Eddie notes that really, one needs to decide what is noticeable about a weapon:

1. from a distance
2. when you pick it up
3. when you wield it
4. when you hit with it
5. over time

and proceed from there. Also, the role of ID needs to be decided: is the game to be ID-by-use? Is it mandatory to have ID in quantity to win?

Problem: Current ID is annoying and tedious.

"Combat gear" means armour and weapons.

There are two kinds of knowledge which apply globally to all items of a given kind:

• Kind lore: this means you recognise the kind of item something is; e.g. kind of ego-item, kind of wand. At birth, a character has kind lore of randomly chosen items.
• Charge lore: this means you know how many charges a rechargeable has without needing to Identify it.

There are two kinds of knowledge which apply only to individual items:

• Bonuses: this means you know the (hit, dam, ac) bonuses of un-Identified gear.
• Identification: this means you know everything about the item.

Pseudo-ID

There are three (four) tiers of items:

• average
• masterwork -- current "good", they are simply well-made items
• magic -- current "everything else"
• (special)

Average items and items the player has lore of are automatically Identified. Other items are displayed with their status in brackets appended (e.g. "(magic)"), until Identified. Cursed items are unnoticeable until they are worn or Identified -- curses are powerful magics, more than capable of hiding themselves.

If you use a piece of masterwork combat gear for a while, it is Identified. If you use magic combat gear, then you learn its bonuses, but Identify is still required to figure out what artifact/ego it is.

If you have an artifact currently known as "magic", then after n turns (or n/2 turns if it is being worn), its status changes to "special".

When using ID

If you identify an ego-item, there is a small chance you will gain kind lore of it. Similarly, every time you ID a rechargeable, there is a chance (proportional to magic devices skill) that you will gain charge lore of it.

When using wands and staffs

If you use un-identified wands and staffs, then the game tracks the number times the item has been used by appending "(used x times)" to the description in lieu of the actual number of charges. Similarly, "(empty)" should be used when the item is known-empty.