Installing mods.

[Tazimus]

I just spent 3 hours downloading the redmod pack thing. Setting up an account on nexus mods. Downloaded tons of mods, cuz each and every single mod requires at least 3 other, unique mods. There's no way to sort which mods are the common ones, which ones are shared between others, and no way to just download a pack of all the mods you need to run the various mods.

You have to individually download each and every mod, and each and every mod requires another, so I downloaded those. Literally close to 100 mods. Then I found a "mod pack" with like 200 mods and one with 600. I installed vortex, which promptly says it doesn't work and you have to download the extension, which I did, which also didn't work. It said it downloaded the mod packs, and then said they were already downloaded, so I clicked install, and they went away but they didn't install a single thing.

This is, by far, the most confusing, hard to keep track of, needlessly large amount mods that are just too much damn trouble for their own good. You can't just install a graphics mod. You can't just download a cool outfit. Nope. You gotta download like hundreds and hundreds of mods just to like , get a new outfit, or have bigger boobs. Its insane. AND nexus mods or vortex or whomever all try to sell you premium accounts to make it easier and faster. Mkay.

If this is how you want people to mod your game, it fucking sucks dudes. I love this game. I love it so much I got it on xbox and pc. I just built a fancy new pc and was excited to install some mods. I've modded WoW. I've modded Minecraft. But cyberpunk is so bad and complicated and just absolutely terrible to try and mod. Seriously disappointed. If you want to be a mod frenly game, so much so as to basically promote it when its installed on pc, with a button right there and links to videos, which I watched, btw. He doesn't show the part where you have to download hundreds of mods just to get one specific mod. He acts like its so simple, and I'm sure it is supposed to be. But for the love of god, this is a terrible, terrible mod system. Even Bethesda does it better. You just download a mod, in game, and it works. And there's a few mods that require others, but cyberpunks system is so convoluted that I'm literally here bitching about how bad it is COMPARED TO STARFIELD. Like if you can't make it at least somewhat simple to easily install various mods, then this is just so not a good thing.

I can support you thru a terrible launch, and years of updates, but when you make the mod system so needlessly complicated that I'm here bitching, I can't support that man. Like what the hell. At the very least, the devs themselves, the ones from the videos showing us how to mod, should have easily installable, all in one mods that we can just download and unzip in the mod folder, without using nexus mods or vortex, or any of that bullshit. Give me an all in one mod pack, just like on the website, but from YOU, and let me install that shit and I'll stop freaking out. But as it stands, this is so unbelievably frustrating. You literally introduce us to an incredibly simple system that requires and incredibly complicated amount of mods to make actually work.

This isn't some 3rd party thing you don't have oversight of, this is a mod thing you introduce us to, and have videos of, showing how easy it is except its not cuz you can't just do what he does. You have to create accounts, download OTHER 3rd party stuff to make it "simpler" even tho they don't work, and download tons and tons of mods that you showed us how to find, and all just to have some sort of endless purgatory of required mods that never ends.

Not happy man. Not with this. Not one bit.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

So you compare it to Starfield, a Bethesda games, from a studio with decades of modding experience and above all, always support mods from day one or almost... Bethesda game are arguably the most "mod-friendly" game out of there, not much games out there which can compare (especially when Bethesda is selling mods^^).
Only Redmods add-on is provided by CDPR... Everything else is totally independent and not up to CDPR.

 

[Tazimus]

For clarity, I love this game. I love the devs. However, my experience installing mods was very very terrible. I do not want to participate in that system. Seriously, its 100's of things you need to download, and the vortext thing didn't help at all.

I mean, its clear I'm upset. But not like, forever and not at someone. I just really think that the mod system is really bad. Its simple, in concept. You download a mod, unzip it to the mod folder, and thats it! Well, that's not it. I mean, it is, but its not just one mod. That one mod you picked has 4 other mods it relies on. And those 4 other mods have 4, 3, 4, and 28 different other mods that are required to make those work. And guess what? Those 39 other mods also have mods that they rely on. You have to download an incredibly large, complex amount of mods to simply use a clothing mod. Literally like 20 different mods, and seriously there are hundreds that rely on hundreds of other ones.

If I want to have a graphics mod, I have to download 300 mods man. Individually. Manually. With a 5 second wait to download each and every one of them. Then, to get the fancy mod packs that require Vortex to install, you have to pay for a membership, which is bogus as fuck, or you have to download them all manually, individually, cuz the app wont' do it unless you give them money. ANd THEN, when I DID download the graphics mod, and clicked install, it installed like 34 kb of data, and I'm like "that's not the graphics mod" and it wasn't, and it didn't actually install anything. It just said it did without actually doing anything.

AND THEN I still downloaded like 50 mods to try and get some outfits and other stuff, character fixes and upgrades. And guess what? None of them worked, cuz when I clicked on all of the other mods that are required to get all of the other mods working, and downloaded all of them individually, with 5 second wait times, over the course of several hours, and then unzipped all of them into the mods folder, which also took like 10 minutes, and then clicked "enable mods" and then the game said "installing mods" and then the game started AND NOTHING WAS MODDED AT ALL.

Like, this is, without a doubt, a terrible mod system, and I hope they change it or put up official mod packs that players can download without using nexus or vortex or anything, so we can just download one thing and get a mod. Cuz having to download literally hundreds of mods to get a shirt is a bad system man.

We SHOULD be able to browse for, download, and install the mods IN game, with a restart required, and not have to deal with any of this. I get it, they're basically hands off of the mods. But that means we're left with literally hundreds of mods that we have no idea which ones require which other ones, and if one of those isn't updated the entire thing doesn't work, and its just not good man.

I don't know all the answers, I'm just here to point out that its a really bad system that didn't do a single thing for me after I spent like 5 hours searching for, downloading, unzipping and installing several mods. Not a single one of them worked, and I downloaded so many of them and that's not my fault man. Its theirs. They have a system where , when you search for a mod, it comes up with that mod. And when you download it it shows you what mods are required for that mod to work. That sounds great! But then it doesn't tell you that it will be an endless quest of downloading mods that are required for other mods to work. I should have been able to pick an outfit, download it, and install it. But I couldn't do that. And even tho I downloaded all the mods and them some that are required for it to work, it still didn't work.

I'm not a smart man. But I know what mods are. I've modded before. I've taken files and put them into a mod folder before. But this is, without a doubt, the wild west of mods cuz its just so incredibly complicated to find a mod that you can just download and install without having to download and install other required mods.

Super simple system, super terrible implimentation.

Love you guys. But the mod system needs a complete overhaul. If a mod requires other mods to work, those mods should be built in or included with that mod. When a player wants to download a mod they should not have to go any further than the mod page for the mod they are looking for. If I want my character faces fixed in 4k, I should be able to download that mod, and not have to download that mod and the 4 others that are required for that mod to work. Those 4 mods should be IN that. They should be on the mod page. That's what modding IS. Like, If you made an outfit mod, and used 5 other mods for that, why didn't you include those in your mod? Why do I have to click on a button, have it tell me 4 things I need, and then click on those 4 things hoping that those are the right ones, are updated, and are available, and if they even work.

The system as it is now is sound in concept: Search for mod. Download mod. Unzip mod into mods folder. Yes, that's how it should be. Like, period. You should have to download anything else for that mod to work.

If the 4 things are common between mods, and you don't want to download them again, you could check the box and NOT download them again. But to require us to click download, click all the mods that are required for the current mod to work, and then click download, and then click on all the mods that are required for THOSE mods to work, and then repeat that process like 100 times, is not good.

I'm no expert. I'm just a disgruntled player that tried to install some simple mods, but was met with literally 100's of required mods that ruined the entire thing for me.

SO yeah, I came in hot, but I'm not spouting BS. This is, at its core, a broken mod system. New players have to download and sift thru literally 100's of mods and avoid several paid subscriptions just to download a shirt. For real. That's not an exaggeration. That's how crazy it is.

I know. I'm a lot. But I'm just trying to show you how crazy bad this system is as opposed to, say, any Bethesda game where you do it all in game and don't have to worry about any of this and can do it on pc and consoles.

This is CDPR. They took the jumbled mess that was the release and made one of the greatest games of all time. They have the power to simplify the mod system and make it available for consoles, and they can get rid of any 3rd party requirements and have it all be in house, so we aren't constantly being asked if we want to make a paid account to get the mods faster.

Pretty please. And thank you.

 

[Bartinga2077]

From Chat:

"I totally get why this pissed you off — you’re not dumb, and you didn’t “miss something obvious.” Cyberpunk’s mod ecosystem really is hostile to newcomers, especially compared to Bethesda games.

That said, a few important things might help explain what went wrong and how to avoid the same trap again:

1. Cyberpunk mods are not self-contained by design​

Cyberpunk doesn’t have an official mod API like Bethesda games do. Almost everything relies on shared framework mods:

• RED4ext
• Cyber Engine Tweaks (CET)
• ArchiveXL / TweakXL / Codeware
• redscript

Those aren’t “mods” in the fun sense — they’re more like runtime libraries. Mod authors cannot legally or technically bundle them into their own mods without causing conflicts or version chaos. That’s why dependencies are external.

So yeah: conceptually simple, practically messy.

2. Most clothing / appearance mods don’t actually need “hundreds” of mods​

What usually happens is:

• One missing core framework causes everything else to silently fail
• The game loads fine → looks vanilla → user assumes nothing worked

In reality, 90% of appearance mods hinge on maybe 5–7 core mods, not 50. If even one of those is missing, outdated, or installed incorrectly, all dependent mods break.

3. Vortex is… honestly the wrong tool for Cyberpunk​

This is the uncomfortable truth:

• Vortex works well for Bethesda games
• It works poorly for Cyberpunk

Most experienced Cyberpunk modders:

• Install manually
• Or use REDmod (CDPR’s tool) only for mods that explicitly support it

Vortex often:

• Installs files to the wrong folder
• Reports success when nothing meaningful was installed
• Breaks load order without telling you

That “34 KB installed” thing? Classic Vortex + CP2077 issue.

4. Folder structure matters more than people realize​

Cyberpunk has multiple mod locations, and mixing them breaks things silently:

• /archive/pc/mod → most asset mods
• /bin/x64/plugins → RED4ext
• /r6/scripts → redscript
• /mods → REDmod mods only

Putting everything into “a mods folder” (which works in other games) does not work here.

5. Why nothing showed as modded​

If none of your mods worked at all, it almost certainly means:

• CET didn’t load (no overlay)
• RED4ext didn’t initialize
• redscript failed to compile (but error wasn’t visible)

That’s not on you — Cyberpunk gives terrible feedback when mods fail.

6. You’re absolutely right about the UX​

Your core criticism is valid:

• Dependency chains are opaque
• Nothing warns you when a required framework is missing or outdated
• Nexus download throttling + paid shortcuts feel awful
• The game provides zero in-game mod management

CDPR could fix this with:

• Proper in-game dependency resolution
• Official curated mod packs
• Clear failure messages

They just haven’t — yet.

7. If you ever try again (minimal pain path)​

If you ever decide to give it another shot, this is the lowest-friction setup:

1. Install only these first, manually:
   • Cyber Engine Tweaks
   • RED4ext
   • redscript
   • ArchiveXL
   • TweakXL
   • Codeware
2. Launch the game once, confirm:
   • CET overlay opens
   • No redscript errors on launch
3. Then install one single outfit mod, nothing else.

If that works, everything else suddenly makes sense.

Bottom line:
You didn’t fail at modding. You ran head-first into a power-user ecosystem with zero onboarding, and your reaction is exactly what most first-timers feel.

Your feedback isn’t BS — it’s just coming from someone who got dropped into the deep end without a life jacket."

 

[Dunaedine]

Due to the fact this game will not have any major overhaul, don't have hope for a better mod environnement. This will need to seriously rework the Red Engine and CPDR is abandoning it (and the mod support can part of the cause for this abandon). We can hope a better mod environnement with the future games since UE5 seems to have a good framework for it, but I'm not a specialist so take it with a grain of salt.

 

[Tazimus]

Thanks. I may or may not try again in the future. I play the hell outta this game man. I don't expect the devs to completely overhaul the mod system, but its something that would be very cool and very beneficial to the game and mods and player count. At the very least, it would be cool if someone, somewhere, took those fancy modpacks on nexus mods and just downloaded them and put them into one thing that people could then download, hassle free, from nexus mods itself or some other hosting site. BTW I didn't have vortex for WoW or Minecraft. I'm not talking smack here, but I'd like to say that bethesda games, MInecraft and WoW, even on nexus, aren't as complicated. I've ran into the "you need a mod for this mod to work" Thing before, but it never went this crazy.

Here me out: A mod that fixes all the mods. I'm no scientist, but I bet someone around here is, and I bet they can figure out how to get all the required things into the right places with an installer and some downloads. Or even a mod for an ingame client. So then you really could just get whatever from nexus, and assuming you've downloaded this hypothetical mod, you wouldn't need to worry about those required mods. I know, different things require different things, but surely there's a base level to make this process not suck so much.

I didn't want vortex, nexus just told me to get it. And I didn't, until I tried getting the packs, and from there it wants you to pay a premium to just be able to click on things, and that's not good. Like, I know that's not CDPR, but Nexus is poking people towards Vortex and other premium content, and we're introduced to this by CDPR themselves. So they got this site, nexusmods, and if you want mods they're a really good place to go, but if you get into this area where the players are being poked into getting 3rd party apps to make this modding process easier, and then easier still if they pay money (which may or may not work, honestly), but the mods themselves aren't trying to do that, its this crazy system that, if someone reworked it so we didn't have to, or want to, or be told to download a 3rd party app and could just get a baseline mod experience when installing the redmod to begin with.

Like, when a player downloads redmod, there could be a download right there with all those required mod pack things, instead of having to go to nexus. Or at least link them there and make an all in one spot to get them. Cuz the entire process is a bit crazy, and then you add monetization of 3rd and 4th parties trying to cash in on this crazy process, so its a crazy crazy process man.

If I could mod or have modded in any way previously, I'd attempt to do such things. But I'm no scientist man. I'm just a dude playing a dude that's really a chick, but one of them chicks that everyone calls dude, man.

Thanks again.

 

[Bartinga2077]

"Yeah, everything you’re saying here makes sense — and honestly, you’re circling around the same conclusions a lot of long-time modders have already reached, just from the player side instead of the technical side.

A few important clarifications and “where you’re right / where the limits are” points:

1. “A mod that fixes all mods” is not a stupid idea​

It’s actually a very natural idea — and parts of it already exist, just fragmented.

What you’re describing is basically:

• a baseline runtime bundle (all the common frameworks)
• plus an installer / validator
• plus clear feedback when something is missing

That’s not sci-fi. The problem isn’t that nobody thought of it — it’s that no single group owns the whole pipeline.

2. Why Nexus “all-in-one modpacks” are rare (and fragile)​

People have made Cyberpunk modpacks — but they’re usually:

• taken down
• abandoned
• or broken within one game patch

Why:

• Framework mods update independently
• Bundling them violates many authors’ redistribution rules
• One outdated file breaks the entire pack
• Then the pack author becomes tech support for hundreds of users

So while “just bundle them” sounds obvious (and I agree it should be easier), in practice it turns into a maintenance nightmare unless CDPR themselves host it.

3. You’re 100% right about REDmod being a missed opportunity​

This is probably your strongest point.

REDmod could have shipped with:

• a recommended base framework bundle
• a “first-time mod setup”
• or even just links + validation

Instead, REDmod mostly helps mod authors, not players.

So when you say:

when a player downloads redmod, there could be a download right there with all those required mod pack things

That is a completely reasonable expectation, and one CDPR could implement without touching Nexus or monetization at all.

4. Nexus + Vortex monetization is not your imagination​

You’re not wrong here either.

What happened is:

• Nexus became the de facto hub
• Vortex became the “recommended” solution by proximity
• Premium quietly became the friction remover

From a new player’s POV, it absolutely feels like:

“Want mods? Install this app. Want it to not suck? Pay.”

That’s not CDPR’s intent — but it is the experience.

5. Why Bethesda / Minecraft / WoW feel easier (and actually are)​

Those ecosystems have at least one of:

• a stable mod API
• in-game mod browsers
• centralized dependency handling
• hard versioning rules

Cyberpunk has none of those. It’s closer to old-school PC modding, but with modern complexity — which is a bad combo for newcomers.

6. The uncomfortable truth​

Cyberpunk modding right now is optimized for:

• power users
• mod authors
• people who already know the ecosystem

It is not optimized for:

• “I just want a shirt”
• first-time modders
• players who expect feedback when something fails

Your experience isn’t an edge case — it’s the default newcomer experience.

7. Your feedback actually is useful​

The key thing: you didn’t just say “this sucks.”

You pointed out:

• lack of onboarding
• invisible failure states
• dependency explosion
• third-party monetization pressure
• and a clear desire for first-party structure

That’s the kind of feedback devs can act on, even if they don’t overhaul everything.

Short version:
You’re not wrong. Your ideas aren’t naive. The ecosystem really is fragmented and hostile to new players. The fact that experienced modders can work around it doesn’t mean the system is good — it just means they’ve learned to live with it.

If CDPR ever does a “modding 2.0” pass, the things you’re describing (baseline packs, validation, better REDmod onboarding) are exactly where they’d need to start.

And hey — if you don’t ever try again, that’s also reasonable. You came to play a game, not debug a dependency tree.

Thanks for sticking around and explaining your side — posts like this actually matter more than you probably think."

You know where the problem lies with Vortex? A lot of mod authors DO mention to at all times install their mods manually, but yet at the same time they have the "Mod manager tab" available on their modpage. So people simply use that to download the mod with the assumption everything will be installed exactly where it needs to be while instead, causes all kinds of issues and crashes from there on in. This has been so since launch.

So why is that? Well, here it is, a picture of a Nexus modpage. When you publish a mod you use this.

See the red arrow? That option is in the deselected state by default. In other words, mod authors must at all times first select this option to remove the Mod manager tab to enforce a manual install.

This is missed by so many mod authors and caused so much issues with their userbase, it's unbelievable. This mod author also clearly states to download manually but has the Mod manager tab open. (I drew the cross and V it's not on their modpage).

I think it's due to reversed psychology. Maybe the brain is used to select something to add it instead of to remove it.
But needless to say, for Cyberpunk, always install manually only! Then the mods will work. I mean, have over a 1000 of 'm running in my game without issues for over a year now.

Enjoy your game and happy holidays.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

5. Why Bethesda / Minecraft / WoW feel easier (and actually are)​

Those ecosystems have at least one of:

• a stable mod API
• in-game mod browsers
• centralized dependency handling
• hard versioning rules

Cyberpunk has none of those. It’s closer to old-school PC modding, but with modern complexity — which is a bad combo for newcomers.

I assume it's a different story for Bethesda, who provide all the tools for modding and make modding easier for their games. But Minecraft/Mojang doesn't provide anything. Mojang never cared about modding at all and never did a thing to help modders (or make modding easier).

It seems easier, because there are really big modding teams (like FTB - Curse Forge) who work since more than a decade to provide an easy way to modify Minecraft. For example, most of mod-packs everyone can install "easiliy" required months if not years of work, alpha/beta testing, tweaking, updates before offcial releases (mod-packs which almost always got their official releases several patch away from the very last game version because it took so much time). If you try to mod Minecraft by your own, you will see that there are as much dependancies than in Cyberpunk and it could turn to be as complicated to mod your game, maybe even more (could turn to horrible nightmares to make it work^^).

In fact, in November 2025, Mojang decided after more than a decade, that they will eliminate code obfuscation in Minecraft: Java Edition which prevented direct access to the game source code (In software development, obfuscation is the practice of creating source or machine code that is intentionally difficult for humans or computers to understand). That's the very first time Mojang ever make a move to help modders.

In short, in Minecraft, modding seems easier because it's Javascript which I assume is a code "easier" to work with, but above all, because the modding community is big, really really big, bigger than Cyberpunk's for sure . And these teams are working on the games since its release in 2011 (even before because I think I remember there was an early access).

 

[Bartinga2077]

I assume it's a different story for Bethesda, who provide all the tools for modding and make modding easier for their games. But Minecraft/Mojang doesn't provide anything. Mojang never cared about modding at all and never did a thing to help modders (or make modding easier).

It seems easier, because there are really big modding teams (like FTB - Curse Forge) who work since more than a decade to provide an easy way to modify Minecraft. For example, most of mod-packs everyone can install "easiliy" required months if not years of work, alpha/beta testing, tweaking, updates before offcial releases (mod-packs which almost always got their official releases several patch away from the very last game version because it took so much time). If you try to mod Minecraft by your own, you will see that are as much dependancies than in Cyberpunk and it could turn to be as complicated to mod your game, maybe even more.

In fact, in November 2025, Mojang decided after more than a decade, that they will eliminate code obfuscation in Minecraft: Java Edition which prevented direct access to the game source code (In software development, obfuscation is the practice of creating source or machine code that is intentionally difficult for humans or computers to understand). That's the very first time Mojang ever make a move to help modders.

In short, in Minecraft, modding seems easier because it's Javascript which I assume is a code "easier" to work with, but above all, because the modding community is big, really really big, bigger than Cyberpunk's for sure . And these teams are working on the games since its release in 2011 (even before because I think I remember there was an early access).

"That’s a fair correction, and I agree with most of it — especially regarding Minecraft.

You’re absolutely right that Mojang itself did very little (basically nothing) for modding for over a decade, and that what people experience today as “easy Minecraft modding” is almost entirely the result of huge, long-running community efforts like CurseForge / FTB, years of tooling, testing, and curation. That part of my comparison was too simplified.

I think where my point still stands is not about who deserves credit (devs vs community), but about what the end-user experiences when they try to mod a game.

From a player perspective:

• Minecraft feels easy because there are centralized launchers, curated packs, dependency resolution, and clear version targets
• Cyberpunk feels hard because there is no equivalent “entry ramp”, even though the community is doing impressive technical work behind the scenes

You’re also correct that if you try to mod Minecraft manually, without launchers or packs, it can absolutely become just as dependency-heavy and painful as Cyberpunk — maybe worse. The difference is that most players never have to see that complexity, because community tooling hides it.

So I’d reframe my original comparison like this:

Bethesda made modding easier through official tools and APIs.
Minecraft made modding feel easier because its community built massive, long-term infrastructure to abstract complexity away from players.
Cyberpunk currently lacks both an official abstraction layer and a mature community-level “one-click” ecosystem.

"That’s not a knock on Cyberpunk modders — if anything, it highlights how young the ecosystem still is compared to something that’s been evolving since 2011.

Your point about modpacks taking months or years to stabilize is also important, and it actually reinforces the frustration being discussed: players are implicitly comparing Cyberpunk (a relatively new modding scene) to ecosystems that had a decade+ head start.

So yeah — good clarification, and I appreciate it.
My intent wasn’t to say “Cyberpunk modding is bad because Mojang/Bethesda are better people,” but to highlight why new players perceive the experience so differently, regardless of where the effort comes from.

Thanks for the detailed context — it adds nuance that’s easy to miss when looking at this purely from the player side."

 

[Tazimus]

Look, I'm still having a hard time. Red4ext needs to be in /bin/x64/plugins, according to the above "easy" instructions, yet that folder doesn't exist. And the mod page just says "in the game's directory" and so does google, and that doesn't help. The game's directory is /cyberpunk2077, and you can't just put it there, so I'm lost at that point, not from lack of skill, but lack of clarity as to where I'm supposed to actually put it. THIS is why its confusing, and it sucks, on top of all that other stuff. Cuz I'm not incompetent, I know how to install things. I just built this pc 2 weeks ago and had to manually install the network drivers to get windows to install, cuz reasons.

You know what that entails? Finding those drivers, for one, after using literally every other option, with ones like Shift+F10 not working for some reason so I couldn't run command prompts. Yeah, this is what I deal with. SO, after trying literally every other option, I had to manually find, download, and install those network drivers into the appropriate folders, and THEN windows completed installation.

So what am I dealing with now? Well, I'm dealing with mods not working cuz they're not in the exact right folder, and the exact right folder is hard to determine due to varying sources of info and varying different needs of the mods.

So when I make walls of text about my experience, its cuz my life is full of this stuff. I get that on your end, I'm just some idiot that can't install mods, and that's part of my frustration, cuz I'm an idiot but I can install mods man, its just a crazy convoluted mess of mods and on top of that you have my personal curse of things not working the way they normally would for other people, like the shift+f10 thing. That's not a thing that doesn't work. It currently works, and does what it should, but during installation when i NEEDED it to work, it didn't, and I had to exhaust all resources and methods before the problem was solved.

So that's what I deal with, and even when I get a nice guy to give me easy, painless instructions for installing the baseline of mods, I run into issues that most people wouldn't ever run into.

So pretty please, and thank you, but I go thru quite a lot of weird things and its taken its toll on me.

 

[Bartinga2077]

If the folder doesn't exist, Red4ext will create it itself. That goes for most mods. It only needs to be placed into the Cyberpunk 2077 folder. May I ask, are you on Steam or GOG?

 

[SigilFey]

Post moved to Mod discussions.

As to the issue, yes, some games are not as "mod-friendly" as other games based on the engine used and how they work. Bethesda games are built on Gamebryo/Creation Engine, which are engines specifically designed to be modular at their core. Such engines will make it easy, because that's what they're designed to do. REDengine, by comparison, is much more "baked in," allowing for all of those cool, cinematic sequences to play out in real time. To make stuff like that work, it makes changing elements and assets a bit more complicated. Things like the file structure are not really modular. Hence, to mod that sort of engine, mods are going to be more particular by necessity.

I'd say that it's unlikely for CDPR's titles to be as easy to mod as Bethesda titles. Building a game like CP2077 in an engine like Creation Engine would make those cool cinematic things very difficult or outright impossible to implement smoothly.

 

[Tazimus]

4. Folder structure matters more than people realize​

Cyberpunk has multiple mod locations, and mixing them breaks things silently:

• /archive/pc/mod → most asset mods
• /bin/x64/plugins → RED4ext
• /r6/scripts → redscript
• /mods → REDmod mods only

So the only reason I'm now confused is that you said folder structure matters, and I look at this list, and then the mods themselves say to just put "in the directory" which seems fine, but then I get this clarification from you, to help me, and THEN, when I post about THAT, you're just like "yeah, in the directory" which is what the mods say, so that's the only point that confuses me. If those 4 things didn't need to be in those specific folders, why mention that folders matter? Cuz only then am I trying to make sure that these go into the correct places. Also I'm on Steam.

I know, I know, you're like "this fucking guy..." and I'm sorry for that but its still unclear, and its just another one of the problems I'm running into. I tried the whole "put it into the folder" thing. And it failed miserably, and then , thanks to your really nice post, I tried again, only to immediately come into the problem of "well he says folders matter, so I should check to make sure these are going into the right folders" and then I'm finding that they all say "in the directory" and that confuses me.

Surely you can see this. I don't mean to be difficult, I'm seriously having so many issues trying to install simple mods to make mods work in Cyberpunk. I tried doing it myself, ran into problems, looked at the videos, posted to the forums to express my distress, and am still being met with difficulties due to lack of clarity, or perhaps too much clarity, and I'm still sitting here wondering just which folders are important, when I'll have to find them and install things to them, and which ones I'll have to do that with.

I haven't been able to just download those required mods, extract them into the folders, and try a shirt. I still can't do that, despite this seemingly simple guide to do so. I'm still not sure of where to put what, and when I'm supposed to know where to put what when they all say "in the directory''.

Not trying to be mean or hostile, hopefully that's clear, just trying to properly convey my frustration with this process.

Post automatically merged: Dec 29, 2025

So I downloaded and installed all those mods, ran the game once, and it didn't ask me to do a keybind for CET. Imagine that. Dude. I've given this system like 20 chances man. How is it I follow the instructions so closely yet have no mods working? I put them all in the right spot. I clicked "enable mods" and nothing. I restarted. Nothing. The plugin folder was not created in /bin/x64, the other folders didn't either. This is why I'm so specific, this is why I'm saying that its not easy. I followed the easy, pain free instructions man, and I launched once to see if the CET thing works, and it doesn't. And I look in the directory, and all those mods are sitting there NOT creating the sub folders that they need to run. This is how my life goes man. I made sure, like 100% sure I was putting the things in the right places, and everyone says it should just make the folder, but it didn't. Now what?

At what point do I just say screw it, the mod system is broken and not worth it? Cuz that's where I'm at. I'd rather play vanilla for 1000 years than do what I'm supposed to do to get mods going but have no mods going.

 

[Bartinga2077]

I clicked "enable mods" and nothing.

This option is only required for REDmods as far as I know and should not be necessary for installing dependency mods or any non REDmods for that matter.

Let's try again. I'll show you how I install mods. But first we have to remove the mods that were installed incorrectly, else they might cause issues. Unless you know exactly which ones they are and where they are installed, you'll have no choice but to delete the whole game folder from the common folder, the two hidden folders and the save folder.

As long you don't do that, chances are mods will never work, especially if those're dependency mods incorrectly installed.

Manual install procedure

[Optional] Go to: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps right-click the common folder and select "Pin to Start".
From that point onwards you can just press the "Windows key" to instantly access your Cyberpunk 2077 folder. (Frequently pronounced as the game directory).

Always drag & drop mods into the Cyberpunk 2077 folder from within the common folder, NOT from within the Cyberpunk 2077 folder!

Install everything while you are in the common folder.

1) Download and install RED4ext - Drag and drop the bin folder and red4ext folder into the Cyberpunk 2077 folder.
2) Download and install Cyber Engine Tweaks - Drag and drop the bin folder into the Cyberpunk 2077 folder.
3) Download and install redscript - Drag and drop the engine folder and r6 folder into the Cyberpunk 2077 folder.
4) Download and install Codeware - Drag and drop the red4ext folder into the Cyberpunk 2077 folder.
5) Download and install TweakXL - Drag and drop the red4ext folder into the Cyberpunk 2077 folder.
6) Download and install ArchiveXL - Drag and drop the r6 folder and red4ext folder into the Cyberpunk 2077.

Launch the game. Ensure your game is in Windowed Borderless mode. The first time you start using Cyber Engine Tweaks (CET), a window will open asking you to select a keybind. Choose one and from there you're good to go. If the window does not appear, try troubleshooting.

Hope you finally get it to work.

 

[SpookyFX]

Post moved to Mod discussions.

As to the issue, yes, some games are not as "mod-friendly" as other games based on the engine used and how they work. Bethesda games are built on Gamebryo/Creation Engine, which are engines specifically designed to be modular at their core. Such engines will make it easy, because that's what they're designed to do. REDengine, by comparison, is much more "baked in," allowing for all of those cool, cinematic sequences to play out in real time. To make stuff like that work, it makes changing elements and assets a bit more complicated. Things like the file structure are not really modular. Hence, to mod that sort of engine, mods are going to be more particular by necessity.

I'd say that it's unlikely for CDPR's titles to be as easy to mod as Bethesda titles. Building a game like CP2077 in an engine like Creation Engine would make those cool cinematic things very difficult or outright impossible to implement smoothly.

And sadly now Bethesda is not making their games as mod easy as their past work. I need a mod to stop any Shield bashing or change the skill to a high requirement of the re-masted Oblivion game. This would have been a 5 minutes of work in the CK in the past. Because of the Frank-in-engine they seem to be adopting this is very difficult now. And they have not released tools for games like 76, Remastered Oblivion and even starfield came well after the game’s launch, making it one of the longest waits for official tools in the company’s history.

Their constant pushing of broken "updates" in Fallout 4 breaks the free mods.

Some say it is on purposes to push the paid mods.

 

[Tazimus]

This option is only required for REDmods as far as I know and should not be necessary for installing dependency mods or any non REDmods for that matter.

Let's try again. I'll show you how I install mods. But first we have to remove the mods that were installed incorrectly, else they might cause issues. Unless you know exactly which ones they are and where they are installed, you'll have no choice but to delete the whole game folder from the common folder, the two hidden folders and the save folder.

As long you don't do that, chances are mods will never work, especially if those're dependency mods incorrectly installed.

Manual install procedure

[Optional] Go to: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps right-click the common folder and select "Pin to Start".
From that point onwards you can just press the "Windows key" to instantly access your Cyberpunk 2077 folder. (Frequently pronounced as the game directory).

Always drag & drop mods into the Cyberpunk 2077 folder from within the common folder, NOT from within the Cyberpunk 2077 folder!

Install everything while you are in the common folder.

1) Download and install RED4ext - Drag and drop the bin folder and red4ext folder into the Cyberpunk 2077 folder.
2) Download and install Cyber Engine Tweaks - Drag and drop the bin folder into the Cyberpunk 2077 folder.
3) Download and install redscript - Drag and drop the engine folder and r6 folder into the Cyberpunk 2077 folder.
4) Download and install Codeware - Drag and drop the red4ext folder into the Cyberpunk 2077 folder.
5) Download and install TweakXL - Drag and drop the red4ext folder into the Cyberpunk 2077 folder.
6) Download and install ArchiveXL - Drag and drop the r6 folder and red4ext folder into the Cyberpunk 2077.

Launch the game. Ensure your game is in Windowed Borderless mode. The first time you start using Cyber Engine Tweaks (CET), a window will open asking you to select a keybind. Choose one and from there you're good to go. If the window does not appear, try troubleshooting.

Hope you finally get it to work.

i did get it to work, but what I did was literally just open up all those folders that should have been making folders, and I put those folders where they should have been, as in I took anything that goes in the bin and I put it there, for all those mods, and it works now. I didn't uninstall, I didn't redo the mods, I just opened up those mod folders and put those things where they were supposed to be going. I do thank you for all your patience and I really appreciate you working with my oldmanness. I'm now looking at the CET overlay and disabling boundary teleport, cuz that's cool. Also, I modded Arkham Asylum in between these posts, with a full hd graphics overhaul. Look at me, I'm a real modder.

 

[Bartinga2077]

i did get it to work, but what I did was literally just open up all those folders that should have been making folders, and I put those folders where they should have been, as in I took anything that goes in the bin and I put it there, for all those mods, and it works now. I didn't uninstall, I didn't redo the mods, I just opened up those mod folders and put those things where they were supposed to be going. I do thank you for all your patience and I really appreciate you working with my oldmanness. I'm now looking at the CET overlay and disabling boundary teleport, cuz that's cool. Also, I modded Arkham Asylum in between these posts, with a full hd graphics overhaul. Look at me, I'm a real modder.

Glad it worked out for you. None of those dependency mods need updating as long the game hasn't updated. If one mentions an update but you don't want to risk it, no need to update. When installing mods, always read the description carefully before installing, and also check the "Preview file contents" when available so you'll know what to look out for. And never use Vortex, for Cyberpunk anyway.

If you're on Steam, it's recommendable that you set Cyberpunk to "Wait until I launch the game", so that you can keep using the mods during their downtime. It's also recommendable to not risk downloading mods that affectively change the workings of the game. If you still want to, make a backup of the game beforehand plus its game-save as it's game version dependable.

When you update your modded game I advise you to take the entire Cyberpunk 2077 folder out of the common folder beforehand and store it anywhere you like. Then reinstall the entire new game from Steam. This way steam's brutal update procedure has no chance corrupting any of your mods causing your game to CTD, making it next to impossible for you to find the broken mod(s) that caused it.

After you can place the mods in the new install. Super tedious I know but trust me, having to look for a broken mod between tens of mods is a hell of a lot more tedious.

Enjoy your game and happy new year.

 

[SigilFey]

Look at me, I'm a real modder.

Soon...soon...

We shall now move on to dynamic directories and editing script extenders.

 

[Tazimus]

So my issue now is that the folders aren't created when I put things into Cyberpunk2077, or the above folder. I have to manually put things where they go, so for RED4ext, its confusing cuz it needs a special spot, but I can't figure out where that is. As in, it should be in bin/x64/plugins. Got it. But the actual mod has a folder of bin/x64/winmm.dll whilst also having a folder that's red4ext/plugins and that has stuff in it. So does red4ext go in plugins, where it then contains a folder with a plugin folder, making it so the path is plugins/red4ext/plugins? I think this is the way, but I'm not positive. And the mods simply don't create folders like you are saying they should. They just don't. I start the game, I restart it, I changed the readonly option to see if that helped, and no. SO when I put a mod from nexus mods, extracted from the zip, to the cyberpunk2077 folder, or the folder above that, it doesn't create a folder. I have to put it there manually, so if I could get a very, very specific list of where these mods end up, and not just "in the directory", I would be able to do this more successfully as I'm currently guessing where red4ext goes, and other mods are similar. Mostly, I can look at the zip (preview on nexus) and see the path it needs to go, and mostly that works. I think I have a LUX mod working, and I did it that way, cuz again they don't create the folders they are supposed to be creating when you put them into cyberpunk2077.

I know. They SHOULD be creating folders. But they don't. So I'm forced to MANUALLY manually install these mods, not just "manually" install them by putting them into cyberpunk2077 and hoping for the best. I have to do whatever its supposed to do when you do that, and put them into the correct paths.

And again, this is not how the other games I mod go. Arkham Asylum didn't even need to be moved. I downloaded the mod, ran the exe, which was just some automatic cmd prompts, and it installed all the stuff where it needs to go. SO its really just Cyberpunk's janky mod system that isn't creating the folders where they need to be. Its not enough to put them where they instructions say to put them, I have to go beyond that and do whatever it is that you guys get when you do that manually by literally creating these paths, which are confusing as you can imagine. Like the red4ext folder has two folders. Bin, and red4ext. But as I think it goes, the red4ext needs to be IN the currently existing bin/x64/plugins, resulting in an actual path of bin/x64/(the winmm.dll goes here, which is the contents of the mod's bin folder)plugins/(the red4ext folder goes here, resulting in a plugin folder with a folder with a plugin folder inside of it, which is confusing when you need to know exactly, specifically where these mod paths are in order to manually place them there correctly). Get it? I can't just put anything into the directory. Whatever occurs to make these paths isn't doing that, so I have to make those paths. If you, in you infinite mods knowledge, can figure this out and show me where these go, I'd appreciate that.

I would not like a bunch of solutions to the creation problem. I'm accepting that this is the way it is, so I don't need a bunch of troubleshooting as to why this is happening. As long as I can get the specific paths, I can make them and the mods will work. That's my system and I'm sticking to it, it works and I'll accept that. So I get that the whole folder creation thing shouldn't be occuring, but at this point I don't care, as long as the end result is mods working, I'll keep it this way.

Pretty please and thank you.

Post automatically merged: Jan 1, 2026

Alright. I spent all night getting various mods or attempting to get various mods to work. I got a body mod, a lux mod, a flashlight - which is the best mod ever, a breast physics mod, and a first person mod.

Notable failures would be NPCs gone wild, which had graphical bugs, and the radioport that I wanted for my own music - literally my own original music, which is error free but just silent instead of playing the music in the folder.

I think I got red4ext in the right spot, actually in the directory folder ironically? I hope so. I get error logs for the radio so I think it works.

SO yeah, other than the fact that I have to meticulously analyze each and every mod for the exact path placement for the actual mod, instead of having it just create it like it should, I'm having a marginal success rate.

Thanks for all the help.

 

[Bartinga2077]

As long as I can get the specific paths, I can make them and the mods will work.

If you click the Preview file contents of mods you'll see this. This tells you what goes where.

Sometimes it won't show anything. Just download the mod in that case and check each folder's name to find out where to install them. If the mods you installed are working, then you installed them and their eventual dependencies correctly.