As is, lore gives you the (often very incorrect) stats of an item on your person and the area it came from. That's all well and good.
What if lore (as a secondary effect or maybe as a separate skill) told you which area an item was found in but did not require you to have the item? Locate that returns an area instead of a mob/room.
How does this help vets? Very little excepting for new equipment in old areas.
How does this help newbs? Players can find lists of items but not where to find to find them. Locate tells you who holds it (or a room). This would make that information useful to new players.
I have no idea how simple or complicated this would be from a code perspective. If it's complicated, it's probably not worth the effort. But there are already similar functions so I'm guessing it wouldn't be hard.
My only other thought is that it should return the area where the item is natively found (vs locate which shows the present location).
Adding features that help newbies is always good on my book. As you stated, lore is often useless with vets and in many cases I hear it isn't even practiced. Great idea.
Potential names: rumor, discern, unearth, origin. Add it to the Adventurer perk and it equates to a locate object in the same way that lore is a 100% accurate identify with the perk.
So lore necklace would return the item name and area for all items matching 'necklace' ?
Sounds fine. Locate object does the same thing but for current location of available objects. Lore could point to the original location of all objects. I'd go even further and give either the mob or room name as well as area.
xxx is found on yy mob in zz area.
xxx is found on a small clearing in zz area.
and then completely remove the bad identification feature.
Still makes lore fairly worthless to vets, but not nearly as horrible now.
newlore sword
You furrow your brow, reaching into the void for information.
a Crusader's Sword can be found in Everwild
a claymore can be found in Ofcol
holy Avenger can be found in Ofcol
a Golden Sword can be found in Ofcol
a long sword can be found in High Tower
a guardian steel sword can be found in The Caves of Kamir
a Frostbrand Sword can be found in Standing Fortress
an emerald sword can be found in Dragon Tower
a kopesh sword can be found in Mahn-Tor
a two-handed sword can be found in Mahn-Tor
'Durindel' the Sword of Flame can be found in Citadel of Kaer Banor
a rusty curved scimitar can be found in Chapel
the pitch-black flaming longsword can be found in Chapel
the Writhing Sword can be found in Tainted Valley
a Bastard sword can be found in Tainted Valley
a Blessed Broadsword can be found in Tainted Valley
a rusty chipped sword can be found in Tainted Valley
a gnome sword can be found in Tarandue
a guardian sword can be found in The Great Elf Valley
a long sword can be found in Sands of Sorrow
a small sword can be found in Sands of Sorrow
More than 20 objects were found in the void - you feel you should narrow your request.
How about making it exclude created springs, gold, corpses? Things that can be used as tracking tools. (This is also why I'm against locate object being purchasable too)
If the object doesn't have a reset value, it is excluded.
So unless the spring, corpse, or gold is reset in a location somewhere, it will not show up.
[Exits: south]
A delicious magic mushroom is here.
( 3) A delicious magic apple is here.
( 2) A delicious magic pig roast is here.
A delicious magic steak is here.
A magical spring flows from the ground here.
newlore 'food magic'
You furrow your brow, reaching into the void for information.
Nothing like that in heaven or earth.