Not sure what you were expecting, on most games you can get a lot of trash you don't need when fighting high level mobs. Similar to d2 though some specific items can be found at level 1 with high value and lots of gear which can be sold, generally anything with 6 different mods and at least level 5 generally sells for 1 fg. By level 20 even 1 stat might sell depending on muter needs.
The main issue with ladder slasher is there is not a npc shop, everything is found by other players so if you need a level 30 weapon with ee someone needs to find it and as you've probably noticed finding a weapon of level 15 or higher with 50+ ee is incredibly rare.
On older versions of ladder slasher the answer was yes, you did need to be 15 levels higher than the level of the gear you were after, but that was a long time back. These days you can find gear even above your current level but generally only from evil presences.