Creative Assembly finally launched the first major update for Total War: Warhammer 3 earlier this week. Update 1.1 added a whole slew of bug fixes, gameplay tweaks, and balance adjustments to the game, but by far the most highly anticipated feature was Steam Workshop support. Within a few hours of launch, there were already over 100 Warhammer 3 mods to choose from. And that number continues to grow exponentially. As of this writing, there are more than 700 of them.
Having so many Warhammer 3 mods at our disposal is fantastic but it can also feel a bit overwhelming. Especially if you’re new to the game. Don’t worry, though, because we put together a handy list covering all the most interesting mods currently available. The game is getting dozens of new mods every day so expect this list to expand appropriately over the coming weeks and months.
Just in case you’re wondering whether you still need mods now that Update 1.1 is out, the answer is yes. While the update does improve on many important aspects of the game, it only fixes a fraction of Warhammer 3’s problems. You’ll definitely want to grab at least a few mods in order to bypass some of the frustrating design choices still present in vanilla.
With that out of the way, let’s take a look at some of the best Total War: Warhammer 3 mods available right now.
Toggle Chaos Realms
We’re starting right off the bat with one of the most important Warhammer 3 mods out there – Toggle Chaos Realms. Just as its name suggests, this simple mod adds a toggle that allows you to completely remove the Chaos Realm narrative from the campaign. Finally, no more Chaos Rifts!
Some Warhammer 3 factions have an easier time than others playing through the Chaos Realms campaign, especially Khorne and Tzeentch. However, the Chaos Rifts mechanic becomes tedious past your first playthrough regardless of which faction you’re using. We do recommend playing the campaign once without the mod and then toggling off the Chaos Realms mechanic for your subsequent playthroughs.
Toggle Chaos Realms supports both single-player and multiplayer campaigns. You’ll find the toggle button on the campaign settings screen in both modes.
Victory Conditions Overhaul
You can look at this mod as an alternative to the previous one. Instead of straight-up removing the Chaos Rifts mechanic, VCO attempts to improve the overall campaign experience by adding new victory conditions for each faction. The new victory conditions are called Routes and every faction gets three of them. Completing one Route is the equivalent of achieving a traditional Short Victory. Meanwhile, completing all three is the equivalent of achieving a Long Victory condition.
Unlike traditional victory conditions, Routes are specifically tailored for each faction. For instance, Khorne’s first Route requires you to achieve the highest level of corruption in at least 50 regions while the second Route requires you to amass at least 20,000 skulls. Meanwhile, to complete the third Route you’ll need to destroy every Slaanesh faction on the map.
Victory Conditions Overhaul doesn’t disable Chaos Rifts so you can pursue the Routes in addition to completing the default campaign objectives. Or, you can just ignore them because now you can win campaigns by simply completing Routes.
It’s worth noting that Victory Conditions Overhaul is comprised of two mods. The first of which acts as a framework, so make sure to install that one first. You can then install VCO – Realms of Chaos on top of it. Both mods can be found in the Workshop. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding them.
Better Camera Mod
Watching hordes of soldiers and huge monsters fighting each other in slow motion is one of my favorite things to do in Total War: Warhammer 3. If you’re also a fan of epic cinematic battles you’ll want to grab the Better Camera Mod asap. The mod gives you more control over the camera and features a built-in cinematic mode that you can access by simply pressing ‘Alt + K’.
The mod is very simple but makes a big difference and is an absolute must if you’re planning to make cinematic battle montages for YouTube. Or if you want to grab some really cool screenshots.
If you’re planning to use Better Camera Mod for multiplayer, keep in mind that it won’t work unless all the other people you’re playing with also have the mod installed.
Speedy Turn Camera
I know what you’re thinking, “why use a speedy camera mod when I can already make things go faster by changing the camera settings in-game?” Well, you can indeed speed things up by adjusting the camera settings, however, it’s worth noting that said settings only affect animations. If you want to have the game jump faster from one faction or army to the next, you’re going to need this mod. The speed improvement may vary from system to system but should be noticeable even on high-end PCs.
UI Improvements
Simplicity is a common theme you’ll notice among many of the Warhammer 3 mods found on this list. UI Improvements introduces small yet very noticeable changes to the game. Primarily, the mod makes it easier to distinguish between building and demolishing counters, by turning the former from red to green. Just like in the previous Total War: Warhammer games.
For some reason, CA thought it was a good idea to make most UI elements in Warhammer 3 red. It’s not, and it can lead to a lot of confusion. Luckily, not anymore. The mod also changes city banners, unit recruitment counters, and a few other UI elements in the interest of making everything more intuitive and easier to read.
Settlement Capture Pictures
Another example of a mindbogglingly bad decision by CA was the removal of settlement capture pictures. This is another basic feature that was present in previous games. Instead, what we got in Warhammer 3 is one more batch of red icons that look identical regardless of which faction you’re playing. Needless to say, this isn’t ideal.
If you’re tired of boring red icons make sure to grab this mod because it adds original artwork for post-settlement battle actions like Occupy, Colonize, Raze, Sack, etc. Every faction gets a distinct set of pictures, which helps a lot with the immersion factor. Some of the artwork looks a bit bland but it’s still better than nothing.
Building Progression Icons Iii
Building Progression Icons is another UI mod that does exactly what it says on the tin. The aim of this mod is to reflect the upgrade progression of building chains in an immersive way. The mod does this by adding unique icons for pretty much every building in the game. The artwork of low-tier building icons is generally fairly minimalistic, but gets gradually more complex and interesting the higher you go up the building chain.
As of this writing, the mod is still a work in progress. Kislev is currently the only Warhammer 3 faction that has new building icons, with all the other factions to follow soon. Like many of the other Warhammer 3 mods on this list, Building Progression Icons was also available for the previous games in the series. This means there’s already artwork for all the other factions coming to the game once Immortal Empires drops.
Alternative Unit Cards
Speaking of original artwork, next up we have Alternative Unit Cards. This mod reworks all the vanilla unit cards in the game, replacing them with new, and arguably much better-looking ones. At least when it comes to most units. The mod supports all factions right off the bat and even replaces lord cards.
Looks are subjective so make sure to check out the mod page for examples of the new artwork before you download this. Who knows, you might end up liking the vanilla cards better.
One Button Respec
Total War: Warhammer 3 raises the level cap up to 50, making it possible to acquire most of the skills you want for your legendary lords throughout the course of a single campaign. The key term here is most. You won’t be able to get all of them. And if you end up spending points on useless skills you’re out of luck because the game doesn’t offer a respec option.
If you want to be able to respec your characters this is the mod you’ll want to grab. Just as its name indicates, the mod allows character respecs with a simple press of a button. However, you can only do it once per character. It’s possible to edit the mod to allow for unlimited respecs but we recommend leaving it as is because it keeps things balanced.
Unique Faction UI
This is one of the few Warhammer 3 mods on this list we haven’t tested ourselves yet, but we still wanted to recommend it anyway because it looks really neat. You know how we mentioned earlier that everything in Warhammer 3 looks awfully red? Well, that extends not just to small icons or other UI elements but rather to the user interface as a whole. The aim of this mod is to give each faction a unique UI design and color.
Unique Faction UI is currently in Beta and only covers two factions – Nurgle and Khorne. More faction UIs should be coming in the near future. Make sure to check back often to see when the mod has been updated to cover your favorite factions.
Rotate All Lords and Heroes
Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what CA was thinking when implementing new changes. The ability to rotate your lord in the character panel seems like a no-brainer, and yet, the developers only made it available for the Daemon Prince. Thanks to this mod, that’s no longer the case.
Just as its name indicates, this mod lets you rotate not just lords but also heroes. There are a couple of issues at the moment preventing players from rotating certain lords like Skrag and Kugath. However, everything else should work just fine.
Legendary Lore
Warhammer Fantasy has a lot of interesting lore but only a fraction of it shows up in TWW3. Let’s face it, if you’re a major lore nerd the existing flavor text is probably not going to cut it. But you can add a bunch more of it with the Legendary Lore mod.
Legendary Lore adds appropriate flavor text whenever you meet certain conditions during the campaign. For instance, when you bring your legendary lords to certain landmarks or when you kill certain enemy legendary lords. A lot of the text is taken from various Warhammer novels so you can expect it to be lore-friendly.
The Motherland
The Motherland is one of the first Warhammer 3 mods you should download if you’re a fan of Kislev. While it’s clear that CA spent more time polishing Kislev than many of the other factions, they could have done a better job in certain areas. Some of the unit names, for instance, aren’t necessarily lore-friendly and I think we can all agree that Kislev has way too many white bears right now.
The Motherland introduces additional bear variants (black, cedar, and honey colors) and reskins several units to make them look better. These include the Tzar Guard, Light War Sleds, and Gryphon Legion. The mod also renames certain units. For example, Light War Sleds become Oblast Sledges, War Bear Riders become Sons of Ursun, and Tzar Guard become Kreml Guards. These changes are meant to make Kislev’s unit roster more lore-friendly.
The mod authors are planning on expanding The Motherland even more in the near future. Upcoming updates will bring to the table more mount options for lords and heroes. Brand new heroes and units could also end up being added to the mod at some point. In the meantime, you can grab another mod called Guardians of the North if you want to expand Kislev’s unit roster.
Climate Adaptation
This is easily one of the most interesting Warhammer 3 mods we’ve come across lately. Climate Adaptation eliminates penalties associated with conquering settlements that have unsuitable climates, and it does it in a realistic manner. Upon conquering such a settlement, you will still suffer the usual debuffs but they will gradually diminish the longer you keep control of the region.
Eventually, the climate of the region will become suitable for your faction, unless it ends up being captured by an enemy faction. In which case you will need to start all over again. It will take you a total of 25 turns to adapt to an Unpleasant climate and 50 turns to adapt to an Uninhabitable climate.
The original mod is in Chinese so you’ll also need to grab Z’s English Sub-mod to have all the text display correctly. The mod will work as indented even without the proper text, though. As usual, you can find both these mods in the Steam Workshop.
Calm’s Ogres Reskins
The Ogre Kingdoms already have one of the best unit rosters in Total War: Warhammer 3 but you can make it even better with Calm’s reskin mods. The first one you’ll want to get is Calm’s Greasus Reskin mod, which makes the Overtyrant significantly less ridiculous than in vanilla. The mod removes Greasus’ wheelbarrow mount and gives him walking animations instead. Not just that but the mod also gives him a fresh coat of paint that makes him look like an Ogre version of Genghis Khan. Pretty sweet.
While you’re at it, you might also want to grab Calm’s Tyrant Reskin and Calm’s Gnoblar Reskin. These mods don’t add any extra features but they do make Tyrants and Gnoblars look cooler. Gnoblars, in particular, have been given a lot more variety and now look closer to their 8th Edition Army Book counterparts.
Drunk Flamingo’s Gnoblar Snacks
Ogres are always hungry and it can sometimes be a pain to find sources of meat for your armies. Now, I’m not saying you should feed your weaker units to your stronger ones whenever you run out of food, but you will have access to that option by installing this mod.
Drunk Flamingo’s Gnoblar Snacks allows you to convert units of gobbos into meat. Each unit will replenish 10 meat and you can eat up to four of them at a time. Additionally, the mod also makes Gnoblars require 0 food to maintain. If you don’t have the heart to feed them to Ogres you can use them to create big inexpensive armies instead.
Greatest of Daemons
Greatest of Daemons is a simple mod designed to introduce a larger variety of Exalted Greater Daemons for all the appropriate factions. The mod adds a couple of new skins for each of the four types of Exalted Greater Daemons on top of the existing variants. All the skins are lore-friendly as they have been based on variants from the tabletop.
Change Starting Settlement
Change Starting Settlement is one of those Warhammer 3 mods that have the potential to break the game if you’re not careful. But we think the risk is well worth it. What the mod does is allow you to start a new campaign from any settlement on the map. Want to play as Tzeentch but start in Kislev? No problem. Tired of having to babysit the Great Bastion as Miao Ying? Just start off on the other side of the map and all your problems are gone.
Given the name of the mod, I’m sure you can already tell that it won’t work unless you start a new campaign. When you do, you will find a new button in the top-left corner of the UI that will allow you to change your settlement. Make sure to use it during your first turn otherwise it disappears.
Advanced Item Fuse
The ability to fuse items in order to obtain better quality gear is a new feature introduced in Total War: Warhammer 3. This system does have some shortcomings, though, as it only works with common, uncommon and rare items. If you’re hoping to obtain epic quality items using this mechanic you’re out of luck. Unless of course, you’re using this mod.
Advanced Item Fuse improves upon the existing system and lets you acquire purple items by fusing together two blue ones. Moreover, the mod also lets you combine purple items into golden ones. Vanilla golden items are usually pretty mediocre but that’s not the case here. In addition to allowing you to combine gear, Advanced Item Fuse also lets you combine followers and banners.
More Character Names
If you’ve been playing Total War: Warhammer 3 for a while you’re probably sick of seeing the same character names pop up over and over. I mean, how many Norscans named Leif Aesling are there? And why are most of my Ice Witches called Evelina Shevchenko? Well, let’s just say that after installing this mod you can forget about seeing duplicate names ever again.
More Character Names adds thousands of new names spread evenly among the game’s eight playable factions. As well as the AI-controlled ones. All the names are lore-friendly and shouldn’t stand out too much compared to the vanilla ones.
There are a few other Warhammer 3 mods on the Steam Workshop that do something similar but More Character Names is the most comprehensive one we’ve seen so far.
Great Harmony Sentinel – The Cathay Dream
This mod is somewhat on the wackier side of things. At least when compared to all the other Warhammer 3 mods we’ve covered so far. Great Harmony Sentinel is a sizeable overhaul mod that adds a bunch of new content to Grand Cathay, including over 20 new units. That alone is enough to put most Warhammer 2 DLCs to shame, but that’s only a small fraction of what this mod brings to the table.
With Great Harmony Sentinel installed, lords and heroes will be able to rank up to level 80 and have a grand total of 100 skill points at their disposal. Of course, there are also some new skills you can spend those points on. In addition, gameplay mechanics, building chains, icons and a variety of other aspects have been changed by this mod as well.
Great Harmony Sentinel is essentially Grand Cathay on steroids. The mod is currently in beta but you can already test it out for yourself via the Steam Workshop. Just keep in mind that there are likely to be bugs at this stage of development. Also, the mod only has partial English language support at the moment. Don’t be surprised if some of the text is either in Chinese or completely missing.
If you’re looking for a smaller but more balanced alternative to Great Harmony Sentinel, we recommend looking into Dead’s Cathay Unit Pack.
Decline Diplomacy
Next up on our list of Warhammer 3 mods you shouldn’t play without is Decline Diplomacy. The mod adds a new UI button next to Pause and Fast Forward that you can use to automatically decline any incoming diplomatic actions with the exception of Ultimatums. If you’re tired of factions bombarding you with non-aggression pact request as soon as you end your turn, this is the mod for you.
Less AI Cheating
We all know that the AI in Total War games (and most grand strategy games, for that matter) cheats but the cheating in Warhammer 3 is particularly infuriating. At higher difficulties, the AI gets a huge amount of advantages over the player, and the worst part is that many of them also apply in the Realms of Chaos. This mod, while somewhat buggy at the moment, attempts to fix that by making the AI more balanced while continuing to keep things fairly challenging.
Less AI Cheating introduces a number of important changes that cut down AI growth speed, research rate, influence gain, immunity to certain campaign effects, and more. The full list of changes is too extensive to cover here, but suffice it to say that you’ll find the AI more manageable after installing this mod.
If you’re playing on normal difficulty or lower you probably don’t want to install this mod because it may make things too easy. Consider getting it if the AI is causing you tons of problems while playing on Very Hard or Legendary.
Landmarks of Legend/Glorious Landmarks
I don’t know about you but I’ve always loved landmarks in Total War: Warhammer games. There’s just something special about finding settlements with unique buildings. In vanilla Warhammer 3, landmarks are few and far between but you can add significantly more of them with any of these two mods. Or even both.
Landmarks of Legend introduces no less than 26 new landmarks spread across most of the factions currently available in the game, including a few non-playable ones like Skaven, Vampire Counts, and The Empire. In addition, you can also expect a bunch of new units and even more new additions to come once CA releases further modding resources.
If you’re looking for a good alternative to Landmarks of Legends, you should try out Glorious Landmarks. This one doesn’t add new units but brings to the table over 40 new landmarks, most of which were taken straight from lore books. The landmarks are, for the most part, balanced and add a lot of flavor to the campaign.
While technically compatible with each other, it’s a good idea to install only one of these mods before deciding to get the other. With both installed, you’ll get almost 70 new landmarks, which can be a bit hard to keep track of. It’s worth noting that the AI benefits from the new landmarks just as much as you do.
Return of the Great Empires
Even though Mortal Empires for Warhammer 3 isn’t out just yet, you can already find a bunch of extra factions in addition to the eight playable ones. Unfortunately, they are significantly weaker here than they were in previous games and won’t have much of an impact on your campaign. But you can change that.
Return of the Great Empires buffs factions from previous games in order to level the playing field for them and make campaigns more interested. Karl Franz, Ungrim, Snikch, Boris Todbringer, Tretch, Manfred, Throt, and their factions have all received significant buffs. The mod makes some of these factions REALLY strong. Don’t be surprised if you see them stomping on the likes of Skrag or Katarin in the early game.
Radious Total War Mod – Warhammer 3
This is one of the few Warhammer 3 mods available right now that completely overhaul the game. We’re talking hundreds of new units, overhauled magic system with more variety, reworked AI scripts, reworked economy system, combat rebalancing, and more. Basically, you can expect the mod to improve upon pretty much every aspect of Total War: Warhammer 3 in one way or another.
At the time of writing, the Radious Total War Mod for Warhammer 3 is still early in development. Radious made similar mods in the past for the first two Total War Warhammer games and has recently started working on this version for the third installment. Kislev and Cathay are already largely done but you’ll have to wait a bit more for the other factions.
According to the mod’s roadmap, the Ogre Kingdoms will be the next faction that will be expanded upon. Followed by Khorne this spring. The remaining factions will follow sometime during the summer. Eventually, the mod will also have full support for all future updates and DLCs. Of course, the highly anticipated Immortal Empires map will be supported too.
It’s important to note that this mod is comprised of three parts. You’ll need to download all of them to install the mod. Just look up ‘Radious Total War Mod’ on the Steam Workshop and you’ll find all three parts there.
Minor Settlement Become Land Battles
This is arguably one of the most important Warhammer 3 mods at the moment. While we appreciate the changes made by CA to minor settlement battles, they’ve stopped being fun a while ago. Minor settlement battles drag on for too long and become tedious at some point.
With this mod installed, you don’t have to worry about that anymore because minor settlement battles will be converted into regular land battles. One exception to this rule is battles that take part in settlements with a port. Those will play out as before. Major siege battles will also remain the same.
There are other mods that simply reduce the number of minor settlement battles you’ll encounter instead of removing them completely. Install one of those if you still want to be able to fight minor settlement battles on occasion. The mod called Fewer Minor Settlement Battles – 50% is a good one you could try.
Final Words
All the Warhammer 3 mods featured on this list were made for Steam and can easily be downloaded via the Workshop. Some of these mods can potentially be jury-rigged to work on the EGS or Game Pass versions of Warhammer 3, but we’re not really sure how to pull off something like that. If possible, we strongly recommend getting the game on Steam, especially if you want to play it with mods.
We haven’t found any reliable mods for boosting the game’s performance, which is still less than ideal even after Update 1.1. Until a new update or a good performance mod comes along, you can check out our Warhammer 3 optimization guide. And if you’re interested in modding other games, we have a bunch of other articles just like this one down below.
- The Best Witcher 3 Mods You Should Be Playing in 2022
- The Best Mass Effect Legendary Edition Mods Ever Created
- Best Skyrim Mods You Should Play in 2022
- Best Elden Ring Mods You Need for Your Next Playthrough
