One of the most frustrating parts of learning this game is item knowledge. It's the one thing that keeps me as a noob from being competitive in PK situation. There are other mitigating factors that may cause me to lose regardless, but being on an even playing field would go a long way in teaching myself what other mistakes I am making.

I was going to suggest that all limited items under level 40 or 50 should be included in the item list. This way the ultra elite stuff is still a discovery, but us new players don't have to commit 500 hrs to establishing a personal database and exploring every area with a fine toothed comb just to be somewhat relevant gear wise. I do appreciate getting outfitted by vets, it's great and I thank all of you that do so, but that's handing me a fish. I don't just want to eat, I want to be able to feed myself.

The fact that only the area is given is still incentive to explore the area, it's something I've done with the current item DB many times, to my benefit.

This very simple change will do wonders to raise the baseline on new players without hurting anything. I have never understood the 'chamber of secrets' system when it only benefits veteran players. It puts incentive toward OOC channels of gaining the information. Besides that, there are various outdated/incomplete/semi current lists available already, they just are outdated/incomplete/semi current. Why the secrecy when the players that it excludes are the exact players that we want to stick around? If this had been a thing much earlier I might have stuck it out one of those times all that long ago and would be a vet instead of a really enthusiastic newb. That all said, I would exclude preps from the list. Let THAT stuff be the super secret sauce. At least with regards to preps the stuff you can find in the cities is comparable to the stuff that your opponent will be carrying (other than Ragers, of course).

Anyhow, I will likely revisit this topic when I write up a larger scope post with some of my observations and potential suggestions, but the TL;DR is that there doesn't seem to be a solid reason why all of this information is so well guarded. I realize that everyone knowing where all the decent limited stuff is makes it less available, but isn't that supposed to incentivize us towards taking it from some of the people that are carrying it? Or, that guardian sword is illusionary? Well now I get to know what the next best thing is, so I'm not left with checking the three or four spots that I know of that have presentable gear, now I get to go explore an area to find out what my next best option is.