Prolific Total War Warhammer 3 modder says growing bug woes are "unacceptable"

In the wake of the latest game-breaking Total War Warhammer 3 bug, one of the most dedicated Total War enthusiasts and mod creators decided to leave a negative review on the game they'd put over 3,800 hours into. Naturally, this caught a lot of attention, so I got in touch with them to learn more. Randall Zaioczkowski, best known as 'Dead Baron,' is one of the founders of the Skeleton Crew Modding team, which has put out many impressive additions and fixes for the Total War series and TWW3 in particular. Despite remaining an ardent fan, he says "there have been so many issues I just couldn't ignore" in recent years.

"This all kind of blew up, to be honest," Randall tells me via Discord, "I didn't think anyone would even read my review." The inciting incident was the latest wrinkle in a long struggle Total War Warhammer 3 developer Creative Assembly has been having with its campaign AI. The recruitment bug in question has caused some factions to simply not fill out their armies when controlled by the computer. As you can imagine, this rather takes the punch out of an experience we usually rank among the best strategy games on PC.

Randall counts his total playtime across the Total War series at more than 7,000 hours, with Three Kingdoms and Warhammer 3 the most substantial among them. "Three Kingdoms was my dream Total War, I love the whole story and characters, love Dynasty Warriors, and have multiple editions of the books." It's also where he began creating mods: "I was inspired by other modders such as 'Guvenoren' and 'Lily' so I tried to copy their style. Unit cards always bothered me in mods so I wanted to try to emulate CA's art style and I honestly think that is part of what made my early mods popular."

In more recent years, Randall began making fixes to visual errors and issues, which he'd also submit to CA's bug report forum indicating the steps taken. After overhauling textures for Total War Empire, he contacted CA and offered to let them use his improved designs for free, but was turned away. "I never expected them to accept the textures in the first place, but I thought it was worth a shot," he explains. "I was never mad they said no. I wanted to make the game better for everyone. That is why I offered to sign any agreements or contract stating I wanted no compensation. I make mods as a hobby."

Since then, Randall has continued updating many older textures from the earlier Total War Warhammer entries to work better in the latest entry. He does these himself using Photoshop or Paint.net. "Originally I toyed with AI upscaling but it didn't look good. So I just resorted to taking their textures from Warhammer 1 and combining the Specular and Diffuse manually. I used Warhammer 1 to reference how they were supposed to look."

Randall compared "almost every texture in Warhammer 1" to their TWW3 equivalents to determine which ones required work. "Some textures looked fine and didn't need to be replaced, others looked downright terrible." All of his improved creations are now available as Total War Warhammer 3 mods, so you can try them out for yourself.

Some of Randall's mods have been notable talking points in the past. Skullmuncha's unique wyvern design from the first Total War Warhammer wasn't there in TWW3; when queried at the time, CA responded that they didn't have access to the file any more. "I just took the model and textures from Warhammer 1, updated them to work in Warhammer 3, and set up the animation fixes with help from some of the community," Randall tells me. The official version was later corrected by CA in patch 4.2. He's made similar 'quick fixes' elsewhere, such as implementing missing lightning spark effects for Kholek Suneater: "I just copied the VFX from Warhammer 1 and they worked."

With so much love for the game, I ask Randall where he felt things started to go wrong. "My frustrations started with the DLC for Three Kingdoms and how they dropped support after teasing the Northern Expansion DLC." Despite this, he "kept positive, turned a blind eye to the issues, and even defended them in the Skeleton Crew Modding server I run." The problems then resurfaced, however, with TWW3's most notorious expansion: "Shadows of Change is when I started to feel the shift and since then there have been so many issues I just couldn't ignore any more."

He points specifically to the infamous "prices have to rise" statement from chief product officer Rob Bartholomew, who later left CA in 2024, as a major turning point. "It felt insulting, like they were just telling us, 'Shut up and buy the DLC,'" Randall remarks, saying he felt the message reflected how the "higher-ups" see the community. "It reminded me of former bosses that didn't care about my safety or concerns and just wanted the job done at any cost."

Lately, we've seen more outreach from CA through developer videos and diaries discussing upcoming content and patches, but Randall isn't convinced. "I see them mostly as just public image recovery. It feels hollow. I want them to make these videos because they want to and they are proud to show off what they are working on."

How does Randall feel about the DLC rollout? "I don't play all of them, I don't have interest in every faction. I like that they get content though because other people do play them." While he doesn't want to see expansions put on pause for core fixes, he admits trying to do both at once "isn't realistic so I understand. The problem is it seems like they are putting a hold on the DLC and not fixing anything either unless it blows up in the community."

While Randall is "not familiar with the intricacies of game dev," he says he has performed QA [quality assurance] before and considers it one of the most glaring problems for Total War today. "In the current state of the game I ask myself, 'Why wasn't this caught in QA? This is unacceptable for release.' They currently only seem to fix things the community attacks them for. I myself have a short list of bugs on their forum that they say they are aware of and looking into but multiple patches have been released with no fixes."

Despite his mod work, Randall encourages people to play without them occasionally to "better appreciate the game and the content modders make separately." For new TWW3 players, he'd encourage not starting until at least the ongoing AI issues are fixed. "If the game isn't running as it is supposed to out of the box without any mods then it could negatively impact user experience, which is something I feel like I care more about than CA [does]. It's about having fun; paying a lot of money for a game that is broken isn't fun."

While the Skeleton Crew Modding team has changed in the years since it was first formed, Randall says he loves his current collaborators, and enjoys making "mods I think would be great additions to the game." He certainly values looks: "The visuals are the first thing people will see that will draw someone in. A great screenshot can make someone want to play a game. If you have broken models, textures, VFX, and other errors, it makes your product look bad. CA seems not to care about visual issues; maybe they are more worried about more engine issues, maybe they don't have the time or manpower. I can't say for sure. I can say I don't regret making the mods I did and would do it again."

"I love the series, I don't hate the CA devs," Randall emphasizes. "I don't want anyone to think I'm doing this out of hatred or spite. I posted my review because I am frustrated. A lot of us have been here through everything, still supporting the game because we want it to be better. I believe there are plenty of people in the company that want to make the game perfect, to make the community happy. No-one enjoys hearing negative comments about their work."

We've rounded up plenty more of the best Warhammer games you can play today, along with the best grand strategy games if you like to go large.

Are you still a big Total War enjoyer? Stop by the PCGamesN community Discord and tell us about your favorites in the series. As an old head, there's still a magical simplicity to the early days of Shogun and Rome's campaigns that will stick with me forever.