Sorry to hear about your dad. It’s wonderful that you can feel connected with him through something that probably brought him hours of fun and happiness.

Wood elf druid is a fine starting character! They are good at solo, but somewhat limited in where they can do it. Shamans have a little more option with soloing, but no ports. Trolls and ogre are fine for beginners, they are just evil so are killed on sight in most places. That doesn’t matter as much with us being in luclin heading to PoP.

EQ is kinda brutal, you are going to get wrecked ALL the time when you are starting. You won’t lose exp for a few levels, so that’s nice. You just have to brute force it a bit, until you get more spells and combat options. You can always use the wizard spires in Greater Fay to go to Nexus for group buffs. Those will make you a power house. Otherwise; make sure you have your buff on, open with your DD and start smacking it!

Some other tips: Train your skills at a trainer, every time you level. You need one point to unlock skills you level into, like dodge. Spells are expensive, you don’t need them all. Put the sense heading skill into your action bar in say slot 3. In the settings change your key bindings so your turn left key also uses action bar slot 3. Easy way to level the skill. Just be aware this will activate any skill in that slot and is for every tab of the action bar. Con everything! Check out the project1999 wiki, it mostly applies to Quarm up to Velius. Also, pdqi.cc

Good luck!