Ultimate Skyrim 4.0.7: The Fond Farewell, and what's next for Ultimate Skyrim SE

Hello there everyone, and thanks in advance for reading!

It's been a long time coming, but today marks the release of Ultimate Skyrim 4.0.7: The Fond Farewell, which you can download here. (Instructions are the same, whether you're updating or installing fresh.)

This post will explore 4.0.7, and the future of Ultimate Skyrim on Skyrim Special Edition.

Our Love Letter to LE

For those of you who don't know, 4.0.7 is the final, end-of-life update for Ultimate Skyrim on Skyrim Legendary Edition (aka "Skyrim Classic" and "Oldrim"). 

From this point onward, you can consider UltSky LE in maintenance mode: it will no longer receive feature updates, and will be maintained as-is for those who remain behind on LE.

You can see all the changes in the official changelog, but here's a summary of new features & additions: 

• A new, simplified install process via Wabbajack
• Simplified performance profiles, via our proprietary launcher
• Suki ENB: a cutting-edge ENB for LE, customized for performance, visual fidelity, and functional Night-Eye
• Over one-hundred feature tweaks & bugfixes designed to address lingering issues & fill gaps in the current functionality

4.0.7 is the most polished version of Ultimate Skyrim to date, and we hope it will provide an excellent experience as we make the full transition to Skyrim Special Edition.

A Toast to Automaton

For those of you who don't know, Ultimate Skyrim versions since 4.0 have utilized a little ol' auto-installer by the name of Automaton, developed by Metherul.  Automaton was a revolutionary utility that laid the groundwork for auto-installable modlists like Ultimate Skyrim, and to this day, it functions exceedingly well (and is remarkably lightweight; an uncommon quality in software). 

Automaton development ceased this year, so I wanted to give a proper sendoff to this excellent tool and its author.

Ultimate Skyrim as we know it would not exist without Automaton and without the influence of Metherul himself. He is a rare talent with an even rarer passion & temperament, and we can't wait to see what he produces as he continues his journey on the cutting-edge of software development.

You can follow Metherul's software development via his GitHub. 

Special Edition: The Future of Ultimate Skyrim

With 4.0.7 released, we can shift our focus entirely onto the Special Edition version of Ultimate Skyrim.

To put it mildly, I'm extremely excited for this transition. Special Edition is an endless horizon of possibilities for Ultimate Skyrim:

• SE significantly improves performance & stability. This opens the door for features & additions that were simply too much for Legendary Edition to handle.
• SE is the cutting edge of mod development. Most mod authors focus on SE at this point, and there are many incredible mods exclusive to SE.
• There are generally, at minimum, twice the number of active players on SE vs LE. This constitutes more potential growth for the Ultimate Skyrim userbase & community.

As many of you know, I've already been working on the first "beta" version of Ultimate Skyrim for Special Edition — hereafter referred to as Ultimate Skyrim 0.1.0. 

Since this version is now our sole focus, I want to level set some expectations for the features this version will contain.

In the interest of releasing sooner rather than later, 0.1.0 will be a near-direct port of Ultimate Skyrim LE — without the recipe system, the cooking system, and Enai mod integrations announced for the now-defunct 5.0 version. (These additions are still on the docket, but do not fit the scope of version 0.1.0.)

With that said, you can expect some new features in 0.1.0 (subject to change, as always):

• Large-scale improvements to graphics — particularly environments
• Hand-selected appearance improvements for NPC's, with a focus on realism & believability (e.g. no "overbeautification")
• Many more NPC's in towns, dungeons, and on the roads
• A custom integration of Open Cities, JK's Skyrim, Dawn of Skyrim, and Expanded Towns & Cities
• Streamlined replacements for existing mechanics (e.g. "Wildcat" over "Combat Evolved", "Keep it Clean" over "Bathing in Skyrim", etc.)
• Some content additions, such as Obscure's College of Winterhold
• Further improvements to the UX, UI, and HUD
• More granular performance presets
• More MCM automation

This brings us to everyone's biggest question: "When will 0.1.0 release?" The answer is "TBD".

I've already completed a solid amount of work on 0.1.0, but there's still a lot to do, and I'm not comfortable providing a release date until I'm confident we can meet it.

My initial goal was a holiday 2020 release, which I'm still aiming for; however, it is very possible (and even likely) that the release will exceed this window. 4.0.7 took longer than I anticipated, and 2020 has been a complicated year elsewise.

I'll post the latest updates here on Patreon (and crosspost them to the subreddit/Discord/Twitter/etc.), and I still stream weekly on Twitch (Fridays @ 12:00 Noon PST). These streams are a good way to stay connected with the latest, and I welcome you all to join me.

I appreciate your patience & understanding, and I promise we're working as diligently as possible to bring you a product that will be worth the wait.

Until then, I hope you all enjoy Ultimate Skyrim 4.0.7, and I can't wait for what's coming next.

All the best,

Dylan & the Ultimate Skyrim Team