I released a major patch recently so I'm taking a small break. Replying won't slow me down a bit.
As for the hint system, I had one in the game few versions back, but I removed it when I was overhauling timed events. You could ask NPCs about news and they would tell you if they saw some traveling trader, random monsters or some timed quests.
I will be introducing this system back in the future, but I will keep most of the "hidden" events a secret. To a degree. As the lore and dialogue gets properly added into the game, talking with other people or reading books will give you enough hints to find out about them, but they won't spell it out loud. For example, Billy will say how he hates his blunderbuss off handedly and that he would like to see what Olaf uses as a weapon one day. Good enough hint for people to know what to do next.
This is going to get added however in far future, since I want to finish other things before focusing on dialogue.