Wycca,
The exact date that we pinned on the item is far less important than what side of the Velious/Luclin fence that the item falls on.
12/24/2001 still puts this on the Luclin side of the fence.
This was an item with a medium drop rate on an NPC that was killed very regularly on (almost?) every server after her loot leaked. You're attributing Fist of Nature to the 11/07/2001 patch. Luclin was 12/04/2001. That's nearly a month later. Furthermore, the magelo date you have is 20 days post-Luclin. The other loot that was patched in was discovered shortly (days) after patching. This does leave a scenario where the Fists were either added and not dropping or had such a low drop rate that no-one server wide managed to get any.
However, even if we go off these unlikely explanations, there is still the hand-to-hand and required level argument as well. The Primal FISTs that went into the game on 11/07 were 1 HB. The earliest known Fist of Nature was a HtH Weapon. Why would they not introduce HtH weapons with Primal/Priceless Fistwraps also? In addition, why would they wait until post-Luclin to patch all the other Velious items with a required level tag?
The argument against the Fist of Nature existing pre-Luclin is a pretty strong one at this point. I hope this doesn't stop you from continuing to look for evidence against this case as we could be very wrong.
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