If you time your rolling towards the end of the three day reboot cycle,
you'll find a full set of decent armor laying around in Velkyn. If you're unlucky
or roll shortly after a reboot, grab whatever armor that looks heavy and wear
it. Plate armor and whatnot from the shops is good in a pinch. If you know how
to make gold, or don't mind asking a hero to do it free, try for some midnight dragon
armor.

Citrine rings sold at the docks are good for something like twenty to thirty
AC each. If you're a mage and have an ac spell, use it. Armor the spell can be found
through healers, wands, and potions sold in shops.

As a mage you can easily solo to fifteen or so. Actually get a group, and its
ridiculously easy. That's leaving out the easily 7k or more of exp available from
quests accessible and achievable at those levels. I'm by no means a quest god, and
there are no doubt more.

This gets less effective pretty quickly around the upper teens. After that the regear
list in the wiki is pretty decent, or if you have gold you can just go to the Bazaar
in the fields between eastern and voralian city and buy restrung lowbie gear-list stuff
that's pretty decent for a while.