by Ogerboss
Hi guys and gals,
It has taken a lot longer than we originally anticipated, but the deed is finally done. Requiem is now officially available for the Skyrim Special Edition!
The new release is available in the SSE mods section of NexusMods and the new documentation/support can be found here. As of this release, Requiem no longer supports the original version of Skyrim. (A note to those who didn’t update their SSE installation to the new update published alongside the Anniversary Edition yet: Requiem should also work on the previous SSE build without problems, but we only officially support the latest build for the Anniversary Edition.)
Changes in the new version
The primary feature of this new release is the official support for the Skyrim Special Edition. However, along the way, we also made a few extra changes and improvements to the mod as we had to rewrite parts of it anyway. The most important changes are:
- The Reqtificator’s visual automerging feature has been redesigned. The Reqtificator will now automatically identify the last mod in your load order that provides visual changes for an NPC or race and forward these changes to the generated patch. You no longer need to provide a list of template mods using configuration files.
- The Reqtificator applies basic patching to custom race mods instead of complaining about incompatible races. This functionality only covers the basic changes for playable races, it does not apply changes to vampire variants of these races or changes any advanced features like racial special abilities. For these kinds of custom races you will still need a hand-made patch.
- Dragonborn content is disabled in a more organic way. Requiem still prevents the Dragonborn content from triggering on its own, but you are free to travel to Solstheim at any time to start the DLC manually. The optional plugin to enable access to the DLC’s content is therefore no longer needed and has been removed.
For the full list of changes, please refer to our changelog. Our modding documentation still needs some updates, but we decided to not delay the release any further. If you need any help on updating your mods to the latest version in the meantime, please reach out to us directly.
Please also note that the new visual automerging feature is a major change to the functionality. It has been working well in our tests, but these can only cover a limited set of cases. If you find any situations where the new implementation produces odd behavior, please help us to improve it and file a report at our Service Desk.
Requiem, Mutagen and Synthesis - what’s this about?
In this release we have completely rewritten the Reqtificator, that was originally based on the Java library, Skyproc as a C# program using the newer Mutagen library. The new Reqtificator is supplied as a standalone executable like the old one (i.e., you do not need to install any additional runtime for it).
Mutagen is also used by the Synthesis patching framework. The Reqtificator in this release is a standalone tool and does not integrate with Synthesis. This has been a conscious decision as Synthesis integration raises some extra questions that would have distracted us from our primary goal of porting Requiem to the Special/Anniversary Edition. Synthesis support might be added in the future if there’s sufficient demand and solid use-cases for it.
A note on Fozar’s Dragonborn patch
During our testing (special thanks to Dylan Perry for helping us here!) we realized that Fozar’s Dragonborn patch is causing a problem with the new Reqtificator. We’ve already identified the source of the problem and gave Fozar instructions how to solve the problem. The Dragonborn patch will need a small update before it works with the new Reqtificator, please be patient in the meantime.
For those curious about the technical details: Fozar’s patch contains some ActorVariations leveled characters that end up having more than 255 entries after processing, which is not supported by the game engine. The old SkyProc library we used before handled this behind the scenes, at the expense of possibly skewing the spawn ratios in an intransparent way. Mutagen doesn’t automatically fix this problem, therefore this setup in Fozar’s patch is causing issues now but worked before.
What happens next?
Our next objective is to update the modding documentation for the new release. After this has been done, our next focus will be a closer look at the content that has been added to the game by the free update accompanying the Anniversary Edition and decide how it can be integrated into Requiem. While Survival Mode can be disabled in the settings menu, the other plugins cannot be disabled in a straight-forward way except by deleting them manually from your data folder and neither are there established community-made compatibility patches like there are for the Dragonborn DLC. Therefore, it is a priority for us to integrate this content into Requiem to ensure a consistent game experience.
- The Requiem Dungeon Masters