Hints and sidequests

The hint is the heart of the mod. It is not a translation: it is the same task said in easier Korean, plus one sentence about the word that is blocking you. And it does not let you continue until you have spent thirty seconds with that word.

H works on the highlighted quest in the log — press V until the quest you want help with is the gold one, then ask.

What H gives you

1. The same goal, at level 1. A late trail might say 돌을 세 개 캐야 해요. — pressing H gives 돌을 캐요. 세 개요. The counters stay, the conditions stay spoken, the grammar drops to the politest form. Hints never leave level 1.
2. The blocking word explained, in Korean. 돌 = 땅에서 나와요. 단단해요. — “comes out of the ground, is hard”. Written with tier-1 vocabulary on purpose, and validated as Hangul-only.
3. A sidequest. Two questions about that word:
   • Korean word + icon → pick the meaning in your language,
   • the meaning + icon → pick the Korean word.

The sidequest

• The original step is frozen while the sidequest runs. You cannot accidentally finish a quest you did not understand.
• A wrong answer does not punish you. It shows the word card, reduces the choices to two and lets you try again.
• Practice — sidequests and ambient word cards — is exposure, not an exam: it never counts against a word’s schedule, so guessing costs nothing.
• Both questions answered and the original step returns with a short Korean confirmation and a 사이드 퀘스트 완료! card.

When you already know the word

The sidequest is skipped and you just get the hint, if the word is:

• mastered in the mod, or
• marked known in Lute (status 99).

You asked for a hint, not a lesson — the mod respects that.

Closing a hint

A hint is a window, and windows stay until you close them. The first press of H shows the hint; once it is open, the next press of H only closes it. That press is not a hint request and changes nothing about the step. If several windows are waiting, each press closes one and a “+N” badge counts the rest.

One hint per step

hintUsed is stored per step. Pressing H again re-shows the hint instead of starting a second sidequest, and it survives a restart. Abandoning a trail clears it, because the trail starts over.

The no-spoiler rule

Quizzes and sidequests never show the item icon before you answer. They draw a neutral ? tile, and the icon only appears on the result card. The ambient word card — the one that appears when you look at something — does show icons, because that card is teaching, not testing.

This matters more than it sounds: with the icon visible, 돌 in a multiple-choice list is a picture puzzle, not a reading exercise.

Translations in quests

By default the quest text is Korean only: tracker, step cards, sidequest, finale. The journal’s Settings tab has Translations in quests, which adds one line under each Korean one in the interface language (English, German, Spanish or French). Turn it on for the first week, then off; the point is to stop needing it.

The danger of overuse: if you leave the translation line on, your eyes will read it first. The mod cannot stop you, but the hint key is the intended crutch, and it is a slower one.

Reading the hint like a teacher

• Try the quest sentence for ten seconds before pressing H. Even a wrong guess primes the word.
• If the hint’s explanation itself contains a word you do not know, look it up in the journal’s dictionary — descriptions are written with early-tree vocabulary, so this should be rare.
• After the sidequest, say the word out loud once. The mod cannot hear you; your brain can.

Next: the journal is where all of this is recorded.