One point I feel should be made - when questing, think like skyrim. If you see something that looks interesting, screw the quest, go check it out. Also chests are tucked away EVERYWHERE. I took a run around the AD newbie island (kenariths roost - spelling but something like that ) on Sunday to get a couple of skyshards I'd missed and see if i'd missed any quests. I had loot chests literally mugging me every 5 minutes to stick a piece of green loot in my inventory
You HAVE to keep your eyes open and remember the ES games ALWAYS rewarded exploration.
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I was breaking down any metal based loot I could for mats but there's LOTS of iron ore nodes around too. Just a case of getting a feel for where they like to hide. The materials are common enough that you should probably be making a new set every couple of levels till about lvl 20 where the loot drops start to feel more solid. Get to town ASAP and get 1 trait researched for each item (so 1 dagger, 1 1h sword, 1 1h mace, 1 glove, chest, head, etc) and maybe start trading gems for the traits you like. ALWAYS chest dressers/drawers/cupboards/crates/barrels for stuff.
You can add more materials to each item up to that materials limit (e.g "Iron" takes you from level 1 to level 14 then you'd need to craft in steel to make a better base item). Was never short. I ended up selling about 5 full stacks of iron ingots for cash.
And tabbycat - yeah, what I was meaning was ANY coloured (green,blue,purple,yellow) metal based item will give blacksmith based boosts right? Does the chance get better as the level improves or is it the same base chance (e.g any "green" sword has a 5% chance to give the green booster item?). If so, I think there's going to be a lot to be said for running back to newbie island to farm bosses/etc that have a drop chance.