Time to get some vocational skills! (Mostly because some bandits kick my ass)
It turns out the card matching minigame at the Casino is really quite awesome. I racked up quite a bit of good gear (and sold the rest for around 32,000 gold) with only about an hour of work. A Zombiesbane (which is the best weapon you can get for quite a long time) is also among the random list of prizes, but I didn't encounter one.