> At one point in Kaliti, I noticed that there was a Sorcerer's Hood for sale in the Shop. I couldn't afford it at the time, but I was wondering if there's anything I can do to encourage such items to come up for sale in the future. Half a million gold is a mere pittance in exchange for such a rare and valuable item.

Each shop item has a 1 in 500 chance of falling across the full range of items instead of just the range normally carried by the shop. Of course, even if this 1 in 500 chance succeeds, the item picked still might happen to fall in the usual range, so you will probably only get a special for every 1000 shop items. With 35 items in a shop with freshly rotated inventory, you'll probably get a special item every 28 shop inventories or so. It's possible, but rare, to get more than one at once.

(The different shops have different normal ranges, but they average out to covering about the weaker half of the items in the game.)