I keep thinking "Lost Skull" and "Indiana Jones" when I see this thread's title. I could care less about perm items. A reset is a reset.
Yeah, it seems crazy to reset with the time constraints and unpredictablity of equip drops and warring for mith. Just drop build to castle only and bypass unnecessarily wasting time on stingy, low-paying, ebs if you want to start over. The only drawback would be missing the xtals from quests but keeping equip, bars and pots would more that make up for it.