Dread Hunger is a UE4 game, and as a result has some secret settings that you can play with, including HDR settings. Click here to look at those.
For english language players, the Unofficial Dread Hunger Discord Server is a great source of information about the game, as is the Dread Hunger Steam Group Chat.
To run a Dread Hunger server to play on, both the Unofficial Dread Hunger Discord Server and Moeyy's discord server (Chinese language) have bots that will create a server for you. There's also a GUI overlay that will create the server for you.
There are several excellent mods made by the Chinese community. Currently "TotemMod", "Headcount Modification", and "11-player UI patch" are the most popular.
These mods can be be left installed while you play non-modded Dread Hunger. The "Old Expanse Map" and "Old Departure Map" mods CANNOT be installed if you want to play unmodded Dread Hunger.
In order to play these mods, you currently CANNOT use the english overlay or the Unofficial dread hunger's bot to run a server. You will need to run a server via the bot on Moeyy's discord server. I will update this when that changes.
You can use the overlay or the Unofficial bot to run non-modded Dread Hunger, even if you have mods installed. However, there are two minor bugs you will want to avoid:
While it doesn't currently function for everyone, the easiest way to install the mods is via Moeyy's ModManager. Download the latest exe from this page. I have looked through the source code myself, and haven't found anything malicious, but if you are uncomfortable, you should proceed to the manual installation method instead.
This exe is not commonly run, so your browser and OS will probably object to you running it. Do what you need to in order to make it run - Clicking "more info" on the windows popup, for example, will show the 'run anyway' button.
Put this exe somewhere easily accessible - You will need to run it to update the mods.
Open up the exe, click settings, then click "manual bind path". Navigate to your Dread Hunger install. For most users, that will be "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Dread Hunger", or similar. Click the Dread Hunger exe and click "open".
Once you've done that, you should be able to install mods, patches, and skins.
First, locate your Dread Hunger directory and open an explorer window to it. For most users, that will be "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Dread Hunger", or similar. Putting a shortcut to this folder on your desktop is probably not a bad idea.
The Dread Hunger Mod Directory is "Dread Hunger\DreadHunger\Content\Paks". To install a mod, download both the .pak and .sig from here and place them in that directory.
The Maxplayers mod needs a special adjustment, but it's easy and safe. Press WindowsKey+R to open up the "run" dialog. Type in "appdata", without the quotes. Click "OK'. An explorer window should open up. From there, navigate to Local\DreadHunger\Saved\Config\WindowsNoEditor and open up "Game.ini". Add in the following lines of code:
[/Script/Engine.GameSession]
MaxPlayers=64
Separate from the modpaks are "Patches". These require running third party code on your machine, so if you are doing a manual install for security concerns, you should not install patches. No patches are required to play the map or play with 11 people, but they can improve the UI.
First, you will need to install the "Base" for the patches. Unzip this folder into "Dread Hunger\DreadHunger\Binaries\Win64", overwriting the existing DreadHunger-Win64-Shipping.exe file.
Once the base is installed, it will look for patches at "Dread Hunger\DreadHunger\Binaries\Win64\Patches". Create this directory if it doesn't exist. To install a patch, download the .js file from here and place it in the directory. If it opens the JS file in your brower instead of downloading, right click and click "Save Page As" or similar.