Scrap Mechanic Mods and Steam Workshop: Getting Started

What Workshop support actually covers

The Scrap Mechanic store listing carries the Steam Workshop and level editor categories, and mod support came through the 1.0 release intact. The mods button was restored to the creative and custom game menus in an early 1.0 patch.

The game describes the content itself in its own menus. The creative download screen is titled “DOWNLOAD CREATIVE MODS” and explains it as “Grab awesome parts, world tiles and blocks to customize your experience.” The challenge equivalent is “DOWNLOAD CHALLENGE PACKS”. Custom games have a third entry point, with the empty state reading “No custom games available yet” and pointing at downloadable custom games on Steam.

So the Workshop here is not one thing. It is parts, world tiles, blocks, challenge packs and complete custom games, and those categories behave differently once a world depends on them.

Subscribing and turning mods on

Subscribing happens on Steam, in the game’s Workshop pages, exactly as it does for any other Steam game. Steam downloads the content into its own workshop directory for this game, and the game reads it from there. You do not copy anything by hand, and nothing appears in the save folder covered by the save location guide.

Subscribing is only half of it. The game keeps a separate selection screen, titled MODS, with a SELECT MODS action and buttons to ENABLE ALL or DISABLE ALL. Content you have subscribed to is available there; content you have selected is what the session loads. That separation is why a mod can be installed and still not appear in your game.

If the screen says “You got no mods installed”, nothing has downloaded yet, and the same screen offers the route to Steam to fix that.

Where modded parts show up

Modded parts get their own inventory filter, labelled MOD PARTS, so you can tell at a glance what came from the Workshop and what shipped with the game. The item database covers only the parts the game ships, which makes that filter the quickest way to check whether a part in someone else’s blueprint is vanilla.

What a modded world depends on afterwards

This is the part that costs people worlds, and the game states it plainly in three separate warnings.

Remove a mod a world has used and you get: “A previously used mod has been removed! This might cause the world to be unloadable. Do you want to do this?”

Load a world whose content is not on the machine and the dialog is titled “MISSING MOD”, reading “This game uses a mod that is not installed”.

Play on with content that is behind the current build and the warning is: “One or more of the selected mods have not been updated to the current game version. The game might not work properly. Continue anyway?”

Read those together and the rule is simple. A world built with modded parts is tied to those mods for as long as you want to open it. Unsubscribing, a mod being taken down, or a mod author stopping work after a game update can all put a world into one of the three states above.

• Back up the world folder before you remove or replace a mod.
• Write down which mods a world needs, next to the backup.
• Check a mod’s last update date after every game patch, before you load an important world.
• Export a blueprint of any creation you would hate to rebuild.

A blueprint is the useful fallback because it is a copy of one creation rather than a copy of a world. The blueprint analyzer reads a local blueprint file and reports its parts, joints and controllers, which is also how you check whether a shared creation leans on content you do not have.

Custom games have their own rule

A custom game can decline extra content. The game’s wording is “This Custom Game does not allow extra mods to be added”, so a mod that works in your creative world may simply be unavailable in someone’s custom game. That is the author’s choice, not a fault.

The types of content, without a ranking

This site does not publish a “best mods” list. Rankings of that kind are opinion presented as fact, they age badly, and the Workshop already sorts by ratings and subscriptions with numbers nobody here can improve on. What is useful is knowing the shapes content comes in, because each one carries a different risk to your save.

Every mod declares its own type, and the game ships example mods for the two building blocks of the system. “Blocks and Parts” is the type behind part packs: buildable items that show up under the MOD PARTS filter. “Terrain Assets” is the type behind world tiles and terrain content. The shipped templates cover the third shape, custom games, in two starting points named Empty Custom Game and Survival Custom Game.

Part and block packs bind a world to a mod most tightly, since the world stores creations made of them. Terrain content binds a world to the mod that generated or placed it. Challenge packs sit apart from all of that, because a challenge is a level rather than a persistent world. Custom games are whole game modes with their own rules, which is why the game gives them a separate menu and lets an author decide whether outside content may be added at all.

Mods, patches and crashes

Patch 1.0.1 fixed crashes affecting some mods, which is a reminder that the interaction runs both ways: a game update can break a mod and a mod can destabilize the game. If the game became unstable after a patch, the mod selection screen’s DISABLE ALL is the fastest test available, and the crash troubleshooting guide covers the rest of that sequence.

Mod questions

Does Scrap Mechanic still support mods after 1.0?

Yes. The store listing carries the Steam Workshop and level editor categories, and the mods button is back in the creative and custom game menus after an early 1.0 patch.

Do mods work in Survival?

The mod selection and download screens the game shows sit in the Creative, Challenge and Custom Game flows. Nothing in the shipped menus advertises adding Workshop parts to the Survival campaign.

Will unsubscribing from a mod break my world?

It can. The game warns that a world which used a removed mod “might” become unloadable, which is a warning worth taking at face value. Copy the world first.

Can I share a modded world with a friend?

They need the same content subscribed, or the world opens the “MISSING MOD” dialog on their machine. Send the mod list with the save.

Where do subscribed mods go?

Steam stores them in its own workshop folder for this game and the game loads them from there, so there is nothing to install by hand. The Mods directory in your save folder under %AppData%\Axolot Games\Scrap Mechanic\User is a separate thing, and a subscription does not put anything into it.