The latest expansion for Total War: Warhammer 3 is now available! Forge of the Chaos Dwarfs" comes bundled with a variety of luxury items. The new DLC is also time for a new update, bringing the dangerous fantasy grim-up to version 3.0. The "General Updates" section of the patch notes (open in new tab) states that this update "introduces a new pack file limit that increases the number of mods that can be run simultaneously (unless there are cross-mod issues)."

This is a more exciting way of saying what William Håkestad, a designer at Creative Assembly working on the Total War: Warhammer 3 DLC, announced on the Total War Modding Discord (opens in a new tab) Boring way of saying: "The new pack file limit is 65,534 simultaneous. Your turn."

Each mod is a separate packfile, and as Håkestad went on to explain, the packfile limit used to be much lower for these games. "They were stored in 8-bit, so at some point during the dinosaur era they were set to 256. The number that could be stacked was even lower because it included the game's own pack files. Too many numbers would not automatically crash the game, but the results were not good." The game was supposed to crash if this limit was exceeded, but a minor fluke could keep the game functioning."

However, only 256 of your pack files are actually working, which seriously affects the stability of the game.

Even at the height of my mania for modding the original Total War: Warhammer with beer-throwing catapults (opens in new tab) and HeroQuest goblins (opens in new tab), I don't think I even reached 50. Still, for those who like to go wild with mods, it would be nice to have more pack files that work. And Håkestad says, "If you somehow manage to exceed the new limit of 65,534 (currently stored in 16-bit!) If you exceed it, a pop-up will appear asking you to reduce the number of packfiles below that number. Just in case."

Given that the number of mods for Total War: Warhammer 3 in the Steam Workshop (open in new tab) is currently under 10,000, you may have trouble meeting the new limit. Perhaps modders might see this as a challenge?

Reaction to the other changes in update 3.0 seems to be positive, and players have been impressed by improved unit behavior (opens in new tab), such as pursuers hunting down defeated enemies and single units engaging lords (opens in new tab), better siege AI (opens in new tab), and small but welcome diplomatic changes that make it more likely that distant lands will settle for peace (opens in new tab). Early tests suggest that the new line of sight changes will ultimately make things better for units with firearms, as decorative objects no longer hinder marksmen (opens in new tab). The Chaos Dwarves are a good example of this, as they have big guns that go well with their big hats.