I stuck with swords and bows. The best damage on swords that are consistently in the game is 70-100, though people have purchased/found random swords with a maximum damage of 110, that I recall.
The farmlands teleporter is in a field mostly covered under bundles of straw, just north west of the Blue Boar inn.
The Dragon Gloves are south of the elven village, in the southern pyre by the first set of steps in the burial grounds (about where you get the cut scene of the area being vandalized).
Check the number of files in the saved game folder (in '..\Divine Divinity\Run\savegames'). A new game should have 22 files, after going to either Verdistis or the Dark Forest it should have 27 and after going to both it should have 32.
Different file extensions are associated with different areas of the game;
.0 / .x0 = Aleroth, Ars Magicana, etc
.1 / .x1 = Verdistis, Council Hall
.2 / .x2 = Dark Forest
It is possible that some *.x1 files got carried over from your previous game, and are incorrectly in saves before you go to Verdistis (if so they can be deleted). Perhaps talking to someone about Verdistis updates these files (or triggers the game to include them), causing a conflict when you go there for the first time.
Two people have had files from the previous game carried over to the next, that I know of, possibly from corrupt files in the '..\Divine Divinity\Run\Dynamic' folder (the files in this folder can be deleted, the game recreates them as required the next time it is started).
