Best Mods for No Man's Sky

Learn how to install mods in No Man's Sky and discover the best mods to enhance your gameplay experience, from reduced launch costs to better rewards and improved visuals.

If you’re new to modding in No Man’s Sky, you’ll need to delete a text file and create a new folder to install mods. Follow these steps:

1. Navigate to your NMS game data folder. By default, this is _Local Disk (C:) > Program Files (x86) > Steam > steamapps > common > No Man’s Sky > GAMEDATA_.
2. In the _PCBANKS_ folder (within _GAMEDATA_), delete the text file named _“DISABLEMODS”_.
3. Create a folder named _“MODS”_ in the _PCBANKS_ folder. Place any new mods (usually .pak files) here.

After installing a mod, you should see a _“Mod Warning”_ message when you start the game, indicating a successful installation. This message can be ignored.

Be aware that some mods may conflict with achievement progress. If a mod is known to cause conflicts, it will usually be stated in its installation instructions. It may be impossible to revert achievement locks without loading a previous save, so always check for conflicts first.

Top Mods for No Man’s Sky

These mods are designed to improve your experience without drastically altering the game’s core characteristics. They focus on enhancing existing features or removing tedious aspects of gameplay, aiming for compatibility with future updates.

Reduced Launch Cost

This mod addresses the tedious aspect of starship launch costs. Normally, launching costs 25% of your thruster fuel (100% total), allowing only four launches before refueling. Refueling can be done with Uranium or by crafting Starship Launch Fuel (1x Metal Plating and 40x Di-hydrogen). This mod allows you to reduce the launch cost to 10%, 5%, or 0%, saving time spent gathering materials for frequent launches.

Better Rewards

This mod enhances rewards across the game. You’ll earn more units, nanites, and quicksilver from general interactions, missions (Local and Nexus), alien encounters, and sentinel kills. Resource deposits (from asteroids and ships) also yield more. Additionally, you’ll learn more words (3 instead of 1) from knowledge stones and dictionaries. This reduces early-game grinding and allows more time for exploration.

Fine LOD (Level of Detail)

This mod fixes visual issues, particularly the low-resolution rendering of distant objects and terrain, which is noticeable when flying or viewing from high vantage points. This issue often occurs with tessellation enabled but can happen regardless of settings without this mod. The mod aims to maintain performance by only forcing high-resolution rendering for visible objects. If you experience a significant FPS drop, consider reducing shadow quality settings.