I think sharing an experience I had with starting anew would be in order here.
When I started playing HCL (which didn't last long due to D2 spazzing out on me shortly after,) I started frequenting a popular HCL-channel that was based out of this website, OP gat-east. I never really asked for handouts or anything, but one day someone on the channel asked if anyone was starting a new character. I decided that since I was getting pretty much nowhere with my current character I would start a new one with them. We started playing through act 1, and they asked me if I could help them mule some stuff over to their character to get him started. In the process of doing this, they let me have items they ran across while going through mules.
The moral of this story is: Don't beg for items, no matter how nice or formal you are about doing it. The best course of action is almost always to just play the game, maybe try to find some people on this site who play as well. If you're nice and trusting to the people, you will almost assuredly not only gain some long-term friends but also a fair amount of items both from games you play with them and from their own generosity. People's figurative "wallets" become much more open to friends and companions than they do towards someone making an item request topic.
When I started playing HCL (which didn't last long due to D2 spazzing out on me shortly after,) I started frequenting a popular HCL-channel that was based out of this website, OP gat-east. I never really asked for handouts or anything, but one day someone on the channel asked if anyone was starting a new character. I decided that since I was getting pretty much nowhere with my current character I would start a new one with them. We started playing through act 1, and they asked me if I could help them mule some stuff over to their character to get him started. In the process of doing this, they let me have items they ran across while going through mules.
The moral of this story is: Don't beg for items, no matter how nice or formal you are about doing it. The best course of action is almost always to just play the game, maybe try to find some people on this site who play as well. If you're nice and trusting to the people, you will almost assuredly not only gain some long-term friends but also a fair amount of items both from games you play with them and from their own generosity. People's figurative "wallets" become much more open to friends and companions than they do towards someone making an item request topic.