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[Dorf and Dumb]

There are a bazillion threads on this site about the mysteries of what a cloak or high boots covers, whether bronze is good for a hammer or for a spear, whether greaves or leggings protect better, etc.  It's ridiculous.  You shouldn't have to read the spoilers to get the feel for what these things are.  You really really REALLY should have something better than the "This is a steel greaves" message, so that players can tell when they're making something useful and when they're wasting their metal on adamantine hammers.

[Witty]

Well, I'm fairly certain it's no big mystery generally. You can just check the raws to see which material is better for what, or what armor covers what

I do agree though. But maybe something a bit more abstract than raw numbers, like "it's very light", or "it's somewhat dull".

[Dorf and Dumb]

Well, the weight and cost are raw numbers.  I don't think it's jarring to show us this stuff directly, especially since as you say it's not really a _secret_, it's just out of the normal path of game play.

[Daonitre]

I find the issue likely has more to do with the incredible amount of information overload a description like this would have. besides weight and sharpness... you also have variable melting points, sizes(including overall size, how many hands, slashing size, blunt impact size, piercing size... etc.), foreign or domestic (better known as "can i make it myself" such as High Boots which may or may not be available to your specific dwarf civ assuming fortress mode), .. ... ... THEN you include the material and congratulations you're looking at multiple pages of information for each singular item.
IMO it's best to leave these things up to the experience of the player / their familiarity with the wiki. Once you know that bone is useless (minus continual hunting bolts but try not to masterwork them), wood is for training (which means now useless as sparring only "taps"), then generally copper-> bronze/iron -> steel -> spoiler with exception to things which rely on weight... you always know it. Think of it as learning to count: I assume you already know that 4 is less than 5 and greater than 3... every time you see a 4 during your average day how often does it tell you what you already know? Instead of 1, 2, 3; think bone, wood, copper.

The same concept applies to armor coverage - it'd be nice to see a quick list on a unit as to which parts are covered by what material, but having all the parts listed on every material is far to much for reason. Again, once you know what things cover (and it's almost completely common sense) you'll always know.

I get the feeling this suggestion is more based off the high count of people asking for advise - when all they would have needed to do was check the wiki; Any experienced Dwarf will tell you to keep that wiki up in the background while you play. You never know what's going to come into your map next, and sometimes it helps to know how to weaponize it. Now I'm not saying anything about adding some more flavor text to the descriptions, that's purely up to player preference.

[Veylon]

IMO it's best to leave these things up to the experience of the player / their familiarity with the wiki. Once you know that bone is useless (minus continual hunting bolts but try not to masterwork them), wood is for training (which means now useless as sparring only "taps"), then generally copper-> bronze/iron -> steel -> spoiler with exception to things which rely on weight... you always know it. Think of it as learning to count: I assume you already know that 4 is less than 5 and greater than 3... every time you see a 4 during your average day how often does it tell you what you already know? Instead of 1, 2, 3; think bone, wood, copper.

What if you're playing a mod? Or you have something made of one of those goofy materials that have been added? And animal/plant-based materials can have different properties.

We have a screen for dwarves so that "Very Unhappy" can be unpacked into the why of that feeling. There could be a button when looking at "Steel Greaves" - or any other item - to see the low-down of it's materials. Or, heck, there could be a screen with a list of all the materials and you can scroll through it and see their properties.

I'd personally like to see the game have a "Dwarfopedia" similar to the Civ Games' Civopedia that's generated from the raws, but that may be a bit much.

[RenoFox]

This might in fact be a perfect use for the alchemist workshop. When the player finds a new kind of material, they could order the alchemist to analyze it. That way we would get some information about what to do with randomly generated and modded metals, and whether they'd be good for weapons and armor or just decoration.

[Ngosp Umbabok]

I think that there could be more detailed descriptions of weapons/armor without giving too much away or holding the players hand. In some cases this could just confirm what a player might suspect based on the items name. Under the description of the item itself there could be a brief piece of text describing distinguishing characteristics about the item that might as well be general knowledge.

Examples:

Scimitar - Scimitars are poor at stabbing but leave deep cuts.

Buckler - Bucklers provide less cover then typical sheilds although there size allows for easier mobility and parrying

Breastplace - Breastplates are effective at protecting the torso but do not cover the forearms

Little sentances like that would help the player decide what items to equip in adventure mode without having look at the raws or DF wiki

[Chevaleresse]

This is a high boot.

A bulky piece of footwear that protects the legs at the cost of weight.


Just do it like creature descriptions.

[dwarf_reform]

I would love in-game descriptions like this for everything Unless you've gained a lot of DF-XP and have a good memory, or break from gameplay to read a spoilerific wiki entry on every new thing you encounter, its pretty hard to remember what you can do with certain stones, ores, and plants..

Stuff like this would keep new players from embarking with lots of dimple cups for brewing sweet dimple cup brew, or taking a boat-load of nickel along for making weapons and armor out of :>

"This is hematite ore. Hematite, limonite, and magnetite can each be used to create iron." would be highly enlightening versus "This is hematite ore."

[Dorf and Dumb]

In response to Daonitre I should say that multiple pages of information for each singular item would be really, really, really welcome.  Even a single page of information would be welcome.  (Well, technically, we _have_ a single page of information, it reads "this is a steel greaves.")

[Dirst]

I think that there could be more detailed descriptions of weapons/armor without giving too much away or holding the players hand. In some cases this could just confirm what a player might suspect based on the items name. Under the description of the item itself there could be a brief piece of text describing distinguishing characteristics about the item that might as well be general knowledge.

Examples:

Scimitar - Scimitars are poor at stabbing but leave deep cuts.

Buckler - Bucklers provide less cover then typical sheilds although there size allows for easier mobility and parrying

Breastplace - Breastplates are effective at protecting the torso but do not cover the forearms

Little sentances like that would help the player decide what items to equip in adventure mode without having look at the raws or DF wiki

This could be handled fairly simply by adding a description tag to equipment raws.

Weight is already reported, and additional stats about the item would be helpful especially if it can be compared to something else.  The player might not know what the yield or contact area numbers mean, but comparing them to other items would build an intuition.  Translating coverage areas into English may be a bit of a challenge, but again referencing reasonably obvious exemplars would help.

[Daonitre]

I think that there could be more detailed descriptions of weapons/armor without giving too much away or holding the players hand. In some cases this could just confirm what a player might suspect based on the items name. Under the description of the item itself there could be a brief piece of text describing distinguishing characteristics about the item that might as well be general knowledge.

Examples:

Scimitar - Scimitars are poor at stabbing but leave deep cuts.

Buckler - Bucklers provide less cover then typical sheilds although there size allows for easier mobility and parrying

Breastplace - Breastplates are effective at protecting the torso but do not cover the forearms

Little sentances like that would help the player decide what items to equip in adventure mode without having look at the raws or DF wiki

This could be handled fairly simply by adding a description tag to equipment raws.

Weight is already reported, and additional stats about the item would be helpful especially if it can be compared to something else.  The player might not know what the yield or contact area numbers mean, but comparing them to other items would build an intuition.  Translating coverage areas into English may be a bit of a challenge, but again referencing reasonably obvious exemplars would help.

The small descriptions I wouldn't be averse to... a desc tag actually sounds like a good idea. And alchemist revealing information? love it (finally a use for alchemy, even if a temporary use - maybe even just give a temporary bonus to value of that material if previously unknown to the civilization (think animal taming but for rocks)). Dirst said exactly what my point was. In general, you can expect that any simple description page like this would either be limited to being useful 'only in an unmodded game' or would have so much raw information the average player would still be clueless.
Dwarfopedia as mentioned I'd be fine with -- but far later. A manual of that size coded into the game (even if it pulls from raws) would take so long to place and edit that it would delay other more needed changes. Also, it's called a Wiki.
"Those new crazy metals" I think someone mentioned...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

think of them as basically on par with blue cheese, but heavier. It's not a hard concept, and if you really wanted to know you could have hit the wiki just as fast

When it comes to mods I feel it is the mod crafters option when setting the learning curve of the changes. If they want you to learn faster, they should provide the information... not expect a game that's still in beta to spoonfeed the changes in a comparative bases to native items/materials. Otherwise: You're in a strange wild; Your goal is to survive as long as you can; your test starts now (welcome to the main reason most of us keep coming back to DF). As far as I've seen, this has been how they responded as well.

Oh, and i need to fix my original post - Dwarf Therapist now reports what parts of the body are covered and by what... I'm not sure when that was added but I didn't see it until last week. It'd be nice if the base game did as well - but it's now another farthought to go with the dwarfpedia.

[Kumil]

There is already an in-game manual to which informations could be added, on weapons, ores... The fact that some people are too lazy to read it shall be their problem.

[Putnam]

It is extremely difficult to actually add to the in-game guides.

[BlueAnchorite]

This might in fact be a perfect use for the alchemist workshop. When the player finds a new kind of material, they could order the alchemist to analyze it. That way we would get some information about what to do with randomly generated and modded metals, and whether they'd be good for weapons and armor or just decoration.

+1 for this idea