Good newbie loot?

[Elendae]

I never found the AC drop to be too restricting. Best way is to make sure everyone knows how to /split coin. I did alot of merchant diving with my monk starting off. Bone chips from NPC vendors are almost pure profit. The odd HQ pelt too only costs about 2 gold from merchants and resold for 10. It's a little shady, but I guess one man's garbage is another man's treasure.

Edit: damn Artea beat me to it.

[girth]

If you're soloing, every bit of AC matters for monks, since monks still seem to take a little too many hits than what I remember.