Mods

Mod Warning

Mods is a page on game modding.

Summary

The PC version of No Man's Sky can be modded to change features and add in game assets. Mods are only available on PC, Steam, GOG and Xbox PC (Microsoft Store/Gamepass). Mods are not able to be used on the Mac release of the game on Steam.

Installing Mods

Follow these steps to install mods.

1. Vortex mod manager has been updated for the new mods location. You can use that for easier installation. If you want to do it manually, proceed to step 2. Otherwise, you are finished here.
2. Download your desired mod, most likely from Nexus Mods. No mods last updated before 29.January.2025 will work with NMS 5.50+.
3. Unzip/decompress the downloaded file.
4. Browse to No Man's Sky\GAMEDATA.
5. Place extracted mod folders inside of GAMEDATA/MODS, not PCBANKS/MODS. If a MODS folder does not exist yet, create it. Each mod will have it's own dedicated folder inside of GAMEDATA/MODS
6. Make sure that the mod folders aren't an extra folder deep (this is usually noted by the highest level folder having many numbers).
7. Start the game and wait for the splash screen to disappear.
8. If done correctly the game will display a warning just before displaying the selection of saved games.

The warning will be the same as the one in the screen shot shown above.

Multiplayer Important Note

Players who use mods are able to play with players who are not using mods completely unrestricted. Most modified aspects of the game will not apply to the unmodded players, they will not see modded planet generation or any simple cosmetic replacement that their own files do not contain. Some things, like corvette bases will transfer to other players so please keep this in mind when you travel to the Space Anomaly with a 1,000 module monstrosity.

Sometimes it can be confusing to new players when they see screenshots of modded or save-edited gameplay, so it may be helpful to disclose if aspects of any photos aren't present or aren't possible in the vanilla game.

Troubleshooting

• Make sure you are running the correct version of NMS.
• Make sure you placed the mod in GAMEDATA\MODS, not PCBANKS\MODS.
• Delete the Binaries\SETTINGS\GCMODSETTINGS.MXML file. When you launch NMS again, it will recreate the file.
• Check the files in the mod folder to make sure their extensions are .MBIN or .EXML. .MXML files will not work (other than LocTable.MXML). .PAK files likely will not work.
• Make sure you placed the entire contents of the mod download in GAMEDATA\MODS, not the individual subfolders or the individual files.

Mod Settings

No Man's Sky stores many of it's mod settings in No Man's Sky/BINARIES/SETTINGS/GCMODSETTINGS.MXML. This file controls mod load order, individual mod disabling and a global variable to disable all mods called DisableAllMods that may enable itself after a crash when mods are installed, this is not indicative of whether the cause of the crash was the mods. The user may safely delete this file to fix any mod problems as the file is regenerated on startup with defaults, including DisableAllMods = false. Mod load order is not very important due to the way EXML files patch their changes on top of existing files and MBIN files fully replace them.

Mod Download Sites

• No Man's Sky at Nexus Mods

Helpful Websites

• No Man's Sky Modding Discord Server
• No Man's Sky Modding Wiki
• No Man's Sky Modding Subreddit

Release History

• Worlds Part II - Reworked modding system to no longer require mods be compressed into .pak files. Mods may now use EXML files to replace the specific parts of the file they wish to modify, making mod conflicts no longer a problem so combining mods using external programs like AMUMSS is no longer necessary for basic modding.