How-To: Setup Skyrim Special Edition 1.5.97 yourself (The Pre Anniversary Edition Version)

[1215drew]

Originally Posted to Reddit Here: https://reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/qtifsd/howto_setup_skyrim_special_edition_1597_yourself/?

Setting up a copy of Skyrim Special Edition version 1.5.97

So you want to use the older version of skyrim since as of this date, the Anniversary edition is a broken mess with more complex mods.

Well you're in luck! Here's your guide for how to do that yourself.

Getting Started

Steam stores the files for each app in "Depots", which are versioned based on a manifest file.

We will mostly be following the lovely guide by u/GMMan_BZFlag here: https://reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/611h5e/guide_how_to_download_older_versions_of_a_game_on/

with a small adjustment when it comes to downloading the old files.

Unfortunately, Steam broke (quite possibly intentionally) downloading older versions of files stored in a depot via the Steam Console like documented in the guide.

Now when running the download_depot command against an older version manifest, you get a lovely "Depot download failed : Manifest not available"

Thankfully, this limitation is only built into the steam console itself and the download_depot command. The actual Steam API still works totally fine.

The lovely folks maintaining the DepotDownloader project have built a tool that will help us get around this problem: https://github.com/SteamRE/DepotDownloader

Information about the files

The AppID for Skyrim Special Edition is: 489830

Skyrim Special Edition Disk

Depot: 489831

Manifest: 7848722008564294070 (7 November 2016)

Skyrim Special Edition Core

Depot: 489832

Manifest: 8702665189575304780 (20 November 2019)

Skyrim Special Edition EXE

Depot: 489833

Manifest: 2289561010626853674 (20 November 2019)

For reference, all of this information can be found at SteamDB here: https://steamdb.info/app/489830/depots/

Downloading the files

After you have unzip'd the DepotDownloader tool you will be downloading the following 3 depot's at their most recent version prior to the Nov 11th, 2021 release.

Open a command prompt in the folder that you unzipped DepotDownloader into (Google it if you need help).

Note that you will need to pass your steam username and password to Depot Downloader, (and likely enter an emailed code verification when prompted to the first time as well)

If this makes you uncomfortable, feel free to review the code for DepotDownloader on github, take the word of myself and other users of it, or simply figure out your own way to download the files outside of this tool.

Disk:

.\DepotDownloader.exe -app 489830 -depot 489831 -manifest 7848722008564294070 -username YOURUSERNAME -password YOURPASSWORD

Core:

.\DepotDownloader.exe -app 489830 -depot 489832 -manifest 8702665189575304780 -username YOURUSERNAME -password YOURPASSWORD

EXE:

.\DepotDownloader.exe -app 489830 -depot 489833 -manifest 2289561010626853674 -username YOURUSERNAME -password YOURPASSWORD

For each of these commands, when complete, you will end up with a folder structure of `depots/DEPOTID/BUILDID` inside your DepotDownloader folder

Building a new Game Folder

Create a new folder where you would like your installation of SSE to live. Grab the files inside each downloaded depot's buildID numbered folder (mine was 7694678) and copy them over into this new folder, building the final folder structure of the game.

When doing so, make sure to not copy the .DepotDownloader folders as those contain metadata used by the tool during the download.

All you need to do at this point is make sure steam is set to not try and auto-update skyrim automatically, and replace the steam Skyrim Special Edition folder with your downloaded folder, making sure it is named correctly.

Run your new installation to confirm that its set up, and you're good to go!

File Hashes

Feel free to verify the file hashes of downloaded files (I encourage you to do so!) Here are the SHA1 hashes for the files:

https://gist.github.com/WardenDrew/abac42b8725e7b1b4ef7e18ca6c739f2