Hi all,

Just been looking at the Forum stats over the past week and noticed one of our most popular searches is “no cd”.

So just thought I’d copy the guide we have on Discord over so people know how to get Vanilla Freelancer up and running in 2023.

This guide is only intended for Vanilla players, that means no other mods.

Download and Install Freelancer

The first step is to download and install the base game. I won’t post a link to the download here, but it’s pretty easy to find.

We recommend that you don’t install Freelancer to Program Files as this has caused issues for users in the past. If you have another drive, installing to D:\Microsoft Games\Freelancer or something would be ideal.

Patching

You have two options here, only select one of these.

Freelancer HD Edition
This contains all the fixes (JFLP, No CD EXE, and more) as well as additional bug fixes and graphical improvements.

• Download the latest FreelancerHDSetup.exe from https://www.moddb.com/mods/freelancer-hd-edition/downloads
• Open the setup file and read the instructions on-screen carefully

Vanilla Patch (Combined 1.1, JFLP, No-CD)
This contains just the fixes required to get you up and running with no graphical improvements.

• Download the self extracting zip
• Extract to your Freelancer installation e.g. D:\Microsoft Games\Freelancer

You will need to right click and “Run as Admin” for the patch if installing to Program Files.

Installing other mods

If you are intending to install other mods, we recommend not installing the patches above and instead following the mod’s installation instructions. HD Edition and the combined patch are intended for Vanilla players and are not compatible with other mods unless otherwise stated by the mod’s developers.