Apparently my ESM files contain dirty edits.

My game functions flawlessly.

Should I bother working on these with TES5Edit? I am not familiar with the program or modding. I just install them and play. Should I even bother?

Which ESM?

Dawnguard, Heartfire, and one of the other main ones I believe.

Yeah, just never EVER, clean Skyrim.ESM. Bad things will happen. you should clean Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Update.

I would recommend watching Gopher's video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOQO2S6HDBw&list=UU1CSCMwaDubQ4rcYCpX40Eg&index=5&feature=plcp and reading the Cleaning Guide.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/mods/25859

http://www.creationkit.com/index.php?title=TES5Edit_Cleaning_Guide_-_TES5Edit

What happens if I don't? My game is working.

Will this break my other mods?

Deletions can lead to ctds as you may try to load a mod later that references what one of the official plugins deletes. It only takes a precursory knowledge of logic and scripting err maybe ... coding to see that will generate errors. The worst being a ctd, but this could also mean mod malfunctioning.

ITMs are more about mod compatibility and since they load early they probably won't be an issue.

The entire process takes less than 5 minutes for all official plugins.

And this totally could have been asked in the Tes5edit thread.

looks too complicated and risky. Not going to clean them.

Actually it's not at all complicated. just watch that video i posted and pay attention to it. He goes out of his way to explain why it does what it does and how to use it step by step, which there are like less than 10 steps to cleaning a esm/esp. It's very easy to do.

You may not be having any "noticeable" issues now, but later on you may get the occasional ctd or notice that one of your mods isnt quite acting like it should. These could be the result of a dirty edit.

Besides nothing is risky if you go into the data folder and actually copy the esm/esp you plan on cleaning and paste it someplace else. - thats called a back up

Nothing complicated or risky about it unless you stray beyond using the cleaning functions.

Want to know why Dawnguard causes it to become impossible to buy the alchemy station in Breezehome? Dirty edits. Clean those out, problem solved. So yes, even early loading stuff with dirty edits can cause significant problems. Unless you LIKE giving all your gold to the steward for nothing in return

If nothing else, make backup copies of the Dawnguard, Hearthfires and Update .esms in another folder before you clean, so if something does go wrong (very unlikely if you follow the instructions), you can always restore the originals (it's an excellent idea to have a backup of your game folders anyway, if you have the disk space to spare). Cleaning those three files has made a very noticeable difference in my game. It wasn't running really badly before , but I was getting occasional CTDs, lags and such. After cleaning, the whole game seems to run much more smoothly, and I haven't yet had a CTD.

That was actually rather easy. ESM's have been cleaned..