Hi Amaron!!!
SEARCH - not certain but this may help you out - go into your profile and reset your defaults to the most amount of time. I think the default is 30 days but you can set it higher and maybe (wings crossed) that will cause the search feature to look through more. Give it a try, if it works, let me know!
Having one person (your lead) high in athletics is a good thing and will come in handy. Some folks have said don't bother upping it past 12 which probably will cover most situations.
A shield can help protect your characters but by the time you've gotten to where most attacks are magical you'll probably be pretty strong and might prefer being able to take an extra whack or two on the baddies.
I'll see if I can find the post that was on KungFu a while back. Folks were having difficulty getting their characters to actually use it until they equipped something into their shield spot, then they were kicking up a storm.
Leadership can be good is you up it on your primarily lead character. They get targeted more often but take less damage from weapon attacks which can help protect some of the other characters.
Wyv