Install a mod loader before anything else. IRON NEST mods depend on one, and without it a correctly installed mod simply does nothing — no error, no warning, no indication of what went wrong. This is the single most common reason a first mod install appears to fail.
The scene is also moving fast: the game shipped in early August, and within the month the mod list roughly doubled — a dedicated VR port, a second co-op mod and a tactical-map utility all appeared after launch week. This page is re-checked on the site's regular schedule.
The loaders
Two are used, and which one you need depends on the mod:
- BepInEx 6 Bleeding Edge — the IL2CPP, 64-bit build. Required by most BepInEx-based IRON NEST mods, including the main co-op mod. BepInEx 5 does not work with this game at all — it only supports Mono, and IRON NEST is IL2CPP.
- MelonLoader — the same role for mods built against it, also with IL2CPP support.
Check the mod page for which loader it targets before downloading. Mods are not interchangeable between the two, and installing the wrong one produces the same silent nothing as installing none.
Both are prerequisites rather than mods in their own right, so neither changes anything in the game on its own. If you install a loader and see no difference, that is the correct outcome.
Co-op — two mods now do this
The most-installed mod adds multiplayer for up to five players over Steam: one player hosts a lobby and shares a short join code, firing is host-authoritative so every player sees identical impacts, and the crew divides the stations — guns, loading, the artillery computer — that the single-player game already separates physically.
A second, independent co-op mod, Synchrony, appeared after launch and takes its own approach: hosting from an in-game "Play Multiplayer" button with an invite code, and syncing turret aim, gun fire and reloading, mission and objective progress, requisition, map entities, and even valves, lamps and hatches.
Both are unofficial and patch-sensitive — a game build broke the main co-op mod outright within the release month, with the fix taking days. The dedicated co-op mod guide on this site keeps a dated table of which mod version works on the current game build; check it before planning a session.
Official co-op is not in this game and is not coming to it. The developers' Steam replies are consistent: this title stays single-player, and official co-op is the core of their next game, targeting around 2027. See the multiplayer page for the full statements.
VR NEST
A dedicated VR port mod: physical interactions, VR hands and head tracking inside the nest. For a game that takes place entirely within one cockpit, VR is an unusually natural fit — the entire play space is already an interior built to be operated by hand.
An older mod bundles VR, co-op and PvP ambitions together in one project. Its scope is broader and less settled; if VR is what you want, the dedicated port is the direct answer.
Tactical Map Tools
A post-launch utility that automates map-table busywork: press F7 for a panel that plots the nest, Alpha and every available spotter on the map automatically, and can reveal the full tactical map using the game's own reconnaissance system.
Be deliberate about when you install this one. Plotting positions and running reconnaissance are skills the campaign teaches and some missions test; automating them on a first playthrough skips the learning the later missions assume. As a second-playthrough convenience, or for practising firing solutions without the setup overhead, it earns its place.
Fire Control System
This mod provides automatic calculation, loading, aiming and firing, and removes the four-target limit.
It is worth being clear about what that does to the game. IRON NEST's entire design is the manual fire-control loop; automating it removes the thing being simulated. That makes this mod excellent as a late-game convenience once the process is second nature, and a poor idea on a first playthrough, where it skips the content you bought.
It has a second, unintended use. If you want to understand how the game derives a firing solution, the mod's behaviour is a working model of the calculation — which is why it is worth studying even if you do not intend to play with it enabled.
Turret Optimization
A quality-of-life mod that adds keyboard support for the turret console, allows custom animation speed, and unlocks the elevation slider during reloading.
The elevation change is the substantive one. Being able to adjust elevation while reloading removes a serialisation the base game imposes, which materially shortens the cycle between rounds. In counter-battery missions, where traverse and loading are already being deliberately overlapped, that compounds with the rest of your timing.
Custom animation speed is more double-edged. Speeding up machinery removes some of the deliberate friction the game is built around, and it changes what "fast" means for any timed condition. Whether either change affects medal timings is unconfirmed.
Infinite Requisition Points
Grants unlimited requisition. Useful for practising a mission's geometry without the ammunition and repair budget ending the run, and for experimenting with shell types you would not normally spend on.
Requisition-limited missions are among the harder gold medals in the game, so this mod also removes a difficulty layer deliberately. Use it to learn a map, not to farm one.
Custom Records
Replaces the tracks on the in-cockpit record player with your own. Purely cosmetic, and the sort of mod that only makes sense in a game where you sit in one room for the entire runtime.
If you like the original music, the full soundtrack is on the developers' YouTube channel — see the soundtrack page, which also covers the unusual story of how the score was written.
What using mods costs you
Mods are unofficial and unsupported. They can break with any game patch — the release month demonstrated this twice — stability is whatever the author achieved rather than what the game guarantees, and the developers are not obliged to preserve compatibility.
Whether medals and Steam achievements record normally in a modded session is unconfirmed — no verified information exists here. Note that medals and achievements are separate systems in IRON NEST: there are over a hundred medals and 33 Steam achievements, so a mod could plausibly affect one and not the other.
If you are working towards either list, finish that first and mod afterwards. Reverting a modded save to an unmodded state is not something this site has verified as reliable.
Installing safely
Read the mod page's own instructions rather than a general tutorial, since the two loaders place files differently. Install one mod at a time and launch the game between each, so that when something breaks you know which addition caused it.
Keep a backup of your save before the first mod goes in. This costs nothing and is the difference between an experiment and a gamble.
Where to find them
Nexus Mods hosts the IRON NEST mod scene, with a top-downloads listing and a recent-uploads feed. Sorting by downloads is the fastest way to see what the community actually uses rather than what merely exists, and the recent feed is where compatibility fixes appear after a patch.
The official Discord has mod channels where authors post directly and answer installation questions. For loader problems specifically — which is where most people get stuck — asking there is faster than working through a mod page's comments.
Download counts and version numbers change constantly, so this page names mods by what they do. The one place versions are quoted is the co-op mod guide's dated compatibility table, which is re-checked on a schedule.