyond listing providing some new details about digital DLC released alongside the books. Posted today on D&D Beyond, the "Forgotten Realms Ultimate Bundle" will include three digital expansions - Astarion's Book of Hungers, Netheril's Fall, and a third "secret" expansion to be named later. The digital expansions will be gradually released over a three week period. Astarion's Book of Hungers will include new player options, while Netheril's Fall will be an adventure book of some kind. Page count is not available, but currently the only way to get these three digital expansions will be through buying the "Ultimate Bundle," which has a whopping price point of $159.99 and includes both physical and digital versions of the other Forgotten Realms books.

What (little) information we know was provided by D&D Beyond and can be seen below:

• Astarion’s Book of Hungers: a digital expansion where players can indulge in their vampire desires with new player options, monsters, and adventure content – all shared by Astarion himself! | Release Date: November 11, 2025
• Netheril’s Fall: a digital expansion where players can explore the lost Netherese Empire in a time traveling adventure | Release Date: November 18, 2025
• A secret third digital expansion – to be revealed soon! | Release Date: November 25, 2025

 

[GarrettKP]

If there's one BG3 character who annoys me the most, it's Astarion. Why WotC thinks he's a selling point, I've no idea.

Somebody ping me when the "Big F***ing Book of Karlach" is coming out. Thanks

Probably because he is a selling point to a majority of their audience, since he and Karlach are the two characters that drive most of the marketing and merch sales.

 

[Remathilis]

If there's one BG3 character who annoys me the most, it's Astarion. Why WotC thinks he's a selling point, I've no idea.

Somebody ping me when the "Big F***ing Book of Karlach" is coming out. Thanks

Karlach tried writing a book on vampires, but it mostly was just a list on different ways to kill them

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Part of me is expecting to see Tabaxi, Saurians, Genasi, also the three goblinod races, and Gith

While the Gith have some kind of presence on Faerun, they are really more of a Planescape species. You used to be able to say the same about Genasi, but FR Genasi & other planetouched lore now greatly overshadows Planescape Planetouched species.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Maybe there will be a future book introducing Karlach or Shadowheart.

I doubt us to see PC species that appeared twice or more. They should be ones that only appeared once. If they were new ones then they would want to playtest them, and not only about the powe balance but if the idea is enoughly good to sell toys or merchandising.

A possibility would be update of the paragenasies that appeared in Dragon magazine..

or why not new dragonborn subraces?

 

[Afroconan]

My FLGS (Spain) just put the alternate covers for pre-order. Have only seen the photo of a banner in GenCon but not the covers themselves.

Couldn't get them in higher quality though.

 

[Azzy]

I do love those covers.

 

[Bill Zebub]

Karlach tried writing a book on vampires, but it mostly was just a list on different ways to kill them

OMG link the Kickstarter...

 

[thatOneLinuxDM]

I'm tentatively excited for the Netheril story, it's an age (Arcane Age) which really interests me as a DM and player. My concern is that Wizards have previously expressed that they don't really consider the older lore to be 'canon' if it's not fifth edition, and there's so much in this setting that they might throw out, which will really undermine it. If they release an adventure which fundamentally rewrites chunks of history of the world, it will invalidate a lot of what I (and I guess a lot of others) have come to know and appreciate about the world. I own a copy of 'The Grand History of the Realms' from the 2000s, and I'm quite attached to it.

Wizards' treatment of their property from the earlier editions is always like this, I would really like to see them revisit the older stories in a way that does them justice, the gods walking the world in their avatar forms in the Time of Troubles, the flying cities of Netheril crashing to the ground after Karsus's Avatar is cast, the raising of the Host Tower of the Arcane and the vast potential of the sarrukh are all so fascinating.

My one ray of hope here is that the Rime book didn't screw with things much, other than getting a date or two wrong, so I hope the editing and lore-keeping of this story is on point.

BG3 also touched on Netheril a tiny bit because it had to for the story to work (which is perfectly fair) but there's a lot of other content in other published media from the 90s and up to the 'Anauroch: The Empire of Shade' storyline from 3.5 which I would like to see treated with respect.