If you’re a fan of The Witcher, you know Roach, Geralt’s trusty steed (or steeds, as he names all of his horses “Roach”). As I’m knee-deep in The Witcher 3 now, I’ve come to know its version of Roach quite well. Or, well enough to feel like my bad luck with mounts in games (unless that game is Red Dead Redemption, or Neverwinter) is spilling over. I don’t know what it is exactly, but from Assassin’s Creed to Dragon Age: Inquisition to The Elder Scrolls Online, I always seems to have enough weird glitches happen with mounts that I get to a point where I’m compelled to ignore them altogether. Unfortunately, Roach has been no exception, as I’ve found her to be the glitchiest of any mount I’ve ever ridden in a game. From getting caught on terrain to being difficult to control (maybe that’s just a problem in general), Roach is one maddening mare. Annoyed though I was at first, I eventually found some humor in Roach’s antics, and I started screenshotting every time she glitched. I recently reviewed my little library of Roach glitch images and, with Listmas in full swing, though it’d be amusing to take a look at five of the most memorable ones (for better or worse) I captured. Poor Roach. How she manages to get herself into such uncomfortable predicaments, I’ll never know!

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1. File Under “This Looks Painful.”

This is the first Roach glitch I captured, and I think it remains my favorite, and also probably most horrible. Because no one wants half a horse. Let alone the end facing Geralt here. But I digress. Early on in the game, I was on a quest to find the “bloody baron” in a place call Crow’s Perch, which has a winding path up to its main castle with this particular gate that opens and closes on a whim. I somehow managed to leave Roach in the wrong place at the wrong time. (She was perfectly fine upon opening the gate.) But this particular scene, funny and terrible, caused me to never bring Roach into Crow’s Perch again.

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2. Becoming One with Nature

This particular glitch where Roach ends up face first in the side of a mountain or building is one I commonly see. However, in this shot in Undvik, it also looks like she’s trying to climb the hill, so I don’t even know what’s going on. In Roach’s defense, I did leave her on a very narrow path, so maybe she needed more…space? But I still don’t even know what’s going on.

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3. Maybe He Saw a Squirrel?

Trying to climb a mountain seems like it could be in the wheelhouse of the right kind of horse, but climbing a tree?? As I recall, I left Roach in this shady spot in Velen, went off to fight a bunch of monsters, and returned to find her in this very uncomfortable-looking state. Maybe she was bored? Maybe she saw a squirrel? Maybe she got confused? Because I know I sure was. Also, there are no squirrels in this game, so what am I even saying. I can assure you that Roach does not know, and neither do I.

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4. Bridges are Bad Luck

While the gate glitch in Crow’s Perch was kind of funny, the time that Roach glitched out on a bridge, again in Undvik, was not. Now, I’ve noticed that Roach doesn’t seem to like bridges, so maybe this was inevitable, but boy oh boy did she ever get so stuck on the end of this bridge. As we rode over this bridge, I accidentally veered her toward the left. and in some bizarre way, her front two legs stuck right where the bridge met land, while her back legs flailed and contorted in the air. I was able to dismount, but then, the game wouldn’t let me back on her. I actually felt bad leaving her there, but I had to in order to recall her into another area. I get that Roach is “magic” in that way, but still, this glitch was straight bad.

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5. Fly Roach, Fly!

Did you not know that “magical” Roach could fly? Well, hover might be a better way to put it. There must be something about Undvik, because that’s where this wonderful moment happened, too. I’d seen Roach before in this odd position, but in most cases, this rear-in-the-air stance happened when he was left on a steep hillside. Here, however, it seemed like she tried to get on a boat, but the game said “hold up!” and then “how about this hilarity instead?” The strange thing is that I’m pretty sure I left Roach on the shore when I went to do a little exploring, so again, maybe she got bored. Or saw a squirrel. Except, there still aren’t any squirrels in the game, so… Poor Roach.

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All images (© CD Projekt S.A.) in this article were taken by author during PS4 gameplay of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.