Dear community,

I'm looking into modding Skyrim and it is already tedious before I have installed a single mod. For example, one way to mod requires first downgrading to version 1.5.97, but how to do that with the gog version? No idea.

Is there an easy way (meaning not more difficult than say modding Morrowind or Oblivion) to mod the gog version of Skyrim?

1.6.659 is the first (and so far only) version on GOG, it is not possible to downgrade futher (if Bethesda eventually make a 1.7 release, we could easily roll back 1.6.659)

Most mods are not version dependent, they work on any version.
SKSE mods is the tricky part - they are version dependent.

1.5.97 is an old version on Steam (~2019), 1.6.640 is the latest.
If the mod was updated for Steam 1.6.640, it should work on GOG 1.6.659 just fine.

Yes, there are mods that only work on 1.5.97, but at the same time there are also mods that only work on the latest version - in other words, no matter which version you choose, you'll miss something.

Every month someone asks on reddit r/SkyrimMods if it's still worth downgrading Steam version for modding. The general consensus (Aug 2023) that it's no longer worth it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrimmods/comments/15bol1s/is_it_still_recomended_to_downgrade_rather_than/

Thanks for the suggestion. I have added a few mods to my Skyrim installation and they seem to work. I haven't run into many problems since the bad start and the few I experienced do not seem to be due to a bad game version.