Starfield's Shattered Space patch fixes a modding restriction that could turn your game into a surrealist hellscape

Starfield sci-fi game with spaceship — (Image credit: Bethesda)

Starfield's first story expansion arrives today: Shattered Space brings a bit of cosmic horror courtesy of those snake-worshipping space cultists we all know and love, and with it comes a fresh batch of fixes in the form of Starfield Update 1.14.70. Our Shattered Space review is on the way, but we've got patch notes to dig through in the meantime—including one particular fix that'll keep your mods from goofing up your game.

Focusing mainly on bugfixes and performance improvements, the patch is a little light on actual gameplay additions, but it does fix an important issue for players who've made some additions of their own. In Bethesda's words, the patch "resolved an issue that limited the number of loaded creations to 255"—"creations" being Bethesda's term of choice for player-created mods.

255 plugins might sound like a lot, but it's common for a single mod to be composed of multiple plugins. With Bethesda's in-game mod browser allowing quick access to thousands of Starfield mods, a player can easily walk away from a bout of modding fever—an affliction we're all familiar with, I'm sure—having installed enough mods to unintentionally cross that invisible 255 plugin threshold.

Anyway, they fixed that. No more hellmouths. You can mod Starfield to your heart's content (once mod creators update their mods, anyway).

Another patch note providing some peace of mind is a fix for Annihilator weapons, which have a chance to generate a damaging disease cloud when they hit an enemy. Previously, those clouds didn't discriminate between enemies and other NPCs like quest characters and companions, which meant they'd start taking damage and react as though you'd shot them directly. Now, companion characters won't be outraged to the point of leaving your party over a single firefight's worth of unintended Annihilator splash damage.

The full Update 1.14.70 patch notes has the complete rundown of changes, if you're so inclined. And while you wait for our forthcoming Shattered Space review, why not make the most of your newfound modding freedom by browsing our catalogue of the best Starfield mods?

Lincoln has been writing about games for 12 years—unless you include the essays about procedural storytelling in Dwarf Fortress he convinced his college professors to accept. Leveraging the brainworms from a youth spent in World of Warcraft to write for sites like Waypoint, Polygon, and Fanbyte, Lincoln spent three years freelancing for PC Gamer before joining on as a full-time News Writer in 2024, bringing an expertise in Caves of Qud bird diplomacy, getting sons killed in Crusader Kings, and hitting dinosaurs with hammers in Monster Hunter.