The solution to finding powerful weapons early on is simple: DONT USE THEM. It's your own fault if you think the game is too easy because you're using overpowered items.
DKS is awesome, well except for the graphics. I haven't gotten to FoV yet because I'm playing through this "remastered" version, but the graphics look the exact same as regular ED. Framerate fix is nice, but honestly it still looks as blocky as ever. Its probably because I've always used Radeon cards. Old rig had a 4850 and the new one has a 5870, so no PhysX. Though I have seen some side by side screenshots of ED with PhysX on and off with everything else jacked up and I noticed practically no difference, but who knows, screenshots can be misleading. I don't get punished for using an AMD processor, so why do developers incorporate nVidia-exclusive features into games? Seems kind of silly. That's a different discussion though.