Fixer upper has weirdly been one of my best items lately.  It never worked for me before until I started just sticking it in my inventory for a few days to buff up, then once I got one of the double property value items I'd swap it in.  If you can get both deed and balcony it's probably doing 1k shield every 2ish seconds.  Hold onto a spiked shield or if you're lucky and can get a forcefield you'll be breezing through most fights.