Some initial Idea (Weapon)...

[Mystery]

You can use any graphics program to sprite, even Photoshop. It's just that PaintMS has no fancy features, like default blur or anything, which makes it the easiest spriting program to work with.

And yet, at the same time, the lack of fancy features also makes it one of the hardest, as well.

I recommend MSpaint if you're learning so you can learn the basics without using any sort of fancy features as a crutch.  Once you're adept at it, it's probably best to get something else to speed up the sprite-making process.

GraphicsGale is excellent once you've picked up the ropes of spriting, for example. However, I almost always come back to using MS/GM Paint because of its simplicity. As awesome as GG is, I only use it for my serious spriting. That's just how I work.

EDIT: On-topic, that's definitely not a bad idea there, Cero. Although the incredible 2x rarity of a DX present would annoy the heck out of some people, and I don't like how pretty much every good item is in this thing, although that was intended. Perhaps the SD could be replaced with a normal dagger, or a dagger could be added as a possible drop..other than those things, great work there, Cero, as always.