The city zone Crescent Reach is the 'base' of expansion...12?...called The Serpent's Spine. Staying in connected zones only, you can level to at least 75 in just that expansion, doing quests that for the most part have the best 'return on investment' you will find in EQ, at least for the trek from 1through 60. The expansion covers 13 huge zones and should keep you busy for a long time.
You can also click on certain books that are on 'display' on a short plinth in certain zones in each expansion. The one in the TSS expansion is in Blightfire Moors, the zone you get to when you run (North-East?) out of Crescent Reach. If you click such a book, you get teleported (ported for short) to the Plane of Knowledge (PoK). Think New York Grand Central times 50. Or better yet; the mother of all airport hubs. In PoK, there are 'stones' you click to get to various zones; in the zone you see a book, in PoK you see a stone. And the stones are often marked with the name of a city zone that is NEAR the point where you end up when you click it. Thus, if you click the Cabilis stone, you end up, not in Cabilis, but in the Field of Bone, from which you can run to Cabilis. In Pok, you will find a HUGE library, where you can get many of your spells up to level 65, and there is a number of tradeskill vendors and tradeskill 'containers' (brew barrel, forge, pottery wheel etc), two banks and access to the Bazaar where players buy and sell stuff to each other, and best of all: accessto the Guild Lobby, where you can post an ad that you are looking for a guild, and look through guilds' postings to maybe find a guild that suits you (see below about guilds).
You'll want to use your in-game atlas to find your way around. I think default is the Backspace key. You probably want to visit
http://www.mapfiend.net/ and look for the link 'map packs' in the menu on the left. Choose 'ALL Maps', download to your desktop, and unzip the maps into your EQ/maps folder, then restart EQ. that should give you 99% of all the maps in the game, including nice markers for quest NPCs and other nice info.
Your new best friend (after this site) is
http://everquest.allakhazam.com/. Go there to look up hard facts such as which spells you can get and where to get them, where to find mob X and that sort of thing. Nearly all quest walkthroughs are there, so once you have a quest, just check Alla to see how others have done the tasks - if you get stuck that is. The point of EQ is to have fun doing things, and following someone else's footsteps is always less glorious, somehow. So my advice to you is; try on your own, the sense of accomplishment is nothing to laugh at. Plus, if you try, and THEN ask for help, people are much more likely to go out of their way to help you. On Allakhazam main page, you'll find a link to 'Everquest Forum', in that forum are two stickied posts that you will want to read (or at least browse).
Learn to use the 'Reference Desk' tab above this forum. If I had a dollar for every time I referred someone to that tab, I'd be posting from a lodge in the Alps rather than this god-forsaken wet and grey place they say is my home
You write you'll be soloing or duoing most of the time; my advice to you is forget that. The vast majority of the challenges you will encounter have been designed for groups. Of course, some of the 10 year old encounters can now be easily soloed by a low-level character because we have access to gear that was considered Godly just a few years ago, but until you have found your feet, a guild is pretty much the only way to get anywhere. Once you've learened to play, you can solo nearly any class up to at least 60, but at some point you'll once again hit a brick wall in terms of what you can do. Join a guild.
And most of all: Welcome to EQ. If you are on the Antonius Bayle server (aka the Euro server), look up Boneheads of Butcherblock, we have a fairly steady inflow of people returning to EQ after years of absence, so you won't be all alone in your journey.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
~Voltaire