Downgrade To 1.5.97

There's a lot of misinformation floating around about how to bypass Bethesda's recent updates and avoid breaking entire modlists or your latest playthrough. Here's a quick, easy-to-use guide for how to downgrade to pre-Anniversary Edition changes and prevent any updates in the future. Best of all, no third-party tools or patching required.

Downloading old files through Steam

Currently, installing Skyrim through Steam will be the latest version that brings in Creations an other useless junk. At the time of writing, that's 1.6.1170 where many players are running into issues where plugins aren't even activating, UI changes have broken other mods like the MCM, the game automatically crashes on startup and other lovely surprises.

We don't want that, so let's go from the top and get you set up with a future-proof install while still being able to use all the latest mods. First of all, we want to use the console feature through Steam to download the 1.5.97 files that will overwrite the basic install.

You do not need to use the various patchers available on Nexus mods, as they're essentially using this same method through separate tools. To access this, use the Windows + R keys on your keyboard to open up the Run tool, or search 'Run' to open it manually.

Once that's done, enter this into the command line and hit Enter.


With Steam open, the Console tab should now appear automatically.


Click across to the Console tab now. Make sure you're online for this and, preferably, that you have Skyrim already installed so you don't have to do that later. Now, we're going to download the three parts you need to rollback to 1.5.97 and overwrite the files currently in your Skyrim directory.

One at a time, enter each line below and then let it finish downloading before you continue. You'll get a notification in the command log when it finishes.

download_depot 489830 489831 7848722008564294070
download_depot 489830 489832 8702665189575304780
download_depot 489830 489833 2289561010626853674

Give it some time, as the first and second entries have a few gigabytes worth. Once that's all done, go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\content\app_489830 or wherever you've installed Skyrim to, such as a separate drive, and you should see three folders in there matching the same lines above.

This is what we need.


Now, all you need to do is go into each folder - starting with 48931 - copy all its contents and paste them into your main Skyrim directory. Make sure to okay all files to overwrite!

And that's it. You've rolled back to the version we want and all the game files are ready to go. Launch the game to change graphics settings as you need and create the config files, if you haven't already done so.

Now, let's move to getting your mods set up.

Rolling back the essentials

Now, I won't run through how to install every single mod as your modlist is either automated through something like Wabbajack or you've done it the old school way of setting it up manually by picking and choosing the mods you want yourself.

That being said, as the game files on our end have been rolled back to pre-Anniversary Edition, there are essential files that many mods rely on, such as the Unofficial Patch, that only have the most recent patch available on Nexus which presents an issue.

Luckily for us, many of these still share the last pre-AE version. If not, we can instead get the version we need through the Archive system so mod authors don't hold people's installs hostage.

To start with, let's get the Unofficial Skyrim Special Edition Patch for the game version we need here.[www.nexusmods.com]

Why is this important? Well, since new files were introduced in subsequent updates, file requirements were changed, relying on the new plugins like the Resouces.esl or the Fishing and Curios rubbish.

Without these plugins, installing the latest versions of some mods that rely on them (and therefore aren't designed for 1.5.97) means you can run into all kinds of issues, most likely crashing on startup because the game can't find the files they rely on.

Next up, let's grab Address Library for SKSE Plugins. (Don't worry, we'll cover SKSE64 in the last section.) The last version for 1.5.97 is available to download here.[www.nexusmods.com]

SkyUI and many others will work right out of the box, as they're dependent on SKSE being updated and not game version per se. Still, I'll include some files that you may need below, such as Papyrus extensions, which is Skyrim's scripting language.

PapyrusUtil SE - Modders Scripting Ability Functions is available here. [www.nexusmods.com]
Both parts of SSE Engine Fixes are available here.[www.nexusmods.com]
And finally JContainers SE here.[www.nexusmods.com]

One last thing we need is a mod called Backported Extended ESL Support. I won't go into all the details, but due to changes with plugin file types by Bethesda recently, it has broken mods when trying to use them on older versions like 1.5.97.

Luckily, as the name implies, this allows us to carry across the file changes to the version we need. This is essential, so make sure to download it here.[www.nexusmods.com]

SKSE and preventing updates

We're almost there. By now, you're probably already diving headlong into Vortex or Mod Organizer to get your full mod setup working again, but first, we should talk about setting up SKSE64.

The Script Extender is a long-running tool that stretches back to games like Oblivion and Fallout 3. It is arguably what has made the Bethesda modding scene what it is and the dev team have been diligently supporting it for many years.

Whether you're using it for the first time or just want help to make sure you've got the correct version, I'll run through the process below. First, let's go to the official website here.[skse.silverlock.org]

Now, you'll see there's a bunch of options depending on the client you use - like Steam or GOG - or game version.

As you can probably guess, we want the third option (2.0.20) which is designed for 1.5.97.


Once the archive is downloaded, open it up with 7-zip. If you don't already have that installed, it's available on the website. 7-zip is completely safe, open source software that works in the same way as a normal zip/compressed folder.

Since the SKSE64 archive was saved with that format, we need the tool to extract it. You can download it here.[www.7-zip.org]

Now, select the files below and drag them to your main Skyrim Special Edition folder, not the Data subfolder where we typically install mods. SKSE doesn't work the same way.


Once that's done, scroll down to the skse64_loader file, right click and create a shortcut for it. This will make sense in a second.


Now copy or drag the newly created shortcut to your desktop or somewhere it's easy to access. This is what we'll be using to launch Skyrim from now on, although you may prefer to do it through your mod manager if you're familiar with how to do that.

The reason for this is by launching through the shortcut, it'll prevent Steam from trying to automatically update the game back to the most recent version and breaking all our changes and the older mods that rely on 1.5.97.

As a precaution, we can also make some changes to prevent Steam doing this regardless. Go to Skyrim Special Edition in your library, right click Properties and go to the Updates tab on the left.

Under the Automatic Updates, we want to change the dropdown to 'Only update this game when I launch it' which will be never, since we're running it through our SKSE shortcut that we just created.


One thing to note is if the game title in Steam is showing as blue and that an update is available, don't panic... as long as you don't try and launch it with this setting on, it won't do anything. Finally, as one last precaution, we can change the appmanifest folder that Steam interacts with for updates to Read-only.

To do this, go up from ..\common\Skyrim Special Edition folder to just ..\Steam\SteamApps where you should see the content folder we got those depots from earlier. This time, however, we want to change the appmanifest file for Skyrim, represented by its Steam ID of 489830.

Right click on it, tick the Read-only box and then Apply.


This now covers all bases and will stop the game from updating. Remember, it's very important that you only launch the game through the SKSE shortcut we created earlier or otherwise an external source like your mod manager.

And that's it. It might seem like a lot to go through, but the good news is, once you've done this, it's a one-time deal and you'll never have to go through it again.

You've ensured that you can use all the mods you want, your game won't break from any future updates or Bethesda's meddling and you have access to everything you need!

If this has been helpful, feel free to leave a comment, rating, etc. and please share it around for others who might be having trouble. Have fun.

[certified loser]

The goat

[Craftian]

Gotcha. If you don't care about having it, you can delete it manually from your Data folder. Just select the .bsas and esm/esl files and delete them.

I don't know what will happen if you try playing with some of the CC stuff on 1.5.97, but up to you. Most of them should theoretically work like normal mods, the question is the Resources.esl thing as a dependency.

[whocares916]

on anniversary ver that has all that download when you start the game the cc content

[Craftian]

You mean like graphics settings and all that? You can if you want to, that doesn't matter and doesn't change between game versions. You'll need to do it at least once before just using the SKSE shortcut going forwards.

[whocares916]

when i install fresh skyrim do i need to treat it like any other and download all anv at the first launch before i downgrade ?

[MrGhostO1O]

Works perfectly (06.03.2025).

Firm handshake to you Craftian. Thank you.

[Tablescraps]

Worked great, thanks!

[hpence73]

Another way to stop automatic updates is to go to steamapps and set appmanifest_489830 to "read only".

[ᚻᚪᚾᛁᚳᛋ]

I tried to download_depot, two of them downloaded succesfully but one of them says Failed: error writing chunk... Am I doing something wrong?

[supernova backshots]

Will this work for 1.6.640?