I’ve played AO off-and-on for nearly 10 years now, but four years ago, I swore to never come back. Sold what items I could, deleted everything else, and deleted almost all of my characters aside from a couple that I just couldn’t bring myself to deleting because of sentimental value. What a shame, as now I’m finding a need to come back. One of the characters, which should be the highest level, is an empty 200(ish, waiting on the pending payment to actually log in and check) crat. Assuming I have the creds, where would be a good pick up point to start myself back up on the grind to re-equip? My second highest level was a 189 Advy, who was my heart and soul of my younger years. What would you guys recommend me picking back up, and how would I go about doing so?
Welcome back! 
As for equipment, depending on how much creds you have, I’d recommend getting the following stuff:
Symbiants
(In descending order of importance): brain, ocular, right hand, chest, all the others. Replace the expensive/less useful ones with implants.
NCU
A shopbuyable 6-slot belt with Infused Yuttos NCU’s and a Viral Compiler or Recompiler.
Armour
Again depending on how much creds you have. In descending order from great to acceptable:
Combined (probably Scout’s or Officer’s on the crat and Mercenary’s or Sharpshooters on the advy, depending on your weapon choices).
Ofab. This is bought with VP’s, but no longer nodrop. If you don’t have VP’s yourself, you can ask someone of the same profession to buy it for you.
Miy’s. Probably Miy’s Nano on the crat or Miy’s Tank on the advy.
Weapons
Some Kyr’ozch weapons should be quick and easy to get; there’s usually plenty on GMS. Unlike armour, ofab weapons are still nodrop unfortunately. If you have the VP’s, they could be an option. If you have friends to help you and you’re not past level 200 yet, some Special Edition Kyr’ozch weapons from Sector 7 would be a great choice too.
Which alt to pick up is a matter of your own preference, but both are salvagable 
Some hopefully helpful considerations:
- If you’re interested in gathering some VP’s for ofab armour, weapons and nano’s, this is easier if you’re level <=200. The 151-200 Battlestation is a lot more active than the 201-214 one.
- If you’re level <=200, there’s a lot more solo-friendly content. Daily missions are a great way to level and not too hard even if you’re out of practice and don’t have great gear. Also the active BS allows for more dailies. Dark Ruins in Adonis is good XP and fun. If you’re >200, you’ll mostly depend on teams for leveling and this is more fun, both for you and your teammates, if you’re reasonably well equipped and practiced.
- If you’re just above 200, say 205, your skills and abilities go up very fast. Even if you’re poorly equipped, you’ll be a stronger soloer than a better equipped sub-200. This makes soloing things (for loot) easier. For XP this shouldn’t matter since you need to kill higher mobs to level anyway.
- The symbiants you can wear at level <= 200 are significantly more expensive than the slightly higher ones you can wear at early tl7.
Since it’s a very broad topic there’s plenty more to say. Feel free to ask more questions
Hey thanks for the reply! I decided to stick with the crat, and work on grinding her up. I’m running into a small problem though, it feels as if my damage is pretty abysmal at the moment. I’m working on the Pen nano quest line, and I’m having one hell of a time doing any damage. In fact, I watched a 176 engi run through and kill mobs in 5-10 seconds, where I was spending over a minute to kill the same one. I was curious where the crat’s damage comes from. I have the highest bot pre-205, the best nuke, calm and roots I can get until spec 3-4, but I feel like I do no damage, and if I was playing a drinking game where I took a shot each time my calm failed, I would have been dead yesterday.
I’m just confused. I’m not quite sure where I’m going wrong, or what I’m doing wrong, but there’s a massive discrepancy from what I’m seeing in-game, and online with crats from what I’m doing. I even hopped on my advy, which surprisingly I was killing those mobs 20 levels lower without even needing to cast a heal.
Watch some Caloss2 videos on his crat playthrough when he reaches similar lvl to yours. He explains this issue and finds a solution he likes It could help you too.
Carlita (Pen Quest) will improve things significantly for you.
Besides that keep an eye out for Dreadloch Freedom Arms, it is a crat on pistol with low reqs. Join lightnet and you might see lootrights advertised.
As for nukes there is a quest for improved rule of one in holes in the wall outside borealis. At the bronto burger.