Best Astroneer Mods: Make the Universe Your Own

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Arron is a featured team writer and lifelong gamer. Ever since he started playing games on his old SNES, and has been hooked ever since. He has a particular love for games like Pillars of Eternity, Skyrim, a variety of beloved indie titles, and also a few online shooters to serve as a means of avoiding open-world fatigue. Outside of gaming, he enjoys watching arthouse movies, playing Dungeons & Dragons, and writing fiction.

Key Info Up Front

There aren’t too many mods available for Astroneer, but the ones out there can go a long way in making the game better fit how you would like it to. Particular standouts are the Better Power, AstroMinimap, and Raytracing mods that you can find more information on below.

How to Install Astroneer Mods

Before we get through my very favorite Astroneer mods, I want to cover how to install mods to begin with since the game is not integrated with Steam Workshop. So, you first should know that mods are only available on the PC version of Astroneer, but they can work regardless of where you download the game’s files from. To make installing the mods as easy as possible with a user-friendly interface and program, I recommend downloading the AstroModLoader, which can be found here.

This mod loader is entirely open-source and has some impressive functions built into it, like being able to set up multiple groups of mods that you can easily switch between when loading up the game. Its GitHub page also has extensive documentation to help you learn how to use the software and troubleshoot any issues that you come across.

It also helps ensure that your mods will stay compatible and will load in the correct order, which can save a lot of headaches when setting up your mod library. I’ve used quite a few different mod loaders over the years, and this one is one of the best I’ve ever seen, so even if you’ve never modded a game before, I think you’ll find modding Astroneer pretty easy.

Top 9 Best Astroneer Mods

Raytracing and Realistic Reflections

Mod Developer: questynesty
Link: Nexus Mods

One of my favorite things about Astroneer is its fantastic visuals. Its graphics are simple, but they are colorful and perfectly capture the game’s toybox design sensibility. The great graphics also help make going to a new planet even more exciting for me since each one has a unique personality and appearance to go with it. But, if Astroneer‘s visuals aren’t enough for you, this mod adds full Raytracing support to make its environments more beautiful and captivating.

The mod does bring a slight hit of around five frames per second, but its gorgeous reflections and the atmosphere it brings with it are well worth the loss. One of my favorite things about this mod is that it doesn’t even change the game’s visual style or severely change its tone. Instead, it merely adds new technology to what is already there to highlight and accentuate what the developers put there in the first place.

Into the Sun

Mod Developer: danlcimes
Link: Nexus Mods

This is another visual mod with the expressed intent to change the visual style and tone of Astroneer. That being said, it does a fantastic job of giving the game a more realistic visual style on top of adding plenty of graphical enhancements, especially when considering the game’s lighting and shadows. Whenever I’m looking for Astroneer to feel a bit more grounded or grim, this is the mod I go to immediately.

Into the Sun’s main change to Astroneer‘s visuals is desaturating the colors and shaders to take a lot of the color out of the planets and replace it with yellow/brown hues. This makes the geography of the planets feel more like they’re made of stone, dirt, and sand.

There are some colors, especially in caves, that help make the environments pop when they’re discovered, but they are much less frequent than in the base game. I’ve found that this mod helps make Astroneer‘s atmosphere feel more like a survival game than a toybox.

Generous Power

Mod Developer: ElDragonFuego
Link: Nexus Mods

I love managing my bases’ power networks and automation systems in Astroneer, but I can also definitely understand why many players might not. The system takes a lot of time, fine-tuning, and trial and error to get just right, which isn’t for everybody.

So, if you’ve grown tired of figuring out power networks and resource consumption or are intimidated by learning Astroneer‘s power mechanics, the Generous Power mod is a perfect fit for you.

This mod does not entirely remove the need for power and generators in the game, but it drastically increases the volume of power that each different source will produce. Doing so allows players to not worry as much about trying to stay on top of upgrading their power sources and balancing resources between them.

Generous Power allows you to place a generator or two at each base you make and then largely forget about them. It also increases the viability of running a base entirely on solar or wind power, allowing players to not worry about dedicating resources to keeping their machines up and running.

AstroMinimap

Mod Developer: Atenfyr
Link: Nexus Mods

One of the most annoying things during any Astroneer game is getting lost on a planet. You then have to wildly wander, hoping that you’ll find a line of Tethers or vehicle to get back to your base, and if you don’t, you suffocate, leaving your body and supplies in an unknown locale.

Then, if you had anything of value on you when you died, you have to undertake the laborious process of tracking down your corpse to retrieve it. Thankfully, the mod AstroMinimap helps cut down on both occurrences.

The mod does exactly what its name implies and puts a square minimap in the top right corner of the screen. The map isn’t as stylized or elegant as some are in AAA titles, but it is still beneficial for making your way around the planets. AstroMinimap even allows players to zoom the map in and out to match the player’s preferences.

At the same time, it can also be toggled on and off with the F4 key if you don’t always want it to take up valuable space on your monitor. However, the minimap is always locked to be facing North, which can be unfortunate if you’re a player that prefers the minimap to spin to align with the direction you are facing at all times.

Generous Storage

Mod Developer: ElDragonFuego
Link: Nexus Mods

Establishing a good storage system is paramount to base efficiency in Astroneer. However, the game’s base storage options can leave much desired. They tend to be smaller, forcing players to build a forest of storage walls or canisters to hold all of their various materials.

Then, when players want to keep things organized, they have to transfer items back and forth between the storage walls laboriously. Or, if they have progressed enough to use canisters, they can easily fill up the canister and new to have multiple for each resource. Storage is easily my least favorite aspect of Astroneer, making this mod one that I never play without.

Much like the Generous Power mod by the same creator, Generous Storage increases the capacity of canisters to maintain the same gameplay elements of the base game to keep the Astroneer that fans know and love.

The increases are big enough to ensure that players never need more than one canister per resource, with the largest size holding up to a whopping 5000 units! However, if you’re downloading this one for a game already in progress, the mod will only apply to newly build canisters, not any built before it was activated.

Generous Tethers

Mod Developer: ElDragonFuego
Link: Nexus Mods

Easily the most crafted item in any Astroneer game is Tethers. Tethers are used to extend oxygen lines out across the entire planet, allowing players to explore freely without worrying about running out of breathable air.

However, constantly having to save or hunt down some Compound to craft Tethers can get annoying, especially later in the game when you’ve exhausted most Compound deposits near your base.

Generous Tethers aims to alleviate this annoyance by increasing the number of Tethers in each bundle you craft. I’ve found this mod extremely helpful ever since I finished my first world in Astroneer, as it helped me focus on getting to the later parts of the game that I was excited to try new things and experiment in. The mod increases the number of Tethers in a bundle from a measly 11 to 220, so you’ll notice installing this one and be thankful that you did.

Omnipotent Trade

Mod Developer: MianBao
Link: Nexus Mods

The Trade Platform is an integral part of cutting down on grinding for resources later in Astroneer games. It allows players to send away the bountiful Scrap and Astronium resources for others so that they don’t have to spend as much time hunting down pockets all across the planet.

However, its list of available resources can feel a bit limited at times, and this mod helps expand it to make the Trade Platform even more useful. Ever since I started using it, I haven’t been able to bring myself to go back to the vanilla module.

Omnipotent Trade increases the number of resources players can trade for from 19 to 34. It adds valuable resources like Plastic, Rubber, Nano Carbon Alloy, and Glass, allowing players to trade for resources to cut down on the processing time required to craft some modules and items.

If the player wants to get their hands on Glass, they can trade for it rather than trade for Quartz and then process it through another module to get the product they want.

AstroNav

Mod Developer: CrystalFerrari
Link: Mod DB

AstroNav is another navigation mod, but it gives you more information than the above minimap mod. This makes the AstroNav mod particularly useful when playing multiplayer.

It allows you to communicate where you are with your team members to discuss things more clearly and succinctly.

The mod adds a display on your screen that displays which planet in the solar system you are on, your coordinates on the planet, a compass to help you maintain directions without consulting a full map, and an optional galactic position.

This HUD element has proven pivotal for me when playing with friends. It is so much easier to list coordinates or use cardinal directions when talking to a friend rather than having to say that you’re “slightly to the right of that big purple hill, next to a big tree thing.”

Alternate Start

Mod Developer: Atenfyr
Link: Nexus Mods

This mod is a great option for Astroneer veterans who have an itch to jump back into the game but want to mix things up. While the planets of every solar system are randomly generated for each playthrough, the resources found on each one are not, which can make progress through them happen similarly each time.

This is great for new players, as it ensures that they will make solid progress through the game in the way the developers intended initially, but it can get repetitive upon future playthroughs.

The Alternate Start mod helps alleviate this issue by mixing up which planet in the solar system players start on. It works by giving you a menu when you first land at the start of a new game, allowing you to choose to spawn on any of the other seven planets or in a randomly selected one.

This is great as it allows you not to use the mod if you load it into a game with a friend or someone who hasn’t played before and wants the conventional experience first. Even better, the mod also works in singleplayer, multiplayer, and dedicated servers, so no matter how you like to play, this is a good one to download.

FAQs

Question: Does Astroneer have mods?

Answer: Yes, Astroneer does have a modest library of mods available. There aren’t nearly as many as bigger mod-friendly games like Skyrim, and none of them are complete overhauls, but there are enough to tailor the game to any player’s preferences.

Question: Is Astroneer fully released?

Answer: Yes, the game was fully released in December of 2019, but the developers at System Era Softworks have continued to release free updates and paid cosmetics to help support future development.

Question: Is there a creative mode in Astroneer?

Answer: Yes, Astroneer has a traditional creative mode that allows players to create bases and vistas without spending time gathering resources. It also allows the player to fly around the game freely without first building a Jet Pack.

Conclusion

Astroneer is a great survival game to pay when you’re looking for a more laidback experience that doesn’t have you constantly fighting off groups of wolves or picking berries from bushes.

The above mods can also greatly improve your experience with the game by allowing you to personalize your experience with it in multiple ways so that it hits your survival itch in whatever way you may want it to.