Agree about being able to see what my character already has without leaving the shop.  Maybe instead of a new window, include them in the "your inventory" with an "E" or something to show they are equipped.  I'd like to be able to sell what my guy is using now when I buy him a better toy.

I'd also like an option to have the shop inventory not include really out-of-date items.  How often are we going to buy patchwork armor after we've researched chain and 2 kinds of plate?  Reduce the clutter.

Perhaps when you have a piece of equipment selected, it shows the positive and negative effects on your Sovereign/Champions's stats in Blue and Red numbers. Then if you click buy, you can also click "equip now".

Actually creating Artifacts made MoM rather unbalanced, because it made your heroes unkillable and therefore all standard units quite useless. Therefore creating arttfacts - this means powerfull ones - if implemented, should permanently decrease your essence to keep it balanced. But back to topic.

Agree with Symondus (1st post), Tasunke & Edpfister.  But when/if we make items for heroes. they should be expensive in terms of mana and/or gold.  Probably not essence, but then I think the whole essence/mana thing could use some tweaking.

Super-champions, with super items I made for them were what make MOM my favorite game ever, and most of what made AOW-SM fun for a while.  So far Elemental is disappointing in that regard.  I've said this before, but kick-ass heroes and the items that make them so are the whole point of a "magic" game.  If you want to win with ordinary units, you can play a spaceship or historical game, like Total-War or GalCiv.

Ideally, I'd change the store screen so that it shows both your Sovereign and the merchant. Sovereign on the left, facing the merchant on the right. Sovereign's inventory panel listed on the left, merchant's on the right. Nice and clear