Loresinging
Loresinging is a bardic ability allowing a singer to divine the properties of an item with the sound of his voice. Some items will simply tell you its properties while others have a specific story attached to them that can only be observed through a bard, often called a loresong itself due to the nature in which the story is revealed.
Different items have different amounts of difficulty to obtain the information from. In order to increase a loresong's strength and ability to divine a loresong from an item, various verses and rhyme schemes can be used to obtain the loresong. Specifically, two-line loresongs with no rhymes are less powerful than two-line verses with a rhyme scheme. And, a four-line verse with a rhyme scheme is even more powerful. Rhymes must be words that rhyme by spelling, such as the infamous hand/land rhyme. However, more and floor, though they rhyme when spoken aloud, they do not count as rhymes for the purpose of loresongs.
Additionally, if certain keywords are used (value, weight, purpose, skill [only for weapons/armor], spell, and ability) in a loresong, you can obtain specific bits of information from the item.
When loresinging to a magical or enhancive item, a Bard may determine whether or not the item will be destroyed when its last magical or enhancive charge has been expended.
When singing to a piece of armor with resistance to a damage type, a proper loresong will tell the level of resistance.
Mechanics
Order
The response message from successful attempts will reveal information in a specific order if you do not use a keyword.
- First verse
- The weight and value of the item
- Second verse
- The purpose of the item
- Third verse
- If the item is a weapon/armor type then it will reveal the skill required to use and enchant bonus of the item.
- If the item is a magic type then it will tell you magic information
- Fourth verse
- Consists of the special ability section. Enhancive details, spells charges, weapon flares, reimbeddable status and other odd information will be found here.
Keywords
- Using keywords such as value, weight, purpose, skill [only for weapons/armor], spell, and ability will allow you to skip to that verse directly.
- Once you skip to that verse, you may continue loresinging without using a keyword to continue to the next verse in order.
- For example: if you are loresinging to a weapon, you skipping to the third verse by using the keyword SKILL. Then if the next loresong you use contains no keywords, it will respond with the fourth verse (the ability line).
- You may jump to any verse including a lower level one
- For example: if you are second verse and you use the keyword VALUE in your next loresong then it will jump back to the first verse.
- Skipping to a higher level verse is more difficult than a lower level one, so if you are inexperienced then skipping to the ability verse often fails but skipping to the purpose verse works often.
- This means that getting the fourth verse by using the ability keyword often fails for inexperienced bards. A lower level bard would likely be more successful to skip to the third phrase using a keyword then continue with a normal loresong without keywords to get the last verse.
- It is important to note that magic is NOT a keyword. It does not allow you to skip to the third verse. It would be the same as using a loresong without a keyword
Failure
It is important to note that if you receive no RT and no reply from a loresinging attempt that means you received a minor failure.
Repeating the same loresong twice in a row will cause your loresinging session to stop.
Any further attempts to loresing to the item will result in a failure message whereby "you learn nothing new."
In order to start over, you must reset the status by either singing to a new item and going back or try to use a simple keyword like value.
To avoid failure, you can alternate between two different loresongs (without keywords) until you receive a response from the item.
Example Messaging
- Blank Rechargable (2nd verse):
- You sense a faint aura of magic around the pink dreamstone brooch. You also feel a faint drawing sensation from it, as though it may be able to hold more power. From the pitch of the vibration you determine that the purpose of the brooch is to cast a spell or perform some magical purpose.
- Rechargable item(2nd verse):
- You sense a faint aura of magic around the grey granite bracer. You also feel a faint drawing sensation from it, as though when its charge is depleted, it may be refilled. From the pitch of the vibration you determine that the purpose of the bracer is to cast a spell or perform some magical purpose.
- Orb gem (2nd verse):
- From the pitch of the vibration you determine that the purpose of the glimaerstone is as a gem of some kind. As you sing, the glimaerstone seems to resonate with your voice, and you feel it trying to draw power from you.
- Rechargable gem (2nd verse):
- From the pitch of the vibration you determine that the purpose of the emerald is as a gem of some kind. As you sing, the emerald seems to resonate with your voice, and you feel it trying to draw power from you. It pulses strongly with the rhythm of your words.
- Blank imbeddable:
- From the rapid vibrations of the pink dreamstone brooch, you determine it has no spell within it now, but could be imbedded with one, in the proper hands.
- Reimbeddable item:
- The magical strength of this item is strong. It could probably handle the imbedding of an entirely new spell, if handled with care.
- TD protection bonus:
- The harmonics generated tell you that the armor serves to protect from magical attacks.
- Enhancive item (4th verse):
- The bracer resonates with your voice, indicating that it enhances its owner in the following ways:
- It provides a bonus of 8 to Agility.
- This enhancement may not be used by adventurers who have not trained 36 times.
- It provides a bonus of 4 to Aura.
- This enhancement may not be used by adventurers who have not trained 20 times.
- It provides a bonus of 2 to Mana Recovery.
- This enhancement may not be used by adventurers who have not trained 10 times.
- The bracer looks to have a lot of charges remaining.
- You sense that the aquamarine bracer will crumble into dust after its last enhancive charge has been expended.