I ran out of patience for the junk I was getting for loot without the ring of fate.
So I decided to drop back to Speed +11 and dust off the =Fate.
I ran into the best room ever, full of traps to disarm, and with some runaway Lesser Wall Monsters (worth ~150xp each, breed explosively, move slowly, and otherwise do nothing at all). I made level 38 off of that room.
and the loot was back to normal. I ended up dropping 3 of my 6 books (and getting a new copy of one book 3). This inventory was worth over 100 grand:
