Alright, well, I feel kind of newbish every time I see everyone with glowing/humming/shiny high-end armor in every slot, and then I look at my eq and see half my slots are empty, and what I do have is just a miscellaneous collection of whatever I happen to find and a few things some nice players gave me...

So then. Anyone have any tips on where to buy/find decent armor? :-)

This is something that used to bug the hell out of me when I was a new player. Not only did I not have the good stuff, I didn't know where to find it. Most of the time I didn't even know "how good" it was.

You're a good-aligned healer. So you have locate and identify object. And gate. And request. These are useful skills for finding gear. However, the most useful thing is that you're good-aligned and useful to a lot of different people. So when you see the dude with all the shinies, make a point to ask him if you can examine each item with which you're not familiar and if he'll tell you where each comes from. You can also approach other characters with an offer like: "Hey, anything you want to get that I can help with? All I ask is that you take me along and go slow enough that I can figure out how to get back there myself." Many people will gladly accept because it means they'll be able to get gear they otherwise couldn't obtain.

Some things to bear in mind:

* If you're going to ask to identify people's stuff, make sure you make it count. Log it! If your client doesn't support logging then get one that does.

* Items over lvl51 can't be located by mortals.

You have this beautiful skill called identify. Use it on everything, and I mean everything. If you find something on the ground, pick it up, identify it and if it's “junk” or you can’t use it... put it back down (or sacrifice it for the coins). Try not to carry a lot of “junk” on you. I personally have a very bad habit of doing this. The objects may be worth something, but if you’re not using them then it’s still “junk”.

When you are ranking on mobs identify all the equipment they drop. You can make yourself a note, good equipment at this level for warriors is here. You’ll be amazed at how quickly you can find pieces to build a complete set for a wide range of classes.

Try to find objects that are light, of high value in coins and you can put into your sack. You then can take these objects to various cities and villages to barter (so you don't have to worry about finding tons of gold). Then you can try out various pieces of equipment that are sold in cities. There's often great regearing and starting out equipment in cities. A single city may not offer a total set of starting out equipment that is good for your class, but at least you will know what’s there. So, buy up what you can and once again identify it. You'll find that in no time at all, you're able to have a vast knowledge of where some great starting out equipment is located.

Over time as you gain in levels, you'll probably be asked to go to areas that are usually called area explore. You'll find that a lot of the best and most shiny equipment comes from said areas. When you go to new places like these or any other place, and someone in your group quickly picks up a piece of gear for themselves... ask if you can identify it. You'll find that most of the time people have no problem at all doing this.

I've been to plenty of area explore type areas and every time I go with a group, it's like a big circle of passing around gear so everyone can identify or lore the objects. Some people who did not practice their lore will want to try them on. You will rarely find that other characters have a problem with this. Yes, they will probably want the gear for themselves in the end, but remember you’ve gained the knowledge.

You mentioned that people hand you gear as gifts, if it is a piece of gear (after you once again identify it) that you would like to have often… ask where it comes from. The chances that the person who gave it to you knows, is high. Then, if you should lose this piece of nice shiny gear, you can tell someone you’d like to go to such and such place for this.

One last thing from your post, even if you can’t find great equipment… try and keep all of your slots covered at all times. I’ve found the most difficult for this can be face wear, but keep all other slots covered.

Good luck!

Seems like sound advice. Only, when ranking, never really have time to stop, get their equipment, and then id it, but other than that, I'll see what I can do.

This is probably a classic question about in-game information rather than game mechanics that you should ask in-game allies and helpful higher level characters. Some general observations from another newbie follow:

If you search through the various merchants in the game, in all the cities and markets outside of them, you can acquire fairly decent stuff at a low level.

Other than that, sources of 'shiny' armor are basically what people loot from higher level corpses, what they receive as gifts, and what they loot from people they kill, and what they find lying on the ground because a higher level character killed a mob wearing it but didn't need it/care what happened to it. It also derives what people are skilled enough to run for themselves, but as a newbie you (and I) don't have access to that by definition.

Complete sets of shiny stuff happen when a high level character dies, the killer butchers the corpse or doesn't stick around to guard it, and a lucky low level character picks it all up. They also happen because very good player killers at low levels (or any levels) are able to kill a lot of characters and acquire the one 'good' piece everyone seems to find around. By definition, the good players are skilled at avoiding getting killed by gangs of less skilled players and often let the other skilled players keep most of their stuff via an explicit or implicit form of detente (and also because they just don't need most of it having amassed what they want).

Very rarely, you'll find a crazy altruistic character who just dies and leaves it all to you or runs you around the game showing you where to go.

Hmm, I'll check around cities a bit more. (Also, did ask IG, just haven't gotten very far that way yet.)

Another question--is there an unwritten rule that you don't loot player corpses besides coin? The behavior I've observed thus far indicates as much, though your post implies otherwise.

When you kill another player's character you are allowed to do whatever you want to the corpse as your own character would act in the situation. Be it loot, butcher the corpse, turn it and everything inside into a war banner (orcs), etc.

If the guy you (or you and your buddies killed) has some really nice equipment that's tons better than what you have, don't hesitate to take what you need or want. It's the spoils of war. But then it all depends on how your character would act, imho.

The general code is 'Don't be an asshole'. This is different for everyone, and comes second to Roleplay. Even if you're an evil, loot-whoring orc it's generally accepted you could leave them a weapon and any 'useless' (very common) armor and only take the limited stuff to glare at coveteously. If you haven't been spamming 'get all corpse, put all sack' or 'get 1. corpse, drop 1., sac 1.' then you're probably doing fine and shouldn't worry about it :P

The biggest offense possible is 'full saccing'. This is where you don't even loot the stuff for yourself, you just destroy it. While full looting is cool under certain rare situations, full saccing is never cool. Ever. Even if you're really angry.

If you want some basic item ID's we have a wiki, and an item search at www.qhcf.net - Be warned, this forum is full of as much bad press from disgruntled veterans as it is helpfulness for newer players :P Take it all with a pinch of salt.

Yhorian

Hmm, I see. I'll keep that in mind.

As for Dioxide's page, it looked like it had some useful stuff, but my biggest problem is its uptime seems to be around 20%, so most of the time I can't even get to it (e.g., right now). Or maybe it's just something with my connection.

There just was a three day downtime(dunno why), but the page is up for the most of the time. Anyway, it's up and working again. The downtimes issues are very recent and I hope that they don't continue.

While much of the dio's item list is still "sort of" accurate, a big chunk of it is obsolete. Either the item no longer exists (because the area was removed or rewritten) or its stats are no longer the same. So feel free use it as a starting point, but don't be surprised when you encounter inaccuracies.

Full-saccing is still preferable to someone who takes your stuff (that they can't use) and just carries it around indefinitely, or puts it in their cabal pit. At least if they destroy it you can go get some of it back.