Maybe I have a skewed view of things, but I am very confident that if you gave me Humbert and geared me with x2 opal rings, x2 brass collars, shirt of shining silver chain, x2 charred bracers, dual lightforged swords etc I'd still get kills easily.

That's a highly gear-dependent character, since it is a warrior. If you are, say, a wrath-spamming paladin or an angel-toting conjurer, your chances of performing well with crap gear are even better!

Maybe with bad gear you have to 'scrape the bottom of the PK barrel' a little to gear up. Avoid the Emperor, Chancellor, etc, but kill the small fish until you gear up. Quite surprisingly lots of newbies have rather nice gear, and I am always really boggled when I see obvious newbies with sweet gear. Sometimes they are so inexperienced that I just leave them the gear if I can't use it and only a cabalmate can.

Anyway I don't mean to say that newbies don't have any right to good gear. I'm saying that exploring and gear-whoring to the extent of neglecting cabal defence/raid is not only bad RP, it also doesn't work out if you are a newbie. Unless you are tongni or elhe, the conservative elite pker sort, the marginal gain versus the marginal cost of gathering a shinier piece of gear is not worthwhile.