So, I'm cleaning a lot of mods prior to merging them to get them in my load order.

After reading and re-reading several articles on cleaning mods, I realize I've been skipping some steps.
No big, I keep the originals for backup, so I can clean them again properly.
I'm finding a HUGE number of un-referenced records in most of the mods I'm looking at.
There are a few instances where it appears that the author forgot to place them, but for the most part, they appear to be un-used.


My question \ uncertainty:

As I understand the game mechanics, new records added to Oblivion must be referenced by another to have it appear in game without using the console.

For example: I create and add the Uber Ring to my mod.
To get the Uber Ring, one of two things must happen:
I manually place it (a reference) somewhere in the game - a place, a container, an NPC, etc. or I place it into the game via a quest result \ script.

This creates another record that references the ring record. So looking at the mod with TES4Edit, each would reference the other.

An example of what I'm talking about:
One mod has a dozen or so packages.
Half of them do not have a reference. Some of those look like the should be assigned to an NPC but are not. I'd just as soon as clear them out if they are "wild" edits.


Is this correct?
Are there exceptions?


Thanks

I'm assuming by "unreferenced" you mean that something you've found in the mod has no data on the "referenced by" tab down below?

If so, that's not something to be worrying about. Having unused statics/activators/scripts/whatever does not constitute dirty edits. They won't be marked by the filter used to clean with either.

What you're looking over now would best be described as vestigial records - records that either once had a purpose or never got used. They're 100% harmless and trying to hunt them down is a big waste of time.

You should be careful though not to lump vanilla records in with the others because you need to specifically tell TES4Edit to build the reference table for Oblivion.esm before it will be able to show you unreferenced vanilla records. Of which there are boatloads.