Okay, I'm not a new player, but lots of times I feel like one. I came over in the first age. I've just come and gone a lot with school, then work, then marriage, etc.

But, I figure this might help out new players so I'll ask here.

How the heck do you people keep track of what's good gear, and where to get it? Especially for multiple classes.

Example, I'm currently playing a melee character in the high 30's. I fight with someone in an opposing cabal, same class, same race, and I get tooled. My skills/spells hit for 2-3 damage categories less then the exact same skills then the guy I was fighting, no vulnerabilities were used. So I figure my +dam roll is too low and/or my weapons suck.

Except..I have NO idea where to get better gear. I look in my log at this guys gear when I got a peak at it later, and have no idea where any of that came from. I've wandered around appropriate level areas, can't find anything. I've tried to ask people who schooled me, usually ends up in rp lectures about how horrible a person I am. There's no one 'helpful' around in my neck of the woods I can ask.

I mean, at level 38 I got my sleeves looted by someone who pk'ed me (not sure why they were from Tarus), and the best replacement I could find was junk sold by the armorer in Galadon for crying out loud after 2 days of looking.

Now, I'm sure while playing another class I probably came across great sleeves for a 30. Probably playing a mage or something looking for more hp and went 'meh' and threw them away. How do you keep track?

I take great pride in trying to wear armor I can get for myself, so I can be self reliant and not worry about being full looted, but I'm getting tired of using stuff slightly better then academy gear.

Options I can think of.

1) Set up some sort of item db of my own. Run around with an explorer chacter, id/lore everything and save it for 'real' characters to follow. That sounds like a huge pain in the butt, but I can do it if I need to.

2) Beg/ask/rp and try to find someone friendly or a mentor to show me some good items for my level. This probably won't work because of my role, but I could get lucky. Otherwise to do this I'd have to reroll a 'friendlier' character.

3) Just keep trucking (and dying) with my current guy and hope eventually I stumble on some npc's that have something useful for me.

I'm trying to tough it out and do #3, but I get tired of getting rolled over by people with gear I have no clue where to get. Soon I'll be fighting people with gauntlets that shoot acid, and rings and shock me, and helmets that blind me, and I can't even begin to guess where THAT stuff is, much less stand a chance against them unless I get lucky.

Really frustrating being a new, old person. I get in groups and someone says "I need help to run 4 zones over to kill Joe the Barber cause maybe he has the epic spear that shoots acidic slugs" and I'm going...how the hell did you know that? And do you think I'll remember 2 years from now when I play my next spear spec warrior?

Any suggestions?