Mass Effect: Andromeda came out some years ago to shock long-time fans of the franchise. Regrettably the game’s shock value was derived from the sheer amount of bugs, questionable game design choices, and an overall disappointing launch.
But after the dust settled and some much-needed patches were released, we ended up with a pretty competent game that scratches that very Mass Effect itch most fans have. Even if this spin-off pales in the face of the original CommanderShepard trilogy, it’s still an incredibly fun game.
If you’re looking for a new adventure in the Mass Effect universe and haven’t gotten around to playing Andromeda, you have a golden opportunity to supercharge your experience with some of these mods.
To help you out I’ve organized my definitive list of Mass Effect: Andromeda mods worth checking out. Take a peek and see what grabs your attention!
Here’s something you might not have realized. Those Remnant decryption puzzles you need to solve at monoliths to gain access to the vaults?
Well, it’s essentially Sudoku.
Now thanks to NexusMods user Smorris2012, it can look even more like the age-old pen and paper game. Just install this mod and all those mysterious alien glyphs will be replaced by perfectly readable Arabic numerals.
This is actually three separate mods that come together to make a finished product: First Person Mass Effect Andromeda.
Creator BlackMaz3 has been working on these and releasing them modularly, so you’ll need to download and install the Combat, Conversations, and Exploration modules separately.
But once you do you’ll finally be able to look others in the face while you tell them to risk their lives for the Initiative.
Something I keep reading over and over again on MEA discussions online is how annoying most people find SAM, the AI helping you through your implant.
To help a little bit with that, creator Watafuzz released Shut Up SAM, which does as advertised and silences this pathfinder AI for the remainder of the game. Well, except for story bits and life-threatening situations where it may remind you to keep an eye on life support.
A companion AI is fine and dandy. But nobody wants a repeat of Ocarina of Time’s Navi, right?
Back in the day we could only hope that creators included cheat codes into their games if we wanted any chance to make them easier.
Now, we have mods.
Modder Tabbed was having a lot of trouble crafting everything they were interested in due to the slow pace at which you can accumulate materials, and even material vendors never seemed to have enough.
Their solution was simply to make the Kiosk on the Tempest stock crafting materials. Every one of them, in stacks of 100,000 for free.
Alternatively you may want a technological solution rather than god-like bartering skills.
With Fast Mining by modder Dimasnik you’ll only need to launch a single drone to collect all of the resources from a newly-discovered mining zone rather.
You’ll also discover every vein in that mineral-rich zone from the moment you first approach it.
This greatly streamlines the mining aspect of the game so you can focus on exploration and shooting aliens on the face.
While inventory management has been a part of open-world RPGs for a long time, it’s still a bit of a pain. And a lot of people just can’t be bothered to keep an eye on their carrying weight.
Modder Coockoo found the initial inventory size to be absurdly limited, and it didn’t get better fast enough. So they took it into their own hands and made this small tweak that simply sets it to 99.999 – a placeholder for “don’t bother me with this again”.
This problem was improved considerably through a patch a long time after this was released, but it remains an option if you don’t want to bother with it.
Another great mod for those of us who just don’t have 250+ hours to experience everything a game has to offer is More Skill Points Per Level by creator Alineinabook.
This nifty mod lets you choose how many skill points Ryder gets every time they level up.
You can take it up to six per level, which will let you max everything by the time you reach level 65.
Just keep in mind that you won’t see much change in the first couple of levels. The creator thought it would be better to let you go through the first areas in the game without such advantages, and I have to agree.
Some people just never have enough customization options. And MEA isn’t exactly the most varied in terms of what you can do with your Ryder.
The character creator leaves a lot to be desired.
To improve the situation a bit, NexusMods user KittenTails is working on porting hairstyles from The Sims 4 to Mass Effect so your Ryder can have the most absurd hairdos while conquering Andromeda.
For the time being it’s mostly girly hairdos with a lot of volume and a bit of a Barbie-like feel, but KittenTails continues to slowly expand the hairstyle library.
Why stop at improving your Ryder? Maybe you could make your squad look so much cooler too!
Human Squadmates Overhaul by Kitsumi does just this for the homo sapiens half of your team. This gives them new hairstyles, somewhat improved complexions, and generally better armor.
There’s a lot of variety here so be sure to give the entire post a read before choosing which version you want to install.
Mix and match to build the best squad for your personal Ryder.
A lot of open-world games have that one area in the entirety of the sandbox where, for some reason, the developers miscalculated. In MEA, it’s Kadara.
I mean, why do those doors take so damn long to open? What is this, old-school Resident Evil?
Well thanks to modder Nightwolf2503, these doors have been properly oiled and will open just like normal doors.
Just keep in mind this is only worth it if your computer is close to recommended specs. Or you’ll just end up experiencing static loading instead while the game loads the area behind the door.
The Asari have always been a thing of beauty. Which makes a lot of sense considering they’re all space-cougars looking for the next weird alien lifeform to mate with.
However in MEA, these blue-skinned ladies have all but lost their charm. They look terrible!
This mod by Ellise improves the situation considerably with a couple of small tweaks to their complexion.
Atandra, Kalinda, Sarissa, and Vederia have never looked this good.
I generally like it when my games takes care of small things like turning a flashlight on without me needing to manually do it. Like how the flashlight on Ryder’s armor tends to work.
But what if it doesn’t?
Sometimes you’ll still have that annoying flashlight on after you leave a cave or other dark spaces, and there’s no way to turn it off manually – unless you get this mod by NexusMods user KrrKs, which gives you a flashlight toggle button and entirely dismantles the issue.
Mass Effect: Andromeda could have been the game where you finally got to make a character belonging to a different species, rather than carrying the banner of humankind yet again.
Instead we got the Ryders, possibly the blandest protagonists ever in both personality and looks.
Modder Anobos decided to open up the possibilities, even if just aesthetically, and made this replacer that turns Scott Ryder into a Turian. I guess he’s adopted?
And if you turn your Scott Ryder into a Turian, you’ll need to make Turians look good.
Thanks to modder Invetro you can replace their spongy complexion for something more akin to stone, just like the Turians in the original Mass Effect trilogy.
They also get darker eye sockets, a darker tongue, and an overall more bad-ass look.
If you’re planning on modding MEA from the get-go, Powers Boosted and Balanced is one of the mods you need to make your game better from the ground up.
This mod by Forkinator rebalances all skills and abilities by increasing damage, force, and radius in most of them.
It also affects passives in an attempt to make the different builds feel diverse and rewarding.
It’s the best way to keep your skills relevant against enemies that become progressively more bullet-spongey as you get into the campaign.
18. Peebee’s Outfit – Casual and Armor Swaps for Ryder
The young Asari maiden Pelessari B’Sayle, also known as Peebee, is one of the single coolest characters in MEA, and even holds her own when compared to characters from the original trilogy.
While her personality is one of her best assets, her outfit is also incredibly bad-ass and stylish, in a roguish kind of way.
Modder Skaramosh now lets us wear the same outfit on your female Ryder, giving an otherwise bland character some extra oomph.
In the base game, profiles tend to feel a little bit generic as you progress into the game.
A lot of their bonuses are completely unimportant. And as enemies become more bullet-spongey, a very few stats begin to matter.
Creator Kahmu attempts to solve this by reworking all profiles to further differentiate them and to simply make them better.
They disregard stuff like Power Restoration and Defense in favor of weapon proficiency, lower power cooldowns, and the like. This creates a much more aggressive but fulfilling experience.
Some of my favorite mods are those that users originally make for their private play, but end up publishing due to popular demand.
That’s the case with modder Jdim who just wanted to add a little more black and red into the Initiative’s uniforms. And ended up making one of the most downloaded mods for MEA.
As the name implies, it simply switches up the colors on many squadmate and NPC outfits to look a lot cooler, and less like hospital staff.
If you want even more clothing options you can go on to improve your Ryder’s wardrobe with this mod by Kitsumi.
While it does touch on some of the more traditional casual outfits for Ryder, this mod’s main draw is the addition of stuff like a leisurely dress and even a sports bra that looks stunning with some pants on a female Ryder.
You’ll spend a lot of time on your ship, so why not look your best while you’re there?
You know how your ship weirdly goes down to a planet’s surface before coming back up to orbit whenever you approach a planet?
Modder Kahmu found this too strange for comfort and made this mod that does away with that extra animation. With it, you’ll simply go straight to orbiting the planet.
It may sound small, but you’ll soon feel considerably more immersed. And you’ll save yourself a bit of time that can quickly add up.
Mass Effect: Andromeda is built upon the same groundwork and engine as Dragon Age: Inquisition, and it becomes especially noticeable in the way characters move.
The extra couple of steps whenever you stop sprinting are tell-tale, for example, and they can be quite troublesome when traversing treacherous terrain and trying to platform correctly.
This free mod by DeltaType7 solves this by readjusting all character movement, sacrificing that realistic feeling of momentum for a slightly more responsive Ryder.
They’ll also sprint faster and jump higher than before!
Another mod that’s also focused on improving mobility is Extended Hover Duration by Kahmu.
It comes in two versions: one to improve your hovering by doubling its duration from 2.5s to 5s, and another one to completely break it by increasing it by 100x. This will let you float around for 250s and probably reach a bunch of places you weren’t supposed to reach.
I know it’s a bit much, but it’s a great way to have fun in the game’s sandbox environments and reclaim some charm of reaching off-limits places in old-school games like Super Mario 64 and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle.
One of MEA’s biggest problems in terms of combat is how enemies don’t get smarter or much more skilled as the game progresses.
Instead they get truckloads of HP, becoming veritable damage pillows and making encounters unnecessarily long.
This mod by Forkinator goes a long way to fix this by enhancing all weapons in the game, especially those that used to be too weak to even consider using after the mid-game.
This, coupled with a more powerful melee, really makes the game’s combat feel a lot more varied and generally just more fun over time.
The statistics page in MEA is one part of the game most people don’t pay much attention to.
After all, your abilities are so affected by equipment and class bonuses that looking at your base stats just doesn’t give you the information you need.
Enhanced Statistics Page by Kahmu attempts to improve that by adding a better overview of these bonuses and the like, both revitalizing the statistics screen and helping you choose your build intelligently.
Cora is among my favorite characters in the game in terms of personality.
And while I don’t dislike her soccer mom look, it could be a bit more interesting.
Modder Ellise offers an alternative based on old concept art of the character, which gave her a lot more melanin and overall made her look like even more of a bad-ass.
This was ultimately scrapped because developers thought she looked too similar to the original trilogy’s Ashley. But you can bring the design back to life by installing this mod.
If you can’t be bothered to fight against MEA’s horrible character creator to make a female Ryder that doesn’t look deformed by the unforeseen consequences of half-a-millennium-long space travel, consider these presets by Melynxx.
Based on The Witcher’s two main girls, it lets you turn your rider into the fierce Ciri, or the mysterious witch Yennefer.
These characters belong in a medieval setting. But clad in spacefaring gear they look right at home beside Cora and the rest of the crew.
While the Nomad is considerably better than the infamous Mako from the original Mass Effect, there’s definitely some room for improvement on your space-tank.
This mod by Watafuzz enhances every aspect of its mobility.
Not only does it make the Nomad faster, but it gives it the traction needed to go up steeper surfaces and boosts the jump function.
It also increases the tank’s damage when running over an enemy.
Not only that, but it scales as you level up, so you’ll be able to keep running baddies as the game progresses. Immersive.
Surprisingly for a game that came out with such terrible bugs from the beginning, there are relatively few mods to improve the game’s performance.
The best among them is MEA Performance Tweaks by DucMeister, which slightly improves performance with custom command variables imported from other games that also run on the Frostbite engine.
It won’t do miracles. But even a bit more stability can make a big difference in keeping your immersion healthy and your GPU cool.
If there’s a single issue that needs fixing in Mass Effect: Andromeda is has to be the god-awful character creator. It’s a challenge to create a Ryder that isn’t hideous.
I get BioWare was going for realism.
But they reached a dark region of the Uncanny Valley with this game.
Character Creation Overhaul by EvaStormi just changes the game’s complexions and makeup to look a bit better, having a massive impact on the final product.
While the game offers plenty of romance options for gay Ryder, for some people it’s never enough.
This mod by Atherisz doesn’t just enable all romances for both male and female Ryder. But it makes the pathfinder polyamorous so they can get it on with literally everyone at the same time.
Of course, the “new” romances are unvoiced for obvious reasons. But it opens up the possibilities and helps you experience everything in a single playthrough for more efficient gaming.
Squadmates are meant to help you in battle and carry you, their leader, towards victory.
Instead MEA squadmates are happy with just tagging along for the ride and, more often than not, getting downed in the line of duty.
Thanks to user Forkinator, this doesn’t have to be the case anymore.
The Better Squad mod doesn’t just increase everyone’s offensive and defensive skills, but it makes each member a bit more unique and representative of their race and background.
Cora’s Charge ability is now as devastating as it looks. And Drack will no longer be as flimsy as your human teammates.
It’s just more immersive, and picking your squad becomes strategic rather than a popularity contest.
Game trailers tend to make games look much better than the finished product through some smart video editing and tweaked game engine values while recording footage.
Luckily, reverse-engineering some of these tweaks can give your game an all-new cinematic look with exactly the same level of detail (or close to it).
With Cinematic Realism Lighting Overhaul by TheMercsAssassin, you won’t only get more climactic lighting, but better Depth of Field and an overall more epic-looking game.
It looks ridiculously better, and considering it comes at virtually no performance cost, it’s a must-have.
Give this a quick install and see how it looks for yourself. I’m not sure you’ll want to go back.
Nelson Chitty is a Venezuelan expat living in Argentina. He’s a writer and translator passionate about history and foreign cultures. His ideal weekend is spent between leisurely playing games of Civilization VI and looking for the next seinen anime to marathon.
