[HoneyBadger]

Two really nice low level items to forge are Pendant of Luck and Amulet of Antimagic. They're both Astral 1. You can forge them as soon as you have the construction and the gems, and they're incredibly useful.

Ring of the Warrior is superb if you've got blood-it's equal to the amulet and pendant in general usefulness throughout the game. Ring of Warning is probably the 4th corner of decent low-level misc. magic items. The 10 guards are nice, but the patrol bonus helps you tax your citizens into the ground for extra gold.

Snake-ring is great to put on thugs that can't use weapons, or have life-drain since it gives 100% poison resistance and poison touch.

Black Bow of Botulf is a good weapon, and it's low level.

Eye of aiming is great in combination with a magical bow, when you're thugging, just understand that it curses your thug, so make sure he's using his bow in the back of your army.

Axe of sharpness is a good choice if you're going to have your thugs dual-wield, since the damage is high and they're short weapons. 2 of them plus a ring of the warrior on an assassin can really increase your kill-factor. Serpent Kryss is better though, if you have nature magic, unless you're attacking someone with good armor or poison resistance.

The enchanted pike isn't a bad weapon either, because of the high length and the fact that it's magical. It's great if you're going up against etherial forces or have to guard against horrors. Thorn staff is good here too.

Copper Plate is decent low level armor, as is Fire Plate, depending on what you want to resist.

Horror helmet is probably the best low level hat around, but I find Horned helmet useful at times too.

Avoid boots, until you can forge atleast Greater magical items. They're basically a waste, except for Birch Boots-absolutely great-and Boots of the Behemoth, and they're only sometimes useful for some nations-EA Atlantis is the top one.