Low drop rates in Kelethin and Gorowyn

Have a level 11 defiler in Goro with no accessories, and a level 10 monk in Kekethin no accessories. Toons in the other starting zones have all accessories by level 10-11. Is this meant to be or is it a bug?

I would move the Gorowyn one to Darklight Woods (outside Neriak), and the Kelethin one to Frostfang Sea. Gorowyn and Kelethin are a bit older and not as well balanced for drops/gear that I can recall

DLW and FF are newer, and have more complete gear drop sets for new characters just starting out. Grind bosses in those two zones for jewelry especially.

(In Frostfang alone, there's a bear boss, as well as Crushinator the rolling rock boss, who drop earrings and rings, plus an Icestorm boss who drops several bracelets. Twiggle the imp in the cave up the hill drops higher-level bracelets and +6 armor, and another boss Orc who's just outside the bank alcove with the mendor drops armor of various pieces too. And on the hills connected to the Herga's Choke area above him, a couple of snowflake bosses drop higher-level rings, plus brawler weapons and tank shields. Then on Herga's Choke itself there's an Orc boss who drops higher-level trinkets. Whew!)

I don't play Freeport side nearly as often, but those who do consider Darklight Woods to be superior even to Frostfang Sea for drops!

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Kelethin was released first, followed by Neriak (Darklight Woods) in the Echoes of Faydwer expansion, followed by Gorowyn and then finally New Halas in Rise of Kunark the following year.

It doesn't matter which of the 4 cities you start and do the newbie timeline in, because they all gear you up enough, give you a mount, and send you to Butcherblock mountains to continue the Golden Path solo questline anyway. Whatever deficiencies or differences in gear that one city provides over any of the others is extremely negligible, given how fast it takes to actually outlevel those areas anyway.

It is true that most evil players prefer Darklight Woods just because the zone itself isn't nearly as physically large to traverse, so you go from point A to point B much faster.

Kelethin timeline is very long though. Frostfang timeline gets you to Level 20 and full gear in half the time. Same for Darklight Wood vs Gorowyn. Darklight Wood gets you to Level 20 much faster.

Frostfang and Darklight Woods are still each newer than their older counterparts (Kelethin and Gorowyn), and have way more bosses to grind for better gear. YMMV but practically everyone goes to FFS and DLW for better, faster gear ups.

Kelethin, DLW, and Gorowyn all came out within the span of a year. New Halas was several years after the fact. The only commonality is that DLW and FFS were mid-expansion updates and Gfay and TD were expansion releases. The expansion releases take longer to complete because they have way more content. All four zones are pretty comparable with named drops, Gfay and TD are just bigger.

Yeah all four cities were added in with a conscious design choice that none of them are objectively better than any others in stats or viability. It's just that two of the 4 newbie zones are physically smaller than the others, and therefor takes less time to complete.

Again, you blaze through the levels so fast these days that you will outgrow that gear before it becomes anything worth valuing.

To be fair Darklight Woods did get updated in 2012 which changed how the zone looked quite a bit as well as new quested gear rewards. There were some subtle changes to New Halas as well (Namely new quested gear rewards.) but not as much (if any) artwork changes.

https://www.everquest2.com/news/imported-eq2-enus-51242