Have you ever found it disappointing with the lack of any creature/animal companions in the game? Tired of having to reanimate or "mind control" creatures all the time? Annoyed that you cannot roleplay as a Xenoweapons specialist?


Xeno Master is here to take care of that.


Xeno Master is a rather different creature companion mod that provides you a way to tame the various different faunas/creatures within the Settled Systems. Your captured alien pets will behave more like real companions rather then being mind controlled or reanimated drones.


NOTICE: Xeno Master is currently in BETA.



Xeno Master allows you to capture creatures through the use of an item called the Creature Cooperation Device (or C.C.D. for short) and manage them with a portable computer called the Xenobox.

- The C.C.D. is your main method of capturing creatures. They are thrown similar to that of Impact grenades, except with a few major key differences. The CCD does not deal any meaningful damage, instead when the CCD gets a direct hit on any creature, it will attempt to contain them into the Xenobox. The CCD follows a catch formula that will be listed later here.

- The Xenobox is your main method of managing your alien pets, this will allow you to send a xeno pet out to accompany you in your travels and behave as a real companion. This also serves as the storage for your pets, you can have up to 300 pets at a time!

- Have a companion not from Xeno Master? No problem! Xeno Master uses its own follower framework which means you can bring a companion (ex: Vasco, Andreja, Barrett, Adoring Fan, etc) and a xeno pet with you!

- Caught a beautiful blue creature in a frozen biome? They will have that look everywhere! No more "chameleon" color swapping! Which means you can bring your newly caught blue creature to a Volcanic or Forest biome and they will still keep that look, no matter what.

- Special Xeno pets that have their own "backstory" and a unique way of obtaining them. Each of them having their own special ability granted to you once you have reached max friendship (or affinity) with them.

- Give your pet a unique name from the 400+ different names to choose from!

- Friendship system! Think of it as the affinity system for human companions. Your alien pet will react on how you treat them. Keep them happy by treating them well, and benefits ensure.

- Command/Order them! Unlike vanilla companions, you can command/order your pets to do specific things! Like telling them to attack an enemy from a distance, picking up items from a distance, interact with certain objects, etc. However, if they don't like you, they will refuse to obey your commands/orders.

- Check their stats! You can check in with your pet to see their current friendship, hunger level, power level, health power level, what level you caught them as, what slot they are in the Xenobox, and legendary status.

- Change their current range attack or even grant them one! You can feed your alien pet special treats that can give them fire breathing, explosive spit, electric breath, etc.

- Beef up your pets! You can feed them special power upgrading meals to permanently enhance their combat capabilities or even make them legendary! Higher level met pets can be found semi pre-beefed up. Caught Legendary creatures will automatically make that pet legendary!

- Relocate them or recall (dismiss) them anytime and anywhere! You can dismiss your pet by telling them in dialogue or from the Xenobox! Lost pet? No problem! Just dispense a Filled C.C.D. (and/or reselect the creature) from the Xenobox and then throw it! Your pets will always be there for you!

- Just like the vanilla game, all of your pets are essential! So you don't have to worry about them dying! They will only enter a kneel down state when they have taken too much damage, in which you can heal them with a medpack to get them back up! (Too easy? You can change it so that they will faint instead or if you want to run hardcore, you can change it so that they will die instead, all available in gameplay options)





Since the Xenobox is your main method of accessing about 95% of this mod's features and functionality, you will be given a Xenobox (and five CCDs) shortly after you have completed (or skipped if you are in NG+) the "One Small Step" Quest. This is usually when the game gives you the lodge key and stuff.

If for some reason you were not given the Xenobox and five CCDs even after completing "One Small Step" you can "force" the mod to start up by crafting an item named [Xeno Master manual start up] in any industrial workbench.

Once you have obtained the Xenobox, you can now go into any planet with life and start catching aliens!

The Xenobox is found under Weapons in your Inventory. The reason why it's a weapon is to allow you to hotkey it.

If you ever need more info you can go into the [Instructions] menu in the Xenobox.

The C.C.D. has five different tier levels that can all be crafted at the Industrial Workbench with each tier having better base catching odds and with the last tier
allowing you to capture the most dominant species in the Settled Systems. All tiers (except the lowest tier) require you to have security and zoology spec'd and researched before you can create them.

The meals and treats can be created from any cooking station, they are prefixed as "Xeno pet". Special pet meals/treats require you to have spec'd into Gastronomy and researched before you can create them.

Most of the creatures/aliens can be caught with a few exceptions. You cannot catch creatures owned by someone else and alien floaters.

Creature Cooperation Device catching formula:

C.C.D. : Base catch chance = 5%
C.C.D MK II. : Base catch chance = 10%
C.C.D MK III. : Base catch chance = 15%
C.C.D MK IV. : Base catch chance = 20%
C.C.D MK V. : Base catch chance = 30%

Ways to improve odds:
- The lower the creature's health is, the easier it is to catch them. So make sure to weaken them.
- Being spec'd into Xenosociology, the higher the rank, the better.
- The creature being Frozen/Paralyzed. Sunless Space will be useful here.
- Fully Incapacitated by electromagnetic. Novablast disrupters (or any weapon that can inflict EM Damage) will be very useful for catching creatures.
- The higher your level versus the creature's level, the easier.
- Back Strike
- Consuming foods that give you catch chance factor bonuses
- Completing the Fauna Compendium

Situations where odds can be decreased:

- The higher the creature's health, the harder.
- The creature outlevels you.
- The creature's temperament. Aggressive creatures will give you a somewhat harder time to capture them while Peaceful and Skittish ones not so much.


Situations where the C.C.D. will ALWAYS fail:

- Trying to capture something that isn't an alien. No, you cannot capture Andreja, I can't let you do that.
- Xenobox is full. Gotta release some if you want to catch more! I would be surprised if you have managed to hit the 300 cap.
- Quest critical target. I enforced this rule very loosely, but please refrain from capturing creatures that are required/involved in quests. Creatures flagged as Essential and/or Unique count as Quest Critical targets.
- Creature is already dead. I don't need to explain this and no, reanimated creatures cannot be captured.
- Is a sea creature. Xeno pets need to be able to operate on land.


Situations where the C.C.D. will ALWAYS succeed:

- Creature caught using one of the zoology outpost modules. Just simply walk up to one of them and "activate" them to store into the Xenobox. You must have a CCD in your inventory. The CCD use order starts from lowest tier to highest tier.




- Extract the zip contents to your Data folder
- Enable the mod named "G231_XenoMaster.esm" with your plugin manager like MO2 or Vortex
(If you use the in-game mod manager, just go to load order and then make sure my mod is enabled)

For Uninstalling, make sure to dismiss all of your pets first. and then uncheck the mod and finally remove "G231_XenoMaster.esm", "G231_XenoMaster - Main.ba2" and "G231_XenoMaster - textures.ba2". in your Data folder.

However, with any other heavier content packed mods, make sure you have a clean save! It's a good habit to have more than one save. This rule applies to all singleplayer BGS games! I will not be held responsible if your game decides to act up.




You can help me by suggesting more possible new names to the ongoing large namepool that you can name your pet! Or findings bugs that are not noted from the known issues!

I may not be open to feature suggestions since this is currently in beta (I'm mainly just bug hunting), but you are free to post them. Just be aware that there is no guarantees that it will happen and I can ignore them. If your suggestion is easy enough and something that interests me, then there is a better chance that it will happen.


If you use discord, you can join my server where you can talk to me (or just to say hi), talk to like minded people, suggest ideas, talk about fauna locations, see teaser updates for upcoming versions of Xeno Master, and etc:


- Art for the CCD (As of right now, it just uses the Particle grenade as the placeholder)
- Art for the treats and meals (As of right now, they just use meal kit as the placeholder)
- Custom sounds for catching and stuff (They currently use sound effects from the game)
- Special/Unique Xeno Pets (This is a big one. This is what [Special Xeno Pets] menu is for.)
- Dialogue having sounds (They are currently silent at the moment)
- Being able to donate a xeno pet to Cora Coe (Come on, Sam, let your daughter live her dream!) [May end up being featured as an optional addon]
- Biome Skin Variation fixed (Hopefully)
- Being able to change your xeno pet's combat style
- Being able to accessorize your pets (Give them jazz or just a way to tell which creature is trying to eat you or is trying to save your life)



Small addons for Xeno Master that I make that aren't worthy enough to have their own modpage. These addons can be found under optional files.

These addons should be version independent from Xeno Master, unless I specify it directly from future change logs/announcements.

And before anyone asks: Yes, all of these addons require Xeno Master to be installed in order for them to work. Otherwise the game will either crash because of missing master or the addon won't load.

Mysterious Captain sells Xeno Master Items


Carpwalker naming and Aceles keyword FIX



Since this is currently in BETA, there are some issues that I am well aware about:

- Most of the Biome Creature Skins turn black when you go far enough away from them. This only applies to your pets, since I am basically using layered materials.

- Some of the Creature Biome skins may be inaccurate. The whole process of creating this was very tedious, I wasn't able to test this completely, so some creatures may end up looking a little different (color wise) right after you've caught them.

- Creatures that use the same technical skeleton structure as the Siren/Ashta can sometimes suffer from the staring at their enemies' face bug. This can be sort of fixed with my other mod: Xeno Staring AI Fix

- Bigger creatures like the Aceles and Cagebrains have clipping issues when being in your ship. The only exception is the Starborn Guardian (that you get from NG+) which is roomy enough for bigger creatures to not have clipping issues. Not much I can really do here, but you can recall them back into the Xenobox when going back into your ship. The other alternative workaround is using bigger ship habs with high ceilings.

Issues that are beyond my control:

- Pet Follower AI may get derpy sometimes and could take a while for them to wake up and start following you again. Also they cannot follow you if you are in the air, this issue also applies to vanilla followers too, and no Xeno Master isn't the cause of this. So if you want them to follow you correctly, your feet must be on the ground. If you need them at your location now while they are derping, just dispense a Filled CCD (and make sure they selected) and then throw that.

- Certain Creatures may have janky hitboxes when trying to capture them, sadly there is nothing I can really do about this.

- Certain Creatures like the Biped looking xenos can sometimes have janky or "teleporting" like movement. Sadly there is nothing I can really do since this is a vanilla related issue.

- Creatures are unable to ride on the back seat of the Rover/Car or even ride on the car with you in general. This is unfortunately tied to animations/animation events which I don't even have the tools to access, this is unfortunately a hard limitation until there is either an SFSE way to do or animation tools come out.

- Certain creature species will not sound like they were before you caught them. Most creatures aren't particularly noticeable in terms of sounding different after you caught them, although the Mantas seems to be the worst offender overall. Unfortunately, this is a hard limitation until there is a way to change an actor's sound group on the fly.



Xeno Master does not make any edits to the base game at all. So Xeno Master should be fine with any load order.

The only time I could think of any compatibility issues is that if a mod were to ever make any big changes with the CCT keywords, spells, and perks. With the recent skill overhaul mods coming out, so as long they don't remove Security, Zoology, Gastronomy, and Xenosociology.

Mods that increase the size range of wild creatures won't affect this mod whatsoever. Heck, if you want to own absurdly large creatures, just remember to turn on uncap in the Xenobox settings. Otherwise, absurdly large creatures will get size capped (To Scale 1.0) when captured, which means they will get shrinked.

Mods that mess with collision layers L_CRITTER and L_SPELL can break the EM and sunless space options for increasing catch rate odds.

If the conflicting mod in question is a paid mod then I would need you to at least give me video footage of the issue, what you were doing, did it happen midway, and what paid mod is it? Be aware that I am unable to debug paid mods because of their "pay to use" nature.

Otherwise, it should be mostly fine, so as long the mod doesn't delete them or anything.




Q: Why is the plugin file so big?
A: This mod holds FormIDS of the many layered materials for each biome skin variation for each creature species. There was no other way I could do it, sure there was AVMS, but that thing wasn't my cup of tea and the process behind it was even more tedious. Oh and yeah, the 300 different slots you could have are all separate actors, and having to reference them 2 times because Bethesda doesn't allow array text replacements.

Q: Does that mean I can have a Terrormorph as a pet now?
A: That's something for you to find out, but if you don't care about spoilers:

Spoiler:  

Show

Yes you can, however you will need to use CCD MK V to capture them, any lower tiers will always fail. Beware, Terrormorphs are very difficult to capture, so come prepared.

Q: Help! I keep crashing everytime I load in with Xeno Master installed!
A: Check your load order, disable all of your other mods except this one. And if your game doesn't crash, then it means that you have a mod that is making the game not play nicely with my mod. While this may be very tedious, but try to enable your other mods one by one until your game crashes again so that you can find the culprit.
A2: If you are running a chunky load order, then there is a very good chance that you may have hit your soft mod limit. Which means you will need to remove some mods in order to stop crashing.

Q: Does my pet's hunger go down when they are stored in the Xenobox?
A: No. Pets stored in the Xenobox don't lose hunger. Only pets that are currently following you.

Q: Ridable Xeno Pets?
A: I wish. Unfortunately that one is a strict engine limitation jacked up broken by BGS. Nothing I can really do on that.
A: With the rovers/cars being out, I would have to break that down and figure that out. As of right now, it's not a priority feature for Xeno Master right now.

Q: Can you add [insert new creature species group]?
A: If you asking about Floaters, then no. Due to technical issues, they are currently in the backburner for the time being.
A2: If you are asking to add a new creature species group from another mod, then I will need you to tell me what mod it is and link it to me. If you are asking to patch is NOT on Nexusmods then I cannot make a patch for it, unless the author of the mod in question has a way of contact. So that I could patch it with Xeno Master, provided that I get the permission to do so. However, just like all suggestions, there is no guarantees that I will get to it. Patches for paid creations is strictly a NO and is against nexusmods' policy.

Q: Could you add cages where you can put your pet in for outposts/ships?
A: Cages? We don't live in the stone ages anymore! We live in the future, we just shove them back into the Xenobox! Just kidding, that is one of the features that I plan on adding in the future. It should be feasible just because the cage assets already exist in the game. It's just the matter of accounting a separate catagory for the Xenobox and implementing it in properly.

Q: Is there anyway you could assign your pet to an outpost?
A: As of right now no. That is currently planned.
A: This feature has been implemented in Beta 0.9.

Q: Where do I find/make NCI MK VII adapters?
A: You can find them by making them in the same bench where you would normally make CCDs. They are found under the N catagory since the Industrial Workbench sorts craftables by alphabet.

Q: Help! Your mod is making the animals become invisible and I only see their health bar now!
A: If you are enabling mods from the in-game load order menu or just downloaded some new mods from creations, then you need to restart your game completely. Which means closing out of the game (For XBOX users this is closing the app and for PC you need to quit to desktop) and then relaunching Starfield again. That should fix the invisible creature issue. Do know that I heard people have this exact issue without having Xeno Master installed. So this temporary fix can apply to other places. Generally it is highly recommended to fully restart Starfield when installing new mods or enabling mods.
TLDR: Quit out of Starfield completely and restart it again.
(I will remove your post if you explicitly post about this exact complaint. Seriously, read this damn FAQ. The last thing I want is a pile of these posts when your answer/solution is RIGHT HERE)


Q: Does having a xeno pet following you affect the extrovert and introvert traits?
A: Nope, having xeno pets following you does not affect those traits, since they are afterall not humans.

Q: When can I be able to catch the new creatures from DLCs?
A: The DLC just came out, I'm currently looking at it, just be patient.
A: You can, its an addon for Xeno Master. Look in either one of my pinned posts or this link: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/11822

Q: Do Xeno Pets level with you?
A: Yes, everytime you level up, you will notice that their health increases. This stops once you hit level 100. However their Power Level and Health Power Level need to be increased by you via Upgrade Meals and such.

Q: Can you feature/make a translation for [Insert non-english language here]
A: I don't make the translations, however if you are willing to volunteer and know how to use the Creation Kit/xEdit/modding tools and have some basic modding knowledge to do it yourself, then go for it! Just remember to refer to my permissions.

Q: Does Fauna Compendium progress persist in NG+?
A: Yes and no. Fauna Compendium progress will only persist across universes if you have fully completed it. You will know when you get the bonus perk for completing the Fauna Compendium.



Just the base game (latest version), nothing else.

If you are running Shattered Space along with Xeno Master and wanting to capture the new creatures, then you may want to install the DLC Support addon as well.



Refer to Permissions and credits.

Xeno Master can only be officially found here on Nexusmods or on Creations (aka bethesda net).

If you find Xeno Master anywhere else besides these two sites I described earlier, then someone else has been stealing/reuploading my mods without my permission.



Xeno Master is available on Creations. Check out the sticky in the comments section for the link. Or you can click it here.

Please be aware: I don't own an Xbox series x/s and a copy of Starfield for it, this means that the creations edition is basically untested by me, but from all of the feedback by the XBOX players, it should work perfectly fine.


You like what I do and would like to support me? You can donate to my Ko-fi! Not expected, but your donation is very much appreciated!




FallenSorrow - name idea for the CCD and some of the name choices
ElminsterAU - SF1Edit (Used to peak at Starfield.esm's contents while I was making the design doc for Xeno Master)
The people behind the Skyrim and Fallout 4 Creation Kit unofficial mirror documentation. (Huge thanks to them, if it wasn't for them. I would spend more time trying to find things then making the mod)
hexabit - B.A.E.
Bethesda Game Studios - Creation Kit and Starfield


Tools used:
Creation Kit
Notepad++
BAE
SF1EDIT
Starfield Plugin Bridge
Audacity
WWise


Additional Sounds