Two things newbies may not know about that you want to know about. 1. Origin ability - the equivalent of the WoW Soul Stone. At lvl 5 you go to your Inventory->Alt Adv-> General abilities, find "Origin", click Hotkey and drop the hotkey on an empty slot on your toolbar. Now, about once every half hour, you can gate back to your home city even if you're not a caster. It's a very slow cast so if you're being beaten on you'll be interrupted, but if you get stuck somewhere it's a lifesaver. 2. Free DB store cash: as long as you're paying a monthly fee to play EQ (ie. if you're on a TLP server) you get 'free' 500 DB store cash every month. You must claim this to get it, it does not accumulate from month to month. To claim it you click on the yellow/orange "DB" square button on the screen. If you have cash to claim the claim button will be green. Press the button. IMPORTANT: you will be asked if, instead of the 500 DB cash, you want to instead buy 3 Bottles of Experience II potions (or some box of junk.) You have to decide then and there. If you say no, you'll get your 500 pots to spend or accumulate. But if you pick the potions you'll get 3, 4 hour potions that give +25% xp. This buff persists across deaths. 3 pots for 500 is a much better deal than the store option of paying 270 DB cash for just 1 potion. If on the other hand you don't want xp potions, just click through and you'll get your 500 cash. These persist if you don't spend them so you can save up a few months cash and buy appearance items (beware the intricacies of Hero's Forge armor), potions, lightweight bags, etc. I always buy the potions. They are Heirloom so you can't share them with friends or across accounts, but you can share them across alts on the same account by using your shared bank.
A couple extremely useful sites: www.raidloot.com/ (their spell search is much more accurate on actual numbers than Allakhazam) http://www.eqitems.com/ (will need to disregard the focus effects on manglers, otherwise very good information) http://www.eqtraders.com/ (very useful search function for trades) http://www.eqmaps.info/ (Brewall's map pack. The default map pack only has starter zones and towns generally, you will not have a map for 95% of the game unless you install a third party map pack) Random things: -Shift-B opens all bags by default. There is a 'open all bank bags' key but you need to bind it yourself -Ctrl-F opens the find window and can save you tons of time trying to find certain things. It can save you from endlessly being lost if you don't have zone maps, as the zone lines in a zone should always show up on the Find window. -You can sell the contents of a bag by clicking on the bag while in the vendor window. It will list the contents of the bag and prompt you to sell them all if the bag has anything in it. If the bag is empty it will prompt you to sell the bag itself -Learn how to use the Labels and Height Filter buttons on your map, they are critical for making map packs like Brewall's useful. Also know that you can right click a spot on your map and if it's in bounds it will pop up a glowing path to the area for you
