Mods

What a mod is in Dominions 6, where the mods folder lives, the folder rule for .dm files, and how to switch mods on for a game.

verified 6.37updated 2026-10-02 · Jake4 min read

A mod is a set of changes to the game’s data, written as plain text in a file with the .dm extension (short for Dominions mod). It can alter weapons, armour, units, spells, items, sites, nations and more, and it can bring its own pictures. This page covers the practical side: where the files go and how to turn a mod on. How to write the commands is the job of Illwinter’s own modding manual, which is the reference to use for that.

Where the files live

Dominions 6 keeps your maps, mods and saved games in one user data folder. The default places are:

• Windows: a dominions6 folder inside your user profile’s Roaming application-data folder
• Linux: ~/.dominions6/
• Mac: ~/.dominions6/

You do not have to remember these. From the main menu open Game Tools and choose the Open User Data Directory function, and the operating system opens the folder in a file manager. Inside it are three subfolders: one for maps, one for mods and one for saved games.

How a mod is laid out

The .dm file must sit inside a folder of the same name, and that folder goes in mods. A mod called gnukingdom is therefore a gnukingdom folder in mods that contains gnukingdom.dm. The official manual’s worked example does exactly this, and tells you to create the folder yourself inside the mods folder that already exists.

Anything else the mod uses, such as pictures, belongs in that same folder or in a subfolder of it. When a mod refers to a file in a subfolder it writes the path with forward slashes, the Linux way, even on Windows. Images must be saved as Targa (.tga) or PNG. A Targa file needs 24-bit or 32-bit colour, uncompressed or run-length encoded; in a 24-bit file, black is read as fully transparent and magenta as a shadow.

Turning mods on

Enable the mods you want in the game’s mod preferences, then create the game. A game made with a mod switched on turns that mod on for every player who joins it, even if the mod is off on their own computer when they load the game. A player who has not got the mod gets an error message, so everyone in a game needs the same files.

To reuse a game’s mods, load that game, go back to the main menu, and start a new game; the same mods are active.

Several mods can run at once, for example one that changes a nation’s units and another that adds a new nation. Two mods should not change the same thing, because the result is unpredictable. The game loads one whole mod at a time, in a fixed order of kinds (weapons first, events last), so a mod cannot reliably refer to something in another mod by name.

Command-line options

If you start or host the game from a command line, three options matter for mods:

• --enablemod (short form -M) with a mod’s file name turns that mod on;
• --nomods disables every mod for the game being created;
• --nodownlmods stops the game fetching mods from the game server automatically.

Changing a mod during testing

To see an edit take effect, change the mod and load the same game again. If you have not quit Dominions in between, first load a different game that has other mods (or none), return to the main menu, and then load your test game; that forces a reload. Be careful when updating a mod that games are already using: inserting a new monster in the middle of the file with #newmonster and no number shifts the numbers of the monsters after it, and old games then point at the wrong ones.

Further reading

Illwinter publishes the modding manual with the full list of commands, and its site is www.illwinter.com. This wiki does not copy it. For the data a mod changes, the unit, spell and item pages record what the game ships with.