A USSEP-less Skyrim run: Free from a tyrant

[Distortedrealms]

That tyrant being the author of said mod that has held the modding scene hostage for years. I just started a new SSE playthrough and noticed out of hundreds of mods only one required USSEP as a master and I decided this time I will run without it just as an experiment. I do not like the added 'additions' in the mod and I heavily dislike the turd behind it. It always made me feel dirty having to have it in my game like a big ugly sore that would never go away so here I am being rid of it. 

 

The point of this post is to see what the consensus here is on this. How many of you play without it? How many swear by it? Are there mods that can replace it even in just bug fix ways? 

 

I have noticed more people ditching it since the Turd's opinions on users still using 1.5.97 and outright insulting them. Surprisingly a large amount are actually positive about ditching it going as far as to say removing it made the game smoother, and less performance related problems.

 

What are your thoughts? 

 

[Kastagir]

Your question seems to be focused on SE versions of the game, yet this is the classic Skyrim/LE forum.  Nevertheless, I'll respond to the spirit of the question, but you should never make your own personal decisions based on consensus but rather based on relevant information and personal choice.

 

I participated in the beta(s) for the individual Unofficial Skyrim patches, even before they were consolidated into a single "Legendary" patch (i.e USLEEP) and well before Special Edition was released.  My bug reports were always dismissed by Arthmoor's lackies and he himself never participated in the effort directly.  I became increasingly disillusioned by jonwd's (another USLEEP "contributor" and frequent Nifskope "developer") insistence that "testing wasn't necessary" for unofficial patch releases, so I stopped participating in the betas.  When Arthmoor began implementing his own subjective changes based on his assertions of having divined the developers' original intent (from mining the data files) I chose to stop using the unofficial patches altogether once these changes began fundamentally changing the character of some of the game's locations.

 

Make your own decision whether to use the patches or not based on your own needs and valid, verifiable information.  If there's something I've written that you don't trust, look it up.  Every core function of the unofficial patches can be implemented in your game on PC by referencing UESP and executing the necessary console commands to fix any remaining bugs in your game version.  If you've ever looked at the unofficial patch changelogs, 90-95% of the changes are fixes to bugs introduced by previous versions of the unofficial patch.

 

If I were a SE user, I'd be sticking with 1.5.97.  If that describes you, it shouldn't be difficult to find a copy of the last unofficial patch for that game version.  Nothing released since then is of any value.  As for me, I've been playing 1.9.32.0 with no unofficial patches since 2014 with no problems and no complaints.  What I couldn't implement via console commands I've added through personal mod customizations.  I take it for granted that if you're playing a game released 14 years ago that you had better have some capability to mod that game.  I'm sure you can manage the same with 1.5.97 if you make an effort.  If not, there are several mods available that attempt to do that for you.

Edited April 10, 2025 by Kastagir