Icarus server mods —
install in one click.
Icarus mods are single pak files — no loader, no injector, no drama. Pak in folder, restart, playing. The card on the right is the entire process; everything below is the by-hand route and what to check when a mod fights you.
# on AcidNodes 1 Panel → Mods tab 2 Pick one → Install 3 Restart the server # paks load at boot # the one rule groups miss ! every player needs the same pak → Players’ copy ↓ link on each mod
One-click install on AcidNodes
Open your server’s Mods tab
The catalogue is the community’s pak mods ranked by their real download counts from the authors’ own GitHub releases. We don’t pick favourites — the numbers are theirs, and every card links its author.
Click Install
The pak downloads from the author’s release directly into your server’s mods folder. We host nothing. Remove works the same way — one click.
Restart the server
Paks load at boot, only at boot. Install without a restart = a file on disk, not a mod in the game. The panel reminds you.
By hand — any host, or your own PC
Get the .pak file
From ProjectDaedalus or Nexus. If a download is .EXMOD/.EXMODZ instead of .pak, that’s the community Icarus Mod Manager’s bundle format — use their tool for those.
Drop it in the mods folder
AcidNodes: Files tab → icarus/mods → upload.
Self-hosting: Icarus\Content\Paks\mods inside your server install — the mods folder doesn’t exist until you create it, lowercase. (Starting from zero? Our sister site’s full setup guide.)
Restart
Same rule as one-click: boot mounts the pak. Most Icarus mods have no config — they’re on or off; where an author offers options they ship separate pak variants. Pick one, never both.
Everyone who joins needs the pak too
Send them the file
Every mod card and every installed row in your panel has a Players’ copy ↓ link — the exact same file your server runs, from the author’s release. Paste it to your group.
They drop it in their game
In Steam: right-click ICARUS → Manage → Browse local files — that opens the install wherever it actually lives (a second drive is common). From there: Icarus\Content\Paks\mods — the mods folder doesn’t exist until they create it, lowercase. Pak in, launch normally.
Mod not working? Five checks, in order
Did the server restart since the pak landed?
Boot-time only. This is the answer half the time.
Is it actually mounted?
Server log, search LogPakFile — you want Mounting pak file …/mods/yourmod.pak. There = server side is done, problem is elsewhere. Missing = wrong folder or it arrived after boot.
Do the joining players have it?
The section above. This is the answer most of the remaining time.
Does the week tag match a recent build?
Icarus patches most Wednesdays; authors tag releases with the game week they built for (w246 = week 246 — your panel shows each mod’s tag). After a patch, grab the author’s fresh release.
Two mods fighting?
Paks editing the same data load in name order — last one silently wins. Remove one, restart, compare. Genuinely need both? That’s what the Icarus Mod Manager’s merge format is for.
How it works, in three sentences
An Icarus mod is a pak file — a bundle of changed game data (recipes, building pieces, stack sizes, the purple sky). At boot, the server mounts every pak in its mods folder; no loader, no injection, and its own log says so in plain text. We watched our server’s log mount one before writing this page — that LogPakFile line in check 2 isn’t theory, it’s what it printed.