Level 43 duelist, where to get good gear?

Hi I'm a currently Level 43 duelist, aiming to go dual crit rapier builds. Problem is, I see people running around with great gear at like lvl 30+ alr but I'm still using what i pick up from the ground.

Anyone have advice on where to farm good leveling gear for a dualwield duelist?

Also is it a must to complete the Lord's Labyrinth in your first normal run of the game?

Hm... while leveling, I've generally been able to do very well for myself just knowing what stats are good and using Transmutation/Alteration to get the stats I need. Maybe I've had insanely good luck, maybe you've had really bad luck. To be fair, I've only ever leveled "untwinked" (i.e. without gear from previous leveled characters) a handful of times.

Just in case my luck was average with rolling trans/alt, as an Attack build, the single most important determiner of your DPS is going to be your Weapon's base damage. If you're like me, this means your sword(s). Most of the time, you want to boost physical damage; up to 49% increased physical damage from level 1 and 64% increased physical damage from level 11 are technically available as magical modifiers on Weapons. The flat added phys options (x-y) aren't bad either. If you're really lucky, Rare weapons can get both at once, as well as a third "hybrid" mod that combines with the % increased to basically give it a higher boost. (The hybrid mod is available on blues as well, but is less useful in that case).

On other pieces of gear, resists are essential. Try to look for gear with multiple resist types, and if that doesn't work, Alt for them like I did? Also, assuming you're a Life build, which you should be as ES is very unintuitive and probably least optimal for a Duelist, you want +maximum Life on all those gear pieces as well. A Magic item with +max Life and +Resists, while leveling, will be much better than a Rare gear piece with 6 modifiers but none of those stats.

EDIT: You can also try using Orb of Alchemy but most people wouldn't recommend that, because Alchs are fairly valuable in player trade, and by the end game (req level 59+ items) you will probably be throwing away all your older gear, so it's a bit like tossing money down the drain. But it can be fun to see the effects, and if you're lucky, you can get a really strong weapon for a few levels, which makes leveling quite a bit easier.

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Also is it a must to complete the Lord's Labyrinth in your first normal run of the game?

Nope! You can do it whenever you want. The higher difficulties are sort of like stronger-alternate-dimensions that you can teleport between at any time using a Waypoint. So once you enter Cruel, and hit a roadblock or feel bored with redoing the story, you can go back to Normal and try running the lab there.

if u are newer to the game, do the labyrinth in normal before u end the cruel-difficulty. The lab has some traps and other things, that can hurt u, so its better to try with higher level for the first time

You can also play the minigame at http://poe.trade/ and find some really good gear cheap.