Luck is backwards?

[Derakon]

I don't know what exactly luck does, but I always assumed it has some impact on the quality of items you find. But now I'm wondering if that impact is backwards...

I beat the game recently with a Dunadan Paladin wearing a decent amount of luck gear. Aside from one really nice shield (three immunities + reflection), he had real difficulty finding decent gear; in fact, at the end of the game he was still wearing boots of Dwarvish Endurance. Now I'm running through again with a Zombie Rohan Knight (thus, unlucky), and as of about two-thirds of the way through Mordor, I've found:

* A Silver Rod of the Istari (the only Istari rod the paladin found was wooden...)
* The Metal Shod Boots of Thror
* Four satisfy-hunger junkarts (the paladin never found any of these, though he did get a healing junkart after a while)
* (EDIT: just obtained: Fingolfin and the Arkenstone of Thrain, both of which were found very late by the paladin)
* The Ring of Flare
* And, most damning, Power Dragon Scale Mail.

I grant that this isn't really much of a sample size, but it seems kinda weird to me that my unlucky character has been luckier than my lucky character.

[Yottle]

Luck definitely affects generation of excellent equipment. I notice this most when playing alchemists, where I am paying attention to the ego items in the stores. A hobbit definitely is more likely to find ego weapons in the regular armor and weapon stores.

I don't think that luck has an effect on what kind of ego items you get- a broad sword of slay orc is a "great" item, as is a vampiric broad sword of westernesse.

By the time you get through Angband that shouldn't make much difference any more.