The manual’s map is mistaken, but not terribly so. The only real mistake is the area around the Heartwood Tavern. Unfortunately, that is directly on the path to both the bank and the Ranger's Guild (a place close to my heart). Below is a corrected map. Under the corrected map is a list of locations and their coordinates in Greater Faydark.

This command is probably the most useful command in the whole game. It gives you coordinates telling you where your character is. Try using this command and you will get the hang of it quickly. If you think you are going to die, ALWAYS use this command, and you will be able to find your corpse much more quickly. The X and Y coordinates are the most useful, though you can use the Heading to understand where you are going, as described later.

Using the /loc command, you can move around far more quickly. Instead of following the paths, which tend to wind around a great deal, you can move directly to important locations.

Moving on a heading between the two will combine the results. For example, moving at heading 325 will move to a lower X and a lower Y coordinate.

Forage

Wonderful. Free food. Enough said.

Kick (5th level)

For warriors, bind this to a hot key, and use during combat. Can give you much more damage.

Track

Though not useful at the first three levels, when you spend most of your time in the newbie areas, this skill becomes critcal when you move up to higher levels, and want to find and attack specific monsters. Also nice to find party members, though you can also get to them by clicking on them and using the /loc command.

Sense Heading

Useless. Use the /loc command.

Hide

Very useful when you’re trying to recover your corpse

Infravision

Why waste points on this skills when you can simply set your screen (or Gamma) to be brighter?

 

Monsters

I am currently a 6^th level Ranger. Here’s what I found I could take on by myself and usually win:

Level 1:

Bat
Decaying Skeleton (w/o weapon)
Black wolf

Level 2:

Wasp Drone
Widow Hatchling
Decaying Skeleton (w/weapon)

Level 3:

Orc Pawn

Level 4:

Pixie Trickster

Level 5:

Orc Centurion
Wasp Sentinel
Large Snake

Level 6:

Dwarf Skeleton

Can’t take on yet:

Orc Legionnaire (in Crushbone)

As you can see, levels three and four are a bit barren, so it’s best to group up with a party and go to the Orc camp.

You can reach me at wood-elf@geocities.com. If you have any interesting locations around Faydark (especially in Steamfont or ButcherBlock), please send me the /loc coordinates.

Links
EQVault's Ranger Player Guide
EQVault's Ranger Spell Guide
EQ Atlas
Norrathian Travel Guide

Most of the maps linked here (with the exception of Kelethin, which I made) are at Everquest Online.