Ready to transform your Starfield journey into an epic cosmic adventure? From immersive combat tweaks and stunning visual overhauls to game-changing quality-of-life improvements, these top 10 mods for 2025 will elevate your gameplay to stellar new heights-whether you crave more challenging battles, richer exploration, or simply a smoother UI experience. Dive in and discover how to customize the universe to your exact liking!
Um, of course – you’re human. That’s why, whether you’re looking for prettier graphics or an easier trek through spacetime, you need to try these 10 Starfield mods.
While Starfield does not yet have official mod support (it’ll arrive “in a big way” in 2024, director Todd Howard said earlier this year), the following mods should work on PC with either Steam or Game Pass after you follow their download instructions.
First, a practical Starfield mod
One of the most practical Starfield mods to install is the Achievement Enabler. In the base game, adding mods or using console commands typically disables the ability to earn achievements, which can be frustrating for completionists. The Achievement Enabler mod solves this by allowing you to keep unlocking achievements even after you’ve customized your game with other mods or tweaks, ensuring you don’t lose progress or bragging rights for your accomplishments. This makes it an essential first step for anyone looking to enhance their gameplay experience without sacrificing recognition for their in-game feats.
Achievement Enabler
Installing any Starfield mods currently disables your achievements. But there’s no need to start eulogizing those little words of congratulations. You can counter Bethesda with your own protective measure – download the popular Baka Achievement Enabler, which saves achievements from going dark.
Note that this is a Steam-only mod that requires you first download the Starfield Script Extender. But once you do, unless you’re a Game Pass player (it’s more touch-and-go, but there are working achievement mods out there for you, too), Baka Achievement Enabler is one of the best ways to keep your game relatively pure.
Best Starfield mods that improve the graphics
For players looking to enhance Starfield’s visuals, several standout mods can dramatically improve the game’s graphics. The “Starfield HD Overhaul” mod is a popular choice, replacing thousands of in-game textures with higher-resolution versions-ranging from 2K to 8K-which gives planets, ships, and environments a much sharper and more detailed appearance. Another highly recommended mod is “Neutral LUTs – No Color Filters,” which removes Starfield’s default color grading and filters, resulting in more natural and realistic visuals, and even allows users to make outer space appear significantly darker for a more immersive experience. For those seeking even more visual flair, mods like “Enhanced Lights and FX” and “EXE – Effect Textures Enhanced” upgrade the game’s lighting and special effects, making explosions, muzzle flashes, and atmospheric effects more striking and lifelike. With these mods, Starfield can look better than ever, whether you’re exploring alien worlds or gazing at the stars.
Deep Space ReShade
Starfield, for all its planets and people, tends to work within a limited color scheme. Gray, beige, white – hospital oatmeal colors. You could think of it as a realistic palette for living in vacuum-like space, or you could think of it as unfairly subjecting you to dogs’ dichromatic vision.
Those in the latter camp will appreciate the Deep Space ReShade by Xtudo. It pan-fries your game, making everything crisper, a little darker, and more dramatic overall. Expect sharper images and deeper shadows while maintaining Starfield’s typical frame rate.
Stellar Water
Stellar Water is a more niche visual improvement – it exclusively enhances Starfield’s water – but it’s a part that works to improve its whole. Creator CyanideX promises in the mod’s description that their “hand-crafted, custom” textures will dutifully replace the soft peaks and dips in Starfield’s default “’wavesoft’ variant,” which looks like skimmed hair gel.
Stellar Water, alternatively, could reasonably make up the white sand beaches you find on your Instagram explore page. Focusing on water specifically creates a relatively small graphic improvement, but the difference is so noticeable that, once you have Stellar Water downloaded, it will be difficult to look at Starfield without it.
Enhanced Blood Textures
Like a rose needs its thorns, HD water requires HD blood. What would be the point of getting your hands dirty otherwise?
You would think that Starfield would be red with blood, considering all the random pirate attacks and bullet hail you frequently find yourself stuck in. But the RPG likes its world to stay clean, sometimes illogically so. Enhanced Blood Textures adjusts for the reality of violence, making blood pools and gashes bigger, and offering an array of spatter, injuries, and textures.
Best quality-of-life mods for Starfield
Quality-of-life mods for Starfield dramatically streamline and enhance the gameplay experience, tackling everything from cumbersome menus to tedious inventory management. Essential picks include the StarUI Inventory mod, which revamps the default inventory system to display more information at once-such as item mass, value, and detailed weapon stats-making it much easier to organize your gear without endless menu digging. Other popular improvements include UI speed mods like Undelayed Menus and Responsive Grabbing, which eliminate frustrating interface delays, and upscaler options like DLSS & XeSS support for smoother performance. Mods such as SKK Console Utility Script add handy hotkeys for resource management, while FOV tweaks and enhanced health bars further refine the game’s usability. Together, these mods remove many small annoyances, letting you focus on exploring the galaxy instead of fighting the interface.
Dark Mode for Terminals
So you’ve upgraded your graphics, but the terminal screens in Starfield continue to offend your eyes. For existing in the future, they’re way too bright. Wouldn’t we have learned more about retina health by then?
Animandan’s Dark Mode for Terminals – which, they note in their Nexus Mods description, is compliant with the modern-day Web Content Accessibility Guidelines – is here to help. This mod repaints in-game terminal and kiosk screens with nighttime-friendly dark colors, and it decreases their brightness. If you like, you can pair it with Starfield’s large menu fonts, an accessibility feature included in the game’s options, for improved readability.
Enhanced Player Healthbar
This mod by SilverEzredes won’t augment your Starfield health bar, a typically white bar that changes shades based on what’s afflicting your character, but it will make it more informative. It’ll usefully change your bar’s colors when it’s drained to 75, 50, and then 25%, either making it a traffic light transition (green-yellow-orange-red color scheme) or turning it the colors of a shifting flame: blue, yellow, orange, and red. Enhanced Player Healthbar is compatible with large menu fonts, too.
Instant Digipick Start
Starfield follows Bethesda tradition and lets players pick locks, this time with digipicks, baton-shaped picks that trigger multilayered puzzles and give you access to hidden treasure. Like jiggling a stuck key in real life, some of these tricky puzzles require a few minutes of your careful attention, as does a brief introductory animation that plays before you can fiddle with any lock.
For those who value near-instant gratification, this seconds-long animation might be excruciating. Honestly, I relate. And I think you’ll appreciate Instant Digipick Start, a mod that fast-forwards lock-picking animations until triggering a scene is a “basically instant” experience, the mod’s description says. Think of all the things you could do with those extra seconds you saved; I’m thinking of writing a book.
Ship Skip
Ship Skip, likewise, is a perfect mod for the most persnickety Starfield players. Hey, no shame in it – you have aliens to face-blast and potatoes to stockpile in an office closet, and time is precious.
Similarly to Instant Digipick, Ship Skip removes, in its own words, “painfully slow” ship docking scenes. It also gives you the option to cut takeoff and landing scenes too, so that you can experience super-fast travel instead of having to confront the splendor of the same array of digital stars so many times that you ultimately decide you’d rather look at your phone.
Starfield mods that change characters’ eyes
Several standout mods enhance the appearance of characters’ eyes in Starfield, significantly improving visual realism and immersion. “The Eyes of Beauty – Starfield Edition” offers new eye textures specifically designed for Starfield, providing a fresh look beyond the original game’s options. Another highly praised mod, “Retina – Photorealistic Eyes Overhaul,” replaces all default eye colors with photorealistic, life-like textures and reflections, making characters’ eyes appear more natural and detailed. Additionally, a mod by UFR delivers incredibly realistic and lifelike eyes for all in-game characters, eliminating the unnatural or watery eye look and enhancing overall character visuals. For players seeking unique customization, the “Cyberpunk Eyes – RTFP” mod adds 97 new eye colors, including cyberpunk-themed designs with tech-integrated textures and black sclera options, offering a striking alternative to the vanilla palette. These mods collectively elevate character eye aesthetics, enriching the player’s visual experience in Starfield.
The Eyes of Beauty
If you’re going to look at your phone – or, since you’re playing Starfield, into the unromantic splash zone of a non-playable character’s pallid face – do it with style. The Eyes of Beauty thaws the ice in Starfield NPCs and makes their eyes glitter. Creator LogRaam has been making this mod for nearly a decade’s worth of Bethesda titles, most popularly for Skyrim, and then for Fallout 4.
It replaces Starfield’s gorgeous but noticeably flat eye textures with the soft starbursts of humanity (extra highlights, reflections of eyelashes, and more vibrant colors), making observing NPCs more like noticing the glint in your best friend’s iris than passing over the unblinking fish at the supermarket.
The Eyes of Beauty applies to a range of Starfield eye colors, some true to life (coffee grounds brown, sunny sky blue, a shade of hazel you might find twinkling inside a geode) and some fantastical (a hot “copper” shade befitting a dragon, stormy “iron” gray, and gooey white cataracts for “dead” characters). But they’re all, I’d say, a really lovely and human improvement to the default.
Eye Blink Fix
It’s usually small, unpredictable things that snap a video game’s attempt at realism. For Starfield, one of those minute details is its NPCs blinking.
NPCs sometimes blink unnaturally fast, like they’re racing to spit out a hunk of space dust, and sometimes they blink too slow, like you’ve hypnotized them with your gameplay. Eye Blink Fix slots them into a comfortable middle – NPCs will blink no less frequently than every five seconds (up from the original three) and no more than every seven and a half seconds (a tiny boost from the original five). It’s a tweak with a heavy impact. Eyes, as you know, are windows to your soul, or, in the case of Starfield, the heart of your leisure time.
Which mods will transform Starfield into a more immersive sci-fi universe in 2025
To transform Starfield into a more immersive sci-fi universe in 2025, several standout mods enhance gameplay, atmosphere, and lore depth:
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Improved Combat AI and Realistic Recoil: Mods like Improved Combat AI make enemies more reactive and tactical, while Realistic Recoil adds challenging, authentic weapon handling, making combat feel more immersive and intense.
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Location-Specific Damage Overhaul: This mod adds realistic damage multipliers based on where enemies are hit, increasing tactical depth and immersion in combat encounters.
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Starborn Powers Expansion: Mods such as “More Power to You” introduce new mystical Starborn abilities, enriching the sci-fi experience with unique powers like gravity waves and solar bursts, adding fresh gameplay layers.
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Themed Sci-Fi Universe Mods: Many mods draw inspiration from iconic sci-fi franchises, notably Star Wars, transforming Starfield with themed weapons, factions, and aesthetics-turning the game into a Star Wars RPG with immersive elements like Aurebesh text, AT-ST walkers, and faction overhauls.
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Lore-Friendly Immersive Mods: Mods focusing on advanced techwear suits, dynamic boostpacks for traversal, and detailed player homes add depth and realism to the sci-fi setting, enhancing player immersion in the universe’s technology and culture.
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Constellation Collection: A comprehensive mod bundle offering difficulty tweaks, NPC behavior improvements, ship ownership expansions, and photo mode customization, allowing players to tailor the sci-fi experience to their preferences.
Together, these mods elevate Starfield’s sci-fi universe by deepening combat realism, expanding supernatural abilities, enriching lore and faction diversity, and enhancing visual and gameplay immersion.
Which mods best create a Wild West space vibe inspired by Firefly in Starfield
To create a Wild West space vibe in Starfield inspired by Firefly, several mods stand out for capturing that frontier spirit and iconic aesthetic:
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Serenity Firefly Class Ship Mods: Multiple creators have meticulously recreated Serenity, the beloved ship from Firefly, allowing you to explore the Settled Systems in true Browncoat style. These builds use advanced ship-building techniques and are available as guides and downloadable blueprints, letting you fly a ship that looks and feels like it came straight from the series.
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Firefly Reshade: This visual overhaul mod is directly inspired by Firefly, enhancing Starfield’s lighting and color palette to evoke the gritty, atmospheric look of the show. It sharpens details, deepens shadows, and adds dynamic lighting, immersing you in a universe that feels more like a space western frontier.
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Space Western Themed Mods: The Starfield modding community has expressed strong interest in Firefly and space western themes, with ongoing projects focused on adding appropriate weapons, ship parts, and even questlines that channel the lawless, rugged tone of Firefly and similar series.
While some mods focus on visuals and ship design, others aim to expand gameplay with new quests and equipment reminiscent of the Firefly universe. Combining these mods will give you a Starfield experience that closely mirrors the Wild West-in-space vibe that made Firefly a cult classic.
