A year or so ago I had an e-mail conversation with Valg about item list items, where few things concerning item lists were talked about. In the discussion an idea about Imm-kept official item list came up, which would contain all lowbie items. This kind of list has some inherent problems, such as not giving newbie the knowledge of the stats of a hidden item or lowbie quest item, existence of which Immortals would uncomfortable to share with unknowing playerbase.

To adress this problem that arises from spoonfeeding info on items you don't know how to get, I've come up with following idea: Let's give lowbies a new 100% skill at level 1, a sort of lowbie lore that they could use to reliably identify low level items. This would make exploration at pre-lore levels meaningful as people would be able to know if their findings are worth something.

This way, people would have a sensible way of ID:ing all that lowbie junk, which in turn would make the use of the Inn identifier more useful(thus increasing it's usage) when you know that you aren't paying him for identifying some totally worthless low level junk, but rather some higher level item that the lowbie identify couldn't identify.

But some mob within the academy that can identify items of lower or equal level than his own. Perhaps make it a level 15 mob.

If the item is of the right level range, he'd ID it for you like lore.

If too high, he'd say something: 'This item is beyond my knowledge'

As he's in the academy, you'd have limited use of him.

"What is mind, don't matter. What is matter, nevermind!" - Homer J. Simpson.

nt

--Nightshade

Perhaps lower the level of lore (and identify) to 1, and make it somewhat level dependent on it's ability to identify stuff up to a certain point? I don't know, just throwing out an idea.