> > My question is where did knivetsil find al the special equiptment before leaving Perinn and should I change my group to do better?
>
> What special equipment are you talking about? Can you refer to a specific post?

These two posts mention this:

http://www.rinkworks.com/rinkforum/view.cgi?post=82161
http://www.rinkworks.com/rinkforum/view.cgi?post=72798

My guess is knivetsil simply sent other characters to explore the deepest levels, gain items, and bring them back to Perinn for the new characters. This is confirmed by the fact that the hall of fame indicates that he won the game with a one-character party the day after making the later of those two posts; that character was probably the one recovering those items, and once his job was done, he went on to win the game.

> Without knowing more about what you mean, I can try to answer your question anyway. By the looks of your party, you've ventured at least as far as level 3 while remaining based out of Perinn. While you can occasionally find special items in pools and dropped by monsters after battle, you're not going to find much of "extra-specialness" to equip on levels 1-3. If you've been to the "Pool Hall" on level 4, that's probably the best place to find special stuff prior to checking in at Kaliti (the town on level 4).
>
> You have to get down much deeper in the game (level 8 or so) before you start to see class-specific items (i.e. armor that only a knight can wear, or footgear that only a rogue can equip), and you won't begin to see that stuff on a semi-regular basis until you're on level 10, the deepest level of the game.

What Grishny said. The earliest I've ever seen an item of extra-specialness was on Level 5, where I found one of the rogue items in a pool with my first party. After that came Level 7, where my second party found one of the wizard items in a pool. Those are the only times I've seen these above Level 8, so they're extremely rare above Level 8. Even on Levels 8 and 9, they're only occasional.

However, as Grish points out, there *are* special but not extra-special items in the early levels that occur occasionally.

By the way, that pool hall is also a good source of experience. When I was trying to reach the gatekeeper in my current game, I found that an expedition to try to reach the gatekeeper gained as much experience as a pool expedition, so I alternated between the two until I defeated him. Then I retrained my one character as a sorcerer and used the pool hall to quickly level him up.

Lucky "Now exploring level 5" Wizard