Apologies in advance for yet another "I'm returning to the game, what should I do?" posts, but I just gotta ask...

I'm returning to EQ after a 3 year absence. My main is a rogue, and raided fairly hardcore when I was active. I have neither the desire nor the time to join a raiding guild, but I've been enjoying 5 and 6 boxing my alts (in my sig), burning through what was still "raid" content when I left the game (wow, 2 boxing Vindi and Sleepers Tomb is INTENSE, haha), and levelling up slowly but surely.

I stumbled onto the Armor Supplies (http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=3665 ) quest looking through these boards, and it's been a great upgrade for all of my characters. I plan on doing the related shield quest when I've worked the faction enough, but was wondering what else I could accomplish through quests or my botted army.

I guess what I'm asking is, what's the best gear you can get without the help of a guild? Between quested, one groupable mobs, and reasonably priced bazaar gear, any recommendations on gear upgrades?

You fail to mention how many expantions you currently have. But if you have all of them on all your accounts, you should check out Dragonscale hills. The gear that drops off the namers in there is Tacvi quality with 30% foci going up to level 80. This would be a great way to get exp/gear. I suggest binding the druid in there and running around checking track for any namers (you will get to know them and there drops after a bit in there) and if they are up and not taken bring the rest of your army to take them out. This will not get you any visable gear though. With your boxing army it is doubtful you could handle the next tier of SoF for the visable gear, but depending on their flagging you most likely could handle Qvic goats and get everyone 200hp/mana gear. If you can't do that, check out the TSS Tier 1 quest armor it is about on the same level of Qvic gear but definitely easier than them. The biggest problem is they are random spawns unlike the goats. If neither of those are appealing and you happen to be a tradeskiller, I suggest making Elaborate/Exalted combo (gives same AC as the above and 300hp/mana and extra mods) The downfall of this is the lack of foci and the cost. A more clear guide to quests/gearring up is on the shaman boards:
http://samanna.net/eq.progression/prog.por.shtml I linked the PoR one because it is one of the more complete ones and has lots of quests you can easily box for all your toons. While doing some you can get some armor: http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=3375 Sorry for my babbling! GL

EDIT: Scratch that, goats probably aren't doable. So check out the TSS tier 1 quest armor and PoR armor for visible slots and Dragonscale for non visible.

Thanks for the advice. I currently have all the expansions except SOF on the accounts, since none of my toons are L75 yet, I figured I'd wait on that expansion until I needed it to gain levels. It shouldn't be long, as they're progressing nicely experience-wise, in the TSS zones so far.

Also, Dwerium jewelry is great. it works for ears, fingers, wrists, neck, and face slots. it can give 400hp/mana/end, with 25 ac, and 25 on 4 stats, like wis, char, etc for my druid. It costs me about 30k to buy the parts to assemble a piece, on my server of fennin ro.

here is an example of the pieces, for my druids ring:

pear cut taaffeitte: +25 on wis, char, sta, int. +25 on resists. +250 hp/mana/end ( costs like 20k to 25k. ) 25ac.

round cut emerald: +150 mana/end

round cut opal: +150 hp.

set in a dwerium trio ring/earring/bracelet/veil/necklace

for other classes, you can choose diff gems for higher ac, higher hp, different stats. my war has 35ac ones, with higher hp, and lower mana/end.

http://www.kyros.info/Tradeskills/JC-Calc/

Easy way to play with some of jewelry choices