i think that new player will simply put the ring on, and see.

also, there are mushrooms in UT, even magic mushrooms sometimes. and even rare spawn of chameleon, so the player will learn about various magic effects quite quickly.
i blocked them due to balancing, not because i wanted monsters to be smarter. those rings are not rare spawn — i mean, i can find them even on UT. not each time, but… it
seemed to me that the game get to unfair territory without that block.
but yeah, it's hard to tell if it really is, or if it's just a series of bad runs. maybe make it int-dependent? the finder AI currently cannot include randomness, but any stable checks are ok. i'd like to enable picking those rings up too, the block looks like "gum solution", yes.
p.s.: what we REALLY need to telegraph better is the effect of worm ring. the description gives a hint, but most descriptions are just a fluff text, so the player will quickly learn to ignore them. maybe some kind of "inspect" command, which will allow intelligent player to learn about artifact properties? it's not like "identify", the artifact is fully usable without it; just informational. or wizards (or librarians?) may tell you about artifacts if you'll show them items. but i don't know yet how to make it work nice, without stupid raw stats and flags dumping. this needs some flavor text too, i guess.