Do you think that Elemental would benefit from randomly created items and weapons? For example, like how Diablo has prefixes and suffixes for their items and weapons? For those that don't know what I'm talking about.
Prefix Longsword Suffix ----> Holy Longsword of Divinity
For example's sake, I'll just post the links to the Diablo wiki.
The prefix list
The suffix list
The better your city, the better the items that shopkeeper can have. For example, a level 1 city only has very basic items, while a level 4 city has a chance for some really great items. Also, the higher the quest/dungeon level, the more of a chance for a better item.
For example's sake, I'll use Blizzard's item colors (I'm not saying use this scheme for Elemental, It's just for reference)
Gray Item - bad quality
Green Item - Average quality
Blue Item - Rare item, pretty powerful
Purple Item - Very rare, very powerful
Orange Item - Extremely rare, extremely powerful
With these types of methods, there could be a lot of different types of weapons, armor, and other items in the game, since it generates it's own. For purple and orange levels (again, just for example's sake), they could be handcrafted by Stardock, while some of the purples, blues, greens, and grays are generated by the game itself when needed.
Of course, Elemental could have it's own system for this, and it's own color scheme. For example, below is using a "hot" color scheme. White being average, yellow being hotter, orange being even more hot, and finally blazing hot red to represent the items power level and uniqueness.
White Item - Common, item normal power (70% rarity)
Yellow Item - Rare Item, pretty powerful (15% rarity)
Orange Item - Very rare item, very powerful (10% rarity)
Red Item - Extremely rare item, extremely powerful (5% rarity)