Are you playing with subwindows? It'll glow in the subwindow, but not in the inventory menu. A bit of a pain really.

Throwing Mastery
 

Not sure where to post this question. One section of the manual describes "trap" skills in Sil. Careful Shot and Mind Over Body I get. But why say "Throwing Mastery offers an inferior ranged option"? Seems useful enough, but maybe the problem is it drives up the cost of other Melee skills which would be even more useful? Or is it that thrown weapons' range is too limited?

Throwing Mastery was actually the "worst" skill in Sil 1.3.0, according to http://angband.oook.cz/forum/showthread.php?t=8157. Why is it so bad compared to Archery?

Firstly, Archery rolls against one-half your opponent's Evasion, throwing weapons rolls Melee against full Evasion. Archers hit more and score more criticals, so in the late game arrows do much more damage.

Secondly, daggers and throwing axes are fairly miserable damage wise, and the criticals they do get are worse than bows.

Thirdly, spears have miserable range: you need to reach 7 strength to pass the range of a shortbow.

Fourthly, Archery has an entire skill tree of goodies powering up bows further.

Fifthly, bow and arrow enchantments compound - while this has been dialled back in Sil-Q, in original Sil you could be firing Flaming Arrows which had an enchantment of Piercing from a Bow of Nargothrond. Archery was somewhat overpowered.

Sixthly, while a stack of vanilla spears or throwing axes might be fine at 50', by late game they look surprisingly sad. It's relatively rare to accumulate a stack of good throwing weapons which have some kind of slay on them, you're much more likely to have multiple bows with different slays in Sil (or arrows in Sil-Q).

There are probably a bunch more reasons why throwing weapons are terrible including, as you mention, driving up the cost of other Melee skills - but much would require to be done to make throwing into a comparably viable ranged option. Throwing being a relatively niche single combat action little mentioned in Tolkien didn't help its case either, nor did the relatively clumsy interface compared to archery, so I opted to drop the skill entirely.

Thanks for the response!

Blunt and Sharp
 

1.4.2 Manual says "blunt weapons are useful against armour" and "Song of Whetting • Grants sharpness" but neither of these things have any details. Is sharpness the same 2% per Song pt as in Sil?

If blunt weapons are still listed as useful against armour, that's a bug in the manual. Previously quarter of the damage blunt weapons dealt ignored armour, but this was revised in 1.4.2 as it was felt to be inelegant.

Sharpness reduces armour by 50%; this is the case with all sharp weapons in Sil. Song of Sharpness was the anomaly here. Song of Whetting grants actual sharpness.

Standfast doesn't show up with staff of self knowledge

Very subjective, but I feel the terms "mindless" and "unintelligent" are too similar. I have it figured out now, but it took me quite a while.

Thanks, will fix.

I believe hand axes are not flagged as throwing items. The combat rolls indicate that they have a thrown melee score of 4 when it should be 9, and 1 damage side when it should be 2. This penalty does not occur when wielded normally.