Possible new rumors and who should give them.

[gut]

We need to figure this first and submit a request later. There just isn't
enough in-game information in adom to inform a player of all the things
they need (or maybe just want) to know. We should rank them, so there is
distinction between need-to-know info and just 'it would be nice' stuff.
Also, let us decide who would be best to give the info. We can't just
keep adding poems, as the MM is too long winded as things are (IMO anyway).

Examples:

Rank level 1 (or such):
Being doomed is bad for entering the chaos gate, but only some doom,
not other doom, like wearing some doom gear... but not other doom gear.
Maybe the oracle can mention this, or gaab bay or some other ultra
related npc.

Rank level 3 (or such):
The advice "Take some measures and harvest some treasures." seems a bit
lacking, especially considering how game-changing that herb farming is.
IMO it is the single most OP feature in adom outside of save scumming
and yet one's chance of landing on the 'Oh, just make squares." tactic
without help is minimal (unless we expect everyone to be familar with
conway's life game). Maybe the druid could mention this?

Rank level 5 (or blah):
Smithing was always one of the most oft-asked questions back on the
brinkster forums. I haven't seen a lot of 'What all do I need for
smithing?" questions recently though, but it couldn't hurt to have
Glod mention a few lines to clarify.

Rank level 7 (ob duh):
It has to be a hatchet, not an axe, as that would be stupid. Also, it
has to be in your tool slot. I know the MM already says something
about this 'good tools' or such, but it isn't enough IMO. Let the
carpenter mention it.

[KyoShinda]

I agree with this, although I learned most things starting out from the wiki. Also, I figured out that I could use the hatchet in the tool slot long before I figured out that you can enter wilderness squares w/o an encounter, there's a lot of things like that would be wierd to put in a rumor and are better just to figure out messing around(or could be added to the manual).

[JellySlayer]

Rank level 7 (ob duh):
It has to be a hatchet, not an axe, as that would be stupid. Also, it
has to be in your tool slot. I know the MM already says something
about this 'good tools' or such, but it isn't enough IMO. Let the
carpenter mention it.

The required steps could be mentioned when the PC (re)reads the manual of bridge building.

[grobblewobble]

One thing (not very important) that I would like to see is to hear some background story or rumor about Kherab from Thrundarr. Who is he, where did he come from, what is he up to? (Currently talking about 'Kherab' or 'darkforge' gets you the standard "me hast nothing to say about that".)

There's a whole lot of info needed for ultra endings so ideally we'd need to see quite a few extra hints from different sources, I guess? I think that if you save Khelavaster, he should give you one hint to get you started. One thing that is very difficult to figure out without being spoiled is the requirement of being level 45. You normally don't reach that level before you killed the balors on D:50. So maybe Khelavaster could tell you to "practice more", "come back later" or something along those lines before you are xp level 45? Then once you are high level enough, he could refer you to the mad minstrel, who could in turn refer you to the assassin prince?

Smithing is a good point. One idea for that is to let the dwarven smith hand you a rereadable scroll (smithing manual) that explains the steps when you buy the skill from him.

[Stingray1]

Great thread.

I don't think too much more is needed for smithing. The game already tells you that you need a forge when applying the skill, I think it even tells you to wield a hammer somewhere. Plus the Weaponsmith class do start with all the needed stuff.

The assassin prince does say something along the lines of not being experienced enough, but as GB said most everyone is going to be deep in CoC on high xl and no one is thinking about going back to the surface then. The prince says he needs a token that you can assassinate or kill or something along those lines.

Maybe some cookie that says, Assassins like daggers and daggers are tokens. Not as explicit as that, but I'm not good at writing rumours.

Edit - Maybe, "A good dagger is a token of a good assassin." The prince should maybe hint that one needs to be extremely experienced.

An alternative could be that Kherab's 3rd quest is to slay the prince, this way the player will find out that the prince has the one dagger of the twins the existing rumour speaks of.

I'm almost convinced TB thought characters would level much faster than they do.

[grobblewobble]

I'm almost convinced TB thought characters would level much faster than they do.

Absolutely agreed. The levelling pattern is a bit strange, level 1-10 go pretty fast, then you slowly crawl to level 20 in the midgame (up until tower), reach maybe level 30 in the endgame (including all temples), until you start killing balors and you skyrocket to 40+. It also shows in certain classpowers you gain long after you have any use for them.. learning to evade wilderness encounters at level 25 and so on.[/derail]

[Grey]

Smithing should just be described in the skills section of the manual.

For hatchet the fact that the carpenter drops a hatchet on death is a hint. In general I prefer this sort of in-game hint than just spelling things out or leaving it to random fortune cookie messages.

Bard songs are a good way to give more hints on obscure knowledge. I wrote a few of these a while back to help reveal more obscure knowledge. Could maybe do some more...

[gym21]

We could also just have the saved carpenter offer hints on woodcraft, bridge-building and fletchery if you chat to him.

[Stingray1]

I have to gauge necessity of additional clues needed on my experience for the moment, unless somebody mentions that their experiences were totally different.

With regards to smithing, fletchery and bridge building I don't think any more "help" is needed. All of these I could figure out how to use in a fairly reasonable time. As I said, with smithing the game tells you what you are missing, same with fletchery. As Grey said the carpenter dropping a Manual, hatchet and something to remove the rust from the hatchet is fair enough.

There is a Tool slot when you press "i" when you press "o" then a whole list of stuff you can "u,U, u:"se comes up, I think a hatchet, pickaxe, beeswax is on the list. Although, I think it mentions a body of water when trying to use a hatchet, maybe that can be changed to "water or tree".

One thing gut mentioned was herbs, which I could never figure out. Not the growth patterns(edit: I did try, but soon got bored and gave up) nor the use of moss, morgia. The others were very easy though, obviously.
There are rumours that speak about these herbs, but still they don't say they should be used in quantity to gain increases. Hence, I ignored these two herbs for most of my ADOM career.

[blob]

I have no idea why dooming should affect entering the gate, I say that requirement should just be dropped. The C artifacts give it so the whole thing just seems silly.

I also have no idea why an axe would not be good enough for chopping trees, and think they should be implemented as well.

As regards to herbs I'd say the druid can give you a more or less explicit hint as to their uses if one chats to him with them in the inventory. Seems in character. Isn't there already a hint like "they say that herbs grow in specific patterns"?

I forget if there's a hint that you can throw potions and stuff, if not there should be.

Why on earth doesn't Kelly just say he's gonna pop over to town if you save him?? And why is he invisible? I get that it's just to mess with us but think it's a bit over the top.