Learning how to do things "In-game"Follow

I am great with looking up any technical questions that I have on the web. But I find it sort of frustrating in EQ that it seems like npcs are loathe to give away any useful information about tradeskills. Where exactly do you learn all of the recipes for the various tradeskills in the game? My dwarf pally on the progression server got a couple books on the trades from his guild leader with the most basic of basic recipes (like two for each skill), but my wizard main on Firiona Vie didn't get anything like that (granted I did bolt for Erudin instead of Crescent Reach). I have bought some random books, but usually they aren't what I am looking for. I know someone had to learn about tradeskills in the game before all of this knowledge on the web came to exist, so I know that it's possible. But it seems like it is nearly impossible for one person to go into the game and learn how to do a tradeskill actually from the game teaching it. Did the first players learn from trial and error like virtual world cave-men? Or is there a Telanir Bookashanks in some village somewhere that only teaches that one and only recipe and it can be found nowhere else except the internet? Just wondering. I would like to play the game as it was designed to be played. It just seems like some things - primarily gaining knowledge about tradeskills - is so obscure that I am going to just have to say "screw it" and look up all the recipes on the internet.

Thanks for your answers Jonnwin. I really do appreciate the help. Yeah. I am checking out EQTC. I already knew about it, but just wanted to see what I could learn in-game. I will probably be using EQTC a lot. I will keep trying to learn some stuff from the game, but I won't hold my breath.

A quick warning about EQTC - some of its pages seem to have viruses waiting to download on your computer. I lost my entire hard drive after visiting that site earlier this year. Taught me my lesson to keep antivirus up all the time, and Norton warns me now that certain EQTC pages are not safe to visit.

I've seen the same problem. It also looks like the admin has locked out new forum accounts. I wanted to browse the forums and had lost my old password and was unable to make a new account.

It is kinda sad what's happened with a lot of the old EQ-related websites. So many forums are now useless wastelands with the most recent post being years ago. I remember how active the Saryrn Tavern and other server-specific forums USED to be.

Oh well, can't have everything.

And it's always a no-brainer not to browse the Internet with solid updated anti-virus and anti-spyware. Both Malwarebytes and SuperAntispyware have free editions so use those IN ADDITION to a good free AV product like AVG, Avira, Avast and others.

I am actually finding that the spell research books are fairly informative so that is great. Am making notes from them as of late. (So I can sell back the heavy book, but keep the information on hand.)