Kingdom Come: Deliverance II mods: Steam Workshop or the manual mods folder

This guide is for anyone who wants to add mods to Kingdom Come: Deliverance II without breaking a save or confusing the game’s loader. You will learn the two official ways to install mods, how to spot a broken Workshop download, and what to do if the game won’t recognise a mod you’ve placed by hand.

There are two routes into this game’s mod support: the Steam Workshop, which the official modding note recommends, and a manual mods folder for anyone installing files from elsewhere, such as Nexus Mods. Both work, but they follow different rules, and mixing them for the same mod causes problems.

Using the Steam Workshop

The Workshop is the simplest route and the one the game’s own modding note points to. Find a mod’s page on the Workshop, click Subscribe, and Steam downloads it in the background. The mod becomes active the next time you launch the game, so there is no manual copying or enabling step.

Back up your save before subscribing to anything new, even though Workshop mods are generally low risk. If a mod changes how the world or quests behave, an old save gives you somewhere safe to go back to.

Installing mods manually

Manual installation suits mods downloaded from sites outside the Workshop. These go into a mods folder inside the game’s root directory, not inside the Data folder. Each mod needs its own unpacked folder, and that folder must contain a file called mod.manifest.

The published build of the game ignores loose files except for mod.manifest and mod.cfg. That means the actual mod content has to be packed into .pak files inside the mod’s folder. A mod that’s just a pile of loose textures or scripts, without being packed, will sit there doing nothing.

Follow these steps when installing a mod by hand:

1. Download the mod archive from the author’s own page.
2. Extract it and check what’s inside. If the archive contains one extra wrapper folder before you reach mod.manifest, remove that outer layer so the mod’s own folder sits directly in the mods directory.
3. Copy that mod folder into the game’s mods folder in the root directory, not into Data.
4. Confirm the folder contains mod.manifest and that the mod’s content is packed as .pak files, as the game won’t read loose files beyond the manifest and config.
5. Launch the game and check the mod is listed and active.

Mod managers: use with care

Third-party mod managers can make manual installs easier, but they are not officially supported by the game. KCD Mod Manager, for example, can install mods straight from archives, list Workshop mods without altering their files, and flag when more than one mod provides the same file. That last feature is useful, since overlapping files between mods are a common cause of odd behaviour or crashes.

If you use a manager, treat it as a convenience layer on top of the same rules above. It still needs a properly packed mod with a valid mod.manifest to work with.

Don’t run the same mod twice

Never keep the same mod installed through both Nexus Mods and the Workshop at once. The game’s loader can end up seeing two different IDs for what is meant to be one mod, or an ambiguous folder structure, and that can cause conflicts or stop the mod loading at all. Pick one source per mod and stick to it.

If something goes wrong

If a Workshop mod shows as subscribed but does nothing in-game, check its entry under the game’s Steam properties, in the Workshop tab. A size of 0 bytes means nothing has actually downloaded, even though Steam lists it as subscribed.

To fix that, unsubscribe from the mod, launch the game once without it, then subscribe again and check the size in the Workshop tab a second time. This forces Steam to retry the download rather than relying on a stuck entry.

For manual installs that don’t appear, recheck that the mod folder sits directly inside the mods folder, with no extra wrapper folder left over from the download, and that mod.manifest is present at the top level of that folder.

Removing a mod

To remove a Workshop mod, unsubscribe from its page and it will stop loading on next launch. To remove a manual mod, delete its folder from the mods directory. Keep your save backups until you’ve confirmed the game runs normally afterwards.

Keep a short text note of which mods came from the Workshop and which were installed by hand, so you never end up chasing the same mod through two different folders when something breaks.