I gotta put a few things straight about some of the recent suggestions.

There was a comment along the lines of "only the best eq is made from
diamond". Well, ask your local merchant to ID some materials for you now that
they have that power. If you have a full set of +int/+spr eq made entirely of
diamond, you aren't doing yourself a lot of favors. Diamond is made entirely
of carbon. Diamond _burns_. You'd be better off with a more all-around
resistant material like quartz in the backrow, where nonphys damage is more
common. Also, in the case of the really newbie eq (the +1 kinda stuff), under
the assumption that you make it yourself, and therefore do not take permanent
damage, ease of repair is also a factor. It's not really likely that a level
40 player is going to face a monster so strong that it will tear a steel
shield in half in two hits.

There was also a comment about random stats. I do know that there are some
items out there with stats randomly assigned (along the lines of "+7 wis +1d3
spr" items). These are rare, but they do exist, and trying to generalize their
stats on [sales] can be a pain, I admit. However, other items do not give
random stats. Mage IDs give random stats. You know that the ID spell has a
mastery? Yeah, it does something. I _love_ laughing at mortals who ask their
mage to ID stuff and then take the results as gospel. It's hillarious. Oh, and
it was recently brought to my attention that sometimes, if you wear the same
eq for a long time, and you made it yourself, your stats go up. That's not
random, but again, I can see how it might be tricky to take that into account.

So I guess the moral is "talk to a merchant, they're there for a reason."

Shinarae Lluminus

Oh, and I think a lot of players would be pissed off if we made wear and tear
affect named eqs. I'd rather hope that doesn't happen myself.