The manual is shock full of inconsistencies. I originally followed the manual to create the portraits and some people reported black portraits. It turned out the game allowed you to make more types of characters than the manual allowed for, so I added those portraits.
Everything you see in-game that isn’t documented as a change in Deathlord Relorded is in the original game. Whenever you see an inconsistency with the original manual, it’s the manual that is wrong :).
To steal a boat you need to attack it. It is very tough until you get mass damage spells, and in any case don’t bother leaving the original island before level 20. You’d be in a world of hurt!
Energy walls can be passed with the right item. I suggest you look at gamefaqs, there are a few walkthroughs that are excellent, especially the latest one by fraterrius. Look at them also to understand why certain tiles behave the way they do, like portcullises. some of them are static and won’t ever open. Why, you ask? Because Deathlord. Really. That game is just sadistic.
You’re probably the only person to ever play a peasant. And I’m wondering how effective the peasant is with the Relorded rules. He might ultimately be extremely powerful! Speaking of smashing, add STR and SIZ and that’s your % of success. So statistically if your crazy strong peasant can’t smash a door after 10 tries, I won’t open.
And as for the emperor question, you need to use the disk swapping trick to reset the palace/town.
Yes, Dosoi slows poison, but doesn’t cure it, it’s an omission that slipped through the cracks. I’ll update it on the next bugfix release. I could also allow the peasant to wear the harame-do. You can do this right now by modifying the InventoryList.csv file and setting the peasant column to 1 for the harame-do line. But there is other cloak armor that you’ll find later that gives the same level of armor for the peasant if you’re willing to play on.