Sounds great, but:

Don't spellcasters occasionally start with really high-level spellbooks like "Wish"?
Should they still auto-learn those?

It would also seem odd to have a learned spell then be unable to read the book to learn again (for other high-level spells like Acid Ball or something)

Maybe they learned the spell from their apprentiship before they left :) maybe instead of wizards knowing their starting spells, they can start with spell knowledge in 2 random bolt spells?

I don't like this change.

Dumb trollish wizards can't actually learn spells, why should they get free offense?

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Is there more representative indication that this change is necessary? Currently it seems the other way round.

If it's just one free reading, troll wizards will get like 20 castings of their spells anyway. Not a big deal.

I don't think this change is necessary, but it's not that big of a deal either way.

As a beginner I remember finding it more instructive that I had to interact with my books and learn my spells.

I'm against mostly due to the same reason auric just pointed out. Let those who normally learn spells from books read books and give spell knowledge just to pure spellcasters (elementalists) as it currently is.

I'm in favor of this, it's way more intuitive. What kind of wizard goes to a dangerous foreign land without ever having read any of his bloody spellbooks? Wish might deserve a special case here, honestly I don't see why anyone should ever be generated with that spellbook. But if they are, a free reading is not going to enable anybody to actually cast it... and anyone who can get to the point of casting it can easily read the book anyway.

So what if it's a tiny buff for Troll Wizards? Is anybody seriously thinking, "OH NO, my Troll Wizard games are going to be RUINED!"?!? There's been so much new content and so many significant nerfs in the last couple of years that a very minor convenience change like this is a drop in the ocean.

Why my PC can't be so lucky to start with this book? No one complains about it...

It's a disadvantage for the vast majority of players (takes up a potentially useful spellbook slot), and makes little sense to me to have such a powerful and massively difficult to use spell in the hands of a starting character.

The game is much easier now than 1.1.1.

Best use of it is to sell it. It's worth enough that you can pretty much buy out the Black Market and have money left over for keys/skills, or get you a good portion of the way to a precrown if you hold onto it until HMV/DT.

That also seems really weird; Wizard arrives in a foreign land, first thing he does is sell a spellbook of unusable ultimate power and buys a lot of expensive stuff? It makes a lot more sense to me if he just has another usable spell.

I don't get why this is being voted against so much. I always thought it was odd that my character was venturing into Ancardia, has these spell-books, but hasn't tried to read any of them yet. Surely my character would have made at least one attempt to read each spell-book before the game had started? (I'm not sure whether these would be guaranteed-successful reads .. I suspect not.)

Doesn't even really have a major effect on the game, except the player is saved the tedium of trying to read their spell-books before venturing out of town. (Assuming you're like me and only check them out once reaching Terinyo.)

Another issue with this: learning a spell for the first time gives you a big Learning boost (bigger than subsequent readings), which is sometimes enough to get you +1 Le early on. Knowing spells from the start would deprive the player from that.

There are several downsides, and no upsides that convince me.

Maybe they should just have the spellbooks identified, i imagine that would help with confusion.

All the spellbooks you start with are identified. Or are you saying they should auto-identify every book in the game, like specialized merchants with scrolls/wands/rings?

See my comments in http://www.adom.de/forums/project.ph...4845#note31371

It has been implemented.