Since its release in early 2016, XCOM 2 has racked up more than 2000 mods on the Steam Workshop. We've assembled our favorites that improve performance and the UI, totally overhaul XCOM's major systems, make the game easier and harder, and so much more. There's a mod that adds co-op play, one that makes XCOM feel more like a Japanese-style Tactics game, totally new character classes and enemies... so have at 'em!
Important: XCOM 2 save files are tied to the mods you use with them. Adding mods as you re playing through a campaign is no problem, saving a game with a mod enabled will cause the save game only work if and only if the mod is enabled. Make sure you fully read the page for each mod to find installation instructions and warnings.
Table of contents
- Character customization and voice packs
- More content
- Fixes, tweaks, and changes
- Official mods, tools and utilities
- Difficulty and game balance
- Gameplay overhauls
Character customization
Free the Hood
Download link
This mod allows for several face customizations at the same time, so our soldiers' cigars don't vanish while wearing a hood and eye patches and masks don't disappear when you equip a helmet. You can also add jewelry to both the upper and lower face at the same time. Not every combination works perfectly, but you've still got a lot more options than you had before.
Full Character Customization From Start
No more leveling up your soldiers before you can fully customize their looks. This mod makes it so the full customization menu is available to you from the jump. All attitudes, hairstyles, and armor patterns are at your disposal from the very beginning of a soldier's arrival.
Ink and Paint
Download link
We'll always, always, always be looking for new ways to customize our soldiers, and this mod provides new facepoints and facial tattoos, as well as 25 new arms tattoos. According to the modder, there's even more on the way.
Capnbubs Accessories Pack
Download link
When your soldiers pop their heads out of cover, you want them looking their best. This pack by modder Capnbubs adds some noggin-based accessories, like a kevlar helmet and facemask that fits nicely with kevlar armor, several different berets, and a ballcap that can be worn with the bill in front or back (but thankfully not to the side). More are being added over time.
Military Camouflage Patterns
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Your soldiers can proudly represent their country of origin with their flags and accents, but why not take it a step further with 21 different real-world camouflage patterns. Russian Berezka, Swedish Barracuda, US TigerPAT, and many others will let your squad hide with pride.
Star Wars Helmets
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We know how frustrating it is when one of your squad, with a clear shot at close range, empties a clip but completely misses their target. That’s why these helmets are so appropriate: there are simply no worse shots in the history of the galaxy than your average stormtroopers. Includes the classic trilogy look, Endor’s scout troopers, and the new helmets from The Force Awakens. Add some black and white armor and bring a convincing taste of Star Wars into your game.
CP Halo Spartans
Download link
Storm Troopers aren't your thing? What about Halo's Spartans? Halo lore nerds will appreciate these character names come straight out of the books, and if Halo Wars isn't quite your chosen flavor of strategy, just pretend you're fighting the Covenant in XCOM 2. This character pool requires a ton of other Halo mods, like Halo Customizable Armors.
Custom Face Paints
Download link
Want your team to have grease-smears under their eyes like professional athletes, or their entire foreheads slathered with soot like Furiosa? Or maybe you’re more into the Braveheart facepaint or the raccoon look like Pris from Blade Runner. This face paint pack adds 10 new looks.
Advent Armor
Download link
Unfortunately, dressing like Advent doesn’t mean you can nonchalantly stroll over to them, offer them a cigarette, chat about the weather, and then bonk them unconscious and run away, giggling. Still, this mod lets you wear their big, clunky helmets and body armor. If you can’t beat ‘em, dress like ‘em.
Uniforms Manager
Watch video on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
When a soldier dies in XCOM 2, they take with them all their earthly memories and dreams. But more importantly, they take their uniform with them, a set of customizations that you spend precious minutes assembling. Uniforms Manager is so helpful and obvious that it should’ve been a stock feature in XCOM 2: it lets you save and reapply created uniforms, letting your whole squad color-coordinate without the agony of clicking through the character creator a bunch.
Soldier voice packs
Commander Shepard
Download link
Watch video on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Ain't no alien-killing badass quite like Mass Effect's Commander Shepard, so you should really add him or her—or both—to your crack staff of extraterrestrial-exterminating soldiers. Your Shepard will bark lines from the Mass Effect games, which naturally fit perfectly into XCOM 2.
Arnold Schwarzenegger
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Worth it alone for the "Get to da choppa!" line from Predator—which plays when you're calling for evac, naturally—this Arnie voice pack includes almost 200 lines from a number of his action films, including Total Recall, The Terminator, and Last Action Hero.
Deadpool
Download link
Watch video on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
This mod mines the plentiful dialogue from High Moon Studios’ 2013 Deadpool game to great effect, with barks like “I AM THROWING A GRENADE” (grenading) and “Guns need bullets to work” (low ammo) slotting in cleanly with every soldier action.
Table of contents
- Character customization and voice packs
- More content
- Fixes, tweaks, and changes
- Official mods, tools and utilities
- Difficulty and game balance
- Gameplay overhauls
More content
A Better Advent 2
Download link
An AI overhaul that could go in the tweaks or increased difficulty sections, but its addition of 60 new enemies makes it feel like a great pick to bulk out XCOM 2's existing content. This is a harder Advent, with a huge variety of new enemies to face, and they will most likely kill you. But what's better than being killed by variety?
More Maps Pack
Download link
Increase your pool of maps with this wonderful selection, which was updated and improved a dozen times after its first release. No new art here, just more layout possibilities for your missions, ensuring they don't feel too samey no matter how many aliens you take on.
World Expansion Project: ADVENT
Download link
Another map pack that works just fine with the first. This one adds ADVENT checkpoints, house raids, traffic stops and dropship pads as XCOM generates its maps.
Maps By Vozati
Download link
Even more combinations! Compatible with the above two mods, Vozati's map pack is about triple the size of the More Maps pack. With all three together, you should be well protected from the danger of randomly generated repetition.
Lucubration's Infantry, Sniper, and Escalation classes
Infantry link, Sniper link, Escalation link
Heard of XCOM 1 s Long War mod? These customized soldier types reprise many of its popular roles. The Escalation classes were designed by our own XCOM 2 expert contributor Beaglerush. They're all a good starting point for experimenting with soldier archetypes outside the defaults.
Table of contents
- Character customization and voice packs
- More content
- Fixes, tweaks, and changes
- Official mods, tools and utilities
- Difficulty and game balance
- Gameplay overhauls
Fixes, tweaks, and changes
Change some basic mechanics, clean up how the UI displays some information, free the camera, and speed up load times.
Reliable smoke
Download link
Reliable Smoke deals with how unreliable XCOM s smoke grenade indicator can be, ensuring that all smokes provide exactly as much defense coverage as they claim to. Flamethrower Panic Fix allows your flamers to properly panic enemies as intended (no, ADVENT is not so brave that they laugh in the face of hellfire). Patrol when Revealed rounds out this set of unofficial patches, removing an issue that caused enemy patrols to annoyingly camp on top of you when you spotted them while concealed.
LOS Preview Ability
Download link
In a similar vein to Gotcha is LOS Preview Ability, granting an ability that you can place on top of enemies and positions to preview exactly what they can see no more being surprised when a Muton draws a bead on you through two separate windows and over a car hood.
Show Health Values
Download link
Show Health Values is another great choice for people who value perfect information, summing up friendly and enemy healthbars into numeric form for easy reading.
Stabilize Me!
Download link
Stabilize Me! is a nice upgrade to the game s medical system, allowing you to use the medkit of a downed trooper to stop them from bleeding out it s a sensible tweak you re likely to appreciate when your only medic goes down.
Better Shieldwall
Download link
Better Shieldwall gives a similarly reasonable boost to an otherwise ignored ability, allowing the lategame WAR Suit ability to provide cover to its wearer, not just allies around them.
PanicMod_AlwaysHunker
Download link
PanicMod_AlwaysHunker is another voice of reason, ensuring panicked soldiers will always go to ground on the spot instead of shooting or running in a random direction. While it can initially be amusing to watch cowardly troops run into the line of fire instead of away from it, this Commander tired of such unnecessary deaths a long time ago.
EU Aim Rolls
Download link
EU Aim Rolls is a brilliant piece of work that fixes a host of issues you likely weren t even aware of. Long story short: in vanilla XCOM 2, the chance to hit and chance to crit shares a single roll, meaning if you have a 10% to hit and a 10% to crit, you can only crit or miss. This mod separates the rolls as it should be, while also removing a bunch of other problems you ll be happy to avoid. Ever seen an on-target grenade decide to miss an Archon? Install this mod and you ll never have to experience such nightmares.
Gotcha (Flank Preview Evolved)
Gotcha (Flank Preview Evolved) is essential it upgrades X2 s line of sight indicator to properly reflect whether you ll flank an enemy from your new position or, even more importantly, if you ll be able to hack/shoot objective items and even if your sniper will have a squadsight angle on distant targets.
Advent Officer: Call in Reinforcements
Download link
Here's a mod for the enemy: this allows Advent Captains to call in reinforcements when his squad has been entirely wiped out. It ups the challenge for you, sure, but it's tempered by the fact that the captain can only use this ability once. You can customize the type of reinforcements that are called, and they'll arrive at a random spot in line of sight.
ShowMeTheSkills
Tired of hunting through your soldiers' info in an effort to remember which particular grunt has that one skill you're looking for? This mod nicely makes all that information immediately visible in the squad selection menu. It's highly customizable as well, so you can have it display stats as well as perks, and even dictate where the information will appear to avoid the menu getting too cluttered.
Stop Wasting My Time
Download link
Have you ve noticed XCOM 2 inexplicably waits for a few seconds after certain actions? There s often a 1-3 second pause after your soldiers fire their weapons, throw grenades, make a kill, or take cover. This mod snips out those weird little delays in the action, making combat a much smoother experience.
Numeric Health Display
Download link
Heath bars are so passé. Here in the future we like cold, hard data. Now you can see the precise numerical value of health, armor, and shields. It even comes with a configuration file so you can customize the size, position, and color of your digits.
Free camera rotation
Download link
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Adds the ability to rotate the camera using the Q and E keys, lets you zoom with the T and G keys, and enables free camera movement controlled by your mouse. You can also remap the keybindings and configure the zoom and step speed. Now there’s all sorts of new ways to watch your squad die horribly.
True Retroactive AWC
Download link
The Advanced Warfare Center provides a chance for your soldiers to earn random but valuable perks. Currently, however, the way it works in XCOM 2 is a bit misleading: a random, hidden perk is selected for each soldier when the AWC is built, or when a soldier is recruited. This mod tweaks the AWC so that soldiers don’t permanently lose their chance at an extra perk if that perk is of ‘lower rank’ than their current rank.
Upgrade Reminder
Download link
If you find yourself occasionally forgetting to actually use all the cool stuff you find during missions, this mod adds icons to the squad loadout screen to remind you if an upgrade is available. You can customize the color and size of the icons to fit your needs.
Evac All
Download link
If you’re tired of individually evacuating your troops, this mod can make it a one-click affair. An ‘Evac All’ button is added to your soldiers’ ability bars when they’re in an evac zone, and clicking it will spirit away both them and any other soldiers in the zone. Speaking of group hugs, there’s also an Overwatch All mod.
True Concealment
Download link
There are a few mods that tamper with the mission timer, but this one feels the most fair. As long as your squad remains concealed, the clock doesn’t start ticking. Once someone is spotted, the countdown begins. It also gives you a bit more time, but there’s a version of it that keeps the default timers if you prefer.
Table of contents
- Character customization and voice packs
- More content
- Fixes, tweaks, and changes
- Official mods, tools and utilities
- Difficulty and game balance
- Gameplay overhauls
Official mods
Some modders, like the creators of XCOM's The Long War, worked with Firaxis to have some mods for the game available day one. There's also an official co-op mod!
Tactical Co-Op
Download link
Why suffer the cruel dice rolls of XCOM alone when you can suffer with a friend? 10 months of work resulted in a two-player co-op mod, which the mod team plans to expand into a 12-player mode when code is approved by Firaxis. Read the short instructions on how to get the mod working with a friend here.
Long War SMG Pack
Download link
This official mod adds a submachine gun option for your soldiers. It allows them a greater range of movement and makes them harder for the enemy to detect, but comes with a cost: less damage and less ammo.
Long War Leader pack
Download link
It provides a new development path for your soldiers that allows them to obtain leadership perks, similar to the custom Officer class from the Long War mod. These perks result in buffs that will help the entire squad, but you can only take one of these leadership characters with you at a time.
Long War Alien Pack
Download link
The Long War gang replaced its Muton Centurion mod with this pack of new aliens. It includes more than a dozen new aliens to fight against, including the Muton Centurion and Elite, a new alien sharpshooter, a giant Chryssalid, and a bunch of new ADVENT troops. Cower in fear.
Long War Perk Pack
Download link
An official mod overhaul of the perk system that changes or adds 70 abilities and allows for picking between three perks per soldier level. The UI has also gotten some tweaks to make space for all these new options.
Tools and utilities
Mod Config Menu is a tool that some mods require you to use for them to play nicely together.
The mod editor, called ModBuddy, is a separate download of about 45 GB. If it sounds familiar, it's because it's the tool used for Civ 5's mod-making. Modbuddy can be downloaded as a Steam Tool, and with it you can debug your mods and upload them directly to Steam. The SDK provides 1,900 game script files, 2,400 maps, thousands of props, materials, and textures, plus hundreds of character assets and animation sets.
If you've clicked any of the links on this page, you know the Steam Workshop is the best place to find mods, and many can be installed with a single click. However, Nexus Mods also has a hub for XCOM 2, and the Nexus Mod Manager already supports the game, and is a great tool for downloading, activating, and managing your favorite mods.
Table of contents
- Character customization and voice packs
- More content
- Fixes, tweaks, and changes
- Official mods, tools and utilities
- Difficulty and game balance
- Gameplay overhauls
Difficulty and game balance mods
Want to make XCOM 2 easier or harder? These are for you.
Grenade Damage Falloff
Download link
One of the easiest ways to solve XCOM 2 s problems (and honestly, any problems) is with an overwhelming number of explosives. With this mod, the power of your unstoppable Grenadiers is reigned in now grenades deal less and less damage towards the edges of their blast zone, meaning you can t just blanket entire groups of enemies with grenades and expect them to all die at once. Having to target and prioritize specific enemies and cover with your grenades rather than just killing everything will bring back the fear and frustration of XCOM faster than you can say I hugely regret installing this mod! Thank me later.
Explosions Destroy Corpses
Download link
You might also like Explosions Destroy Corpses, which fits in perfectly by yep, you guessed it destroying the corpse of enemies you kill with explosives, cutting down on your research resources and black market moneymaking immensely. Maybe now you ll think twice about rocketing those Sectoids for kicks. I mean, I use the mod and I still do it, but some things are more important than money.
A Better AI
Download link
It s not enough to just make killing your enemies harder. You need to make them kill you harder, too.
A Better AI is the perfect mod for the job, increasing the decision making and ruthless killer instinct of every enemy in the game. While you may have experienced the AI granting you small acts of mercy in vanilla acts such as ignoring a low HP trooper to fire at a healthier one, or using an ability on you instead of taking an easy flank shot this mod ensures such friendly sportsmanship is long over. Enemies will ruthlessly prioritize killshots and flank opportunities, overwatch only when the situation makes it tactically favourable, and rarely spam their various abilities if it s better to just shoot you in your face instead. Another excellent set of changes is how the AI will pick and choose from many more options at any given moment, making enemies far less predictable than their vanilla brains allowed. Be warned: now that Stun Lancers remember they have guns, they are easily fifteen times as hateable.
BleedOutMod
Download link
BleedOutMod overhauls the chances your troopers have to start bleeding out when critically wounded instead of flat out dying. I think every soldier should have some chance to survive a knockout regardless of rank or experience, so this mod is one of my favourites.
Advanced Modular Weapons
Download link
Advanced Modular Weapons takes the Armed to the Teeth bonus from the vanilla game that s the continent bonus that grants an extra weapon upgrade slot for all your primary weapons and turns it into an expensive Proving Grounds project instead. Considering how this essential bonus only shows up based on chance, I think having it as a mid-game upgrade for every campaign makes much more sense.
Heavy Weapon Tweaks
Download link
Heavy Weapon Tweaks both buffs and nerfs the player s arsenal. In short, if you felt like the only heavies worth using were the Shredder and the Rocket/Blaster Launcher, this mod evens things out so that Flamers and Plasma Blasters are more competitive as choices for your EXO troops.
Its Just A Scratch V2
Download link
Its Just A Scratch is another in a series of sensible tweaks for the XCOM player. When your troops come home in vanilla, they re assigned wounded time based on how much damage they took, period. With this mod, they re only given wounds based on how much damage they took to their basic health value. In layman's terms, that means if you re wearing armor that gives you an extra four health and you only take four damage or less, you re not wounded, and taking five would be a light injury with a quick recovery. It s a reasonable tweak that allows your better-armored troops to put their plating to use without worrying about instant wound time. Your doctors will appreciate treating fewer bruised wrists and hurt feelings.
Table of contents
- Character customization and voice packs
- More content
- Fixes, tweaks, and changes
- Official mods, tools and utilities
- Difficulty and game balance
- Gameplay overhauls
Gameplay overhauls
Make XCOM 2 feel like a different game.
Suppressable Targeting Abilities
Download link
Suppressable Targeting Abilities revamps the Suppression ability to reduce the range of many area-of-effect abilities, like launching a grenade or spitting a cloud of poison. If you ve ever suppressed a Muton only to watch him happily blow up your squad, rejoice you can properly keep his head down now in all offensive aspects. The mod also unlocks the targeting for abilities, allowing you to place grenades and other skills with pinpoint precision, which is a much needed tweak if you re using Grenades Damage Falloff to lower your overall damage.
Overwatch Ignores Concealment
Download link
Overwatch Ignores Concealment is a little change with a huge effect, allowing your overwatch to fire off normally even while your troops are concealed. You no longer gain the bonus chance to hit that vanilla concealed Overwatch enjoys, but in return, you don t have to jump through hoops to get your stealthed troops to react anymore. As an XCOM:EU vet, this mod is one I really enjoy I prefer starting fights on the alien s turn instead of starting ambushes during mine. It s a definite boost to the player s lethality from concealment, so consider increasing your game s difficulty to balance things out.
Additional Mission Types
Download link
Additional Mission Types is a fantastic mod that introduces several new sorts of missions to your campaigns, focusing on defensive scenarios that provide some alternatives to vanilla s more offensive missions. Defending a resistance shanty town from waves of ADVENT, neutralizing a VIP and holding for an extract, and executing a jailbreak as reinforcements drop in to cut you off are all excellent additions this mod adds to your campaign.
Guerilla War
Download link
Okay, here's the big one. My favourite XCOM 2 overhaul, which happens to combine perfectly with Additional Mission Types. Instead of wiping out all enemies and rolling in the rewards, campaigns played with this mod require you only to accomplish your mission objectives and extract before being overwhelmed. You will want to extract, because ADVENT calls in reinforcements once they go on alert at first just small pairs of soldiers, ramping up to full squads of enemies airdropping in to cut you down. The reinforcements provide a great alternative to mission timers as a result; instead of racing a literal clock, you re racing a metaphorical clock, represented by dropships full of very angry soldiers who will swarm all over you if you don t move fast enough.
Couple that with only keeping what you can carry to the Skyranger, and your tactical decision making will be put to the test far more commonly than in vanilla. Should you bail out immediately after accomplishing your objective, or stick around a few more turns to grab bodies for research? In Supply Raids, how greedy will you be happy to head home after snatching a few boxes full of goods, or risking it all to grab all six? While the reinforcements certainly provide a difficulty hike, the fact that they replace timers allows you more options and flexibility, and encourages you to be greedy as you overstay your welcome to grab loot and corpses.
There s something to be said for racing to the Skyranger with a butt-naked Sectoid slung over your shoulder. Guerilla War s still in development, but it s entirely playable now, so if using a Fulton Harness to extract a Sectopod wreck while you hold your LZ sounds like the kind of gameplay you re interested in, it s well worth checking out.
Wave COM
Download link
Speaking of total overhauls, Wave COM is a mod dear to my heart. As someone who loves tower and wave defense games, this mod is my dream come true start with a small squad of rookies and fight off increasingly harder and more numerous waves of enemies on random maps. Your soldiers level up from kills as they would in a real campaign, and as you earn resources from surviving enemy waves, you can hire new troops, unlock new research, and buy new equipment and upgrades.
With troop customization and savegame support and even optional boss waves featuring the new Alien Hunters Ruler aliens, WaveCOM takes all of the fun and progression of a real campaign and sums it up in one huge and endless defense mission with the nice side effect being that when you eventually lose your entire squad, it s more inevitable and fun than frustrating.
Recovery Turn System
Download link
Finally, while the above mods all pull off some fairly big changes to XCOM, Recovery Turn System takes the cake for absolutely changing the game. Players of other tactics games or more traditional tabletop RPGs will be familiar with the idea instead of moving your entire squad at once, and then all the aliens moving next, this mod has each individual unit act in order based on their mobility score, making it more similar to an initiative based system like Dungeons and Dragons. This completely changes how the game is played; no longer can you use your entire squad s strength to wipe out the enemy before they can act, with combat instead becoming a constant exchange of shots and abilities for each engagement. Whether it makes the game more fun or not is up to you at the very least, it s well worth a look for how radically it mixes up the XCOM formula.
Table of contents
- Character customization and voice packs
- More content
- Fixes, tweaks, and changes
- Official mods, tools and utilities
- Difficulty and game balance
- Gameplay overhauls