Hi guys and gals,
as the Skyrim Anniversary Version has been released by now, I’m certain you all want to know when Requiem will finally be available on Skyrim Special Edition (SSE). As we haven’t managed to release Requiem well in advance of the Anniversary Edition, we concluded that it would be more appropriate to wait until the Anniversary Edition (AE) and its companion update to the base game are out and then analyze these changes first, instead of publishing a version that might be broken soon after its release. I’m sorry for not communicating this earlier to you; professional life has kept me very busy since our CEO change. (I should mention here that most of the changes I’ve seen so far are positive, so I’m not complaining about my workplace going to hell. But this time of change requires a lot of my attention that could otherwise have been put into Requiem.
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So, let me quickly summarize what we know about the SSE 1.6.318 update and how it affects Requiem:
- The official master plugins contain a variety of changes, but only small overlap with Requiem – forwarding these changes to Requiem is easy. (There are no changes in the Papyrus scripts.)
- The Unofficial Patch has already been updated after the AE release and contains a number of fixes that need to be forwarded to Requiem.
- SSE 1.6.318 includes Survival Mode, Fishing, Rare Curios, and Saints & Seducers. This new content cannot be disabled by normal means and will therefore remain as unsupported content in the initial Requiem on SSE release.
- The Skyrim Script Extender (SKSE) is already updated and appears to be working fine.
- Two SKSE plugins we identified as strongly recommended dependencies to fix important engine bugs have not been (fully) updated yet.
- Engine Fixes is available as a beta release for SSE 1.6.318 since November 19th.
- Scrambled Bugs is undergoing a complete rewrite as SKSE plugin that will first be released for SSE 1.5.97.
The most important aspect here are the two SKSE plugins. These fix very important engine bugs that affect Requiem in severe ways. Those who have been around for long enough might remember the ancient days where enemies just seemed way too brutal sometimes. Eventually we figured out that perk effects can get applied twice to NPCs after you reload the game. Considering that Requiem’s perks often have strong modifiers (e.g. spell damage scaling) these effects are more pronounced than in the base game.
The relevant changes in the base game and the Unofficial Patches will be included in our the initial SSE release of Requiem. When exactly we’ll release Requiem on SSE also depends on how these SKSE plugins (or replacements thereof) will evolve. We will observe the situation for the next two weeks, hopefully getting some more clarity on timelines, and then decide when and how we should release Requiem on SSE.
Based on our analysis so far, we expect that Requiem will also run on SSE 1.5.97, but we will only provide official support for it on the 1.6.318 version. The new content added by the SSE 1.6.318 version will be evaluated and probably adapted to Requiem in a future release. However, we have no plans to integrate any of the new content offered by the Anniversary Edition into Requiem.
Best regards,
Ogerboss on behalf of the Requiem Dungeon Masters