A ton of useful things are sold in towns. Nearly all towns are rather safe, and well-marked roads point the way from one to the next. There's a few reasons to take a good look at what's available:

1) Barter means that if you find something that you don't need (a weapon you can't use, a valuable-but-not-practical item like a gem, etc.), you can exchange it for something you do need. Even if you're doing pretty well as far as gear, you might be able to dump it for a pile of food, saving you currency.

2) Some things vary in price from place to place. Galadon is the busiest, but many of the items there are more expensive.

3) It fills gaps in your area knowledge. If you can't figure out where to get leggings worth a damn, you can probably find a dozen shops that sell decent-ish leggings for a low price. Ditto (to a lesser extent) for more obscure stuff (face-wear, flight potion, boat, etc.)

4) Safer. No place in CF is 100% safe, but taking the main roads from town to town usually means low risk from NPCs. (Once you're in PK range, staying in the most populated areas may also mean that you're easily located by hostile PCs. However, a lot of the smaller towns are both safe and not well-traveled.) Wandering off the main roads means a higher chance of getting lost, or accidentally moving into more dangerous areas.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com