Files can get corrupted on disk, or in transit.  And poorly written mods might wind up smashing through your assets directory, causing issues.

Also, if you’re just borrowing the game from an internet friend to try it out, it’s nice to know that the files weren’t changed out from under you, and that your friend is being friendly, and not secretly evil. :)

You can check these hashes against the ones on your disk by using a number of freeware utilities online.  And for you linux folks it should be right in your package manager as md5sum, sha1sum, sha256sum, and crc32.

These files are zipped either using the standard zip file, or 7z (which you can download the unzipping utility for free at 7-zip.org)

v Angry Koala

• Sha256Sum (7zip only): starboundsha256sum
• Sha1Sum (zip): starboundsha1sum
• Sha1Sum (7zip): starboundsha1sum
• MD5Sum (zip): starboundmd5sum
• MD5Sum (7zip): starboundmd5sum
• CRC32 (zip): starboundcrc32
• CRC32 (7zip): starboundcrc32