I was following your works for some time, but I wasn't posting, because Thorn was giving you good tips and critique, so I wouldn't repeat it again
At first, I must say that you are improving for sure. Your sprites from beginning just were annoying for eyes, mostly due to simply coloring. Now you have some more intuition in shading. Keep developing it. I may suggest you to pick few pictures from real life and try to understand them. Focus on where are lights, peach highlights, darks, darkest part and reflected light (as Thorn wrote). It will come naturally in practice, you should think about objects as 3d structures.
Secondly, color picking and AA (It's best to find good pixel art examples and understand it on your own, check some tutorials for basics) is thing which is gonna boost your sprites quality significiantly. I noticed you slightly add hues to those grays, which is good move. Don't be afraid to push it sometimes even more. Your metal might be more brownish or blueish, never gray. Try hue shifting for more visual spices. I can see, that in your gold legs you stayed on yellow. In those darks you could push it toward orange . In color picking menu dark yellows are more resemblying me dirty greens, so I avoid them in golds. Read about color theory, cool n warm colors. You should find some interesting and helpful tips (for example how colors work together, affect each other).
Lastly, why your items are so small? Maybe that's your personal preference or style, but don't be afraid to make much more bigger equipment. This way you could play more with shapes. If you need some ideas, you can do some research for armors, weaponry throughout history and place.
I'm looking forward for your sprites :>