While I agree the items generally cost way too much on the store, everything there but the loot boost, xp boost, hair dyes and adventure packs can be gotten by playing the game. And even those things can be gotten by playing so you could play without ever paying actual money for the game.
First for every 4 levels on a F2P account you need sigils these are Copper, Silver, Gold and Platinum. While you can buy these at the store the only time you should ever need to buy them is if you get really unlucky, and even then you could just continue questing until you get one.
They drop off quests, while you may not have seen any on Korthos, where I’ve gathered from other players it doesn’t drop very often. Once you get to the Harbour there is a good chance of pulling it off the quest there. I’ve even meet people that got it as a reward 5 times before even hitting level 4.
Arrows, potions and other convenience items can be bought at vendors, on Korthos there is a general vendor that sells all the basics.
Now adventure packs, those things do cost points and if you’re going to get to 20 you are going to have to buy some of them. To get the points you don’t have to buy them, doing quests rewards favor points with the faction you do the quest for, besides the things favor does mentioned in an earlier comment, favor milestones also awards Turbine Points.
On you very first character getting 100 favor will award you 75 or 100 Turbine points because of extra milestones on the way up to 100 favor, every milestone gives 25 points. After that every 100 favor awards 25 Turbine points.

Now onwards to things to make it easier for new players.

Building your character:
Many people pigeon-hole they character into a very tight build, say they create a Cleric, oh I’m a Cleric I MUST heal things and so I will put everything into Wisdom and pick up Empower Healing as my first feat.
This is a mistake, Clerics and their cousin the Favored Souls are both very capable melee fighters, and you shouldn’t neglect Strength on them, if they buff them selves they can outdo most pure melee classes in the lower levels while still be very capable at higher levels. So instead of spending a lot of points to fill up Wisdom, take 2 points off (Those 2 points costed you 6 stat points) and spend them on Strength, more Constitution and a tiny bit of Charisma (Not really important as clerical Turning is terrible in DDO because of the inflated hp of mobs, basically the turn follows the pnp rules, but as they mobs have more hp than in pnp to not be complete pushovers turning takes a swing for the worse)

Only a few classes benefit from putting all into their primary stat: The Wizard, the Sorcerer and the Barbarian, with Inteligence, Charisma and Strength respectably. For other classes staying 2 points off maxing the primary stat will yield great benefits by increasing constitution, strength and other valuable stats.

Quests can be repeated for xp and loot, doing the short Korthos quests can quickly amass you quite a bit of coin for which at the general vendor you can buy potions, arrows and other things you might like.

The coinage could also go towards hirelings for the rare occasion you just cannot find a party and are too lazy to start one your self.
You mentioned using gold contracts, these contracts are a store thing only to use multiple hirelings. You can however buy normal contracts they don’t cost a lot for the hour you can use them and running with a single hireling is often easier than having multiple. The normal setting on a quest scales with the party up to it’s maximum scaling at 4 members. So having just a single hireling (One that you didn’t pay Turbine Points for) will often make the quest easier than if you had multiple, assuming that you brought a hireling that complements your own class well.

Now lets get more into the hireling and which one is advantageous for you to bring.
Now on your Cleric you should bring a Fighter or a Barbarian, you should avoid picking a hireling that is a Warforged because they get a healing penalty.
Warforged hirelings are ideal for Wizards, as they can pick Repair spells and heal the hireling with it.
With the other way around for melee where you’d bring a Cleric, or if you’re a Warforged bring a caster.
Hirelings are pretty dumb, and if let rampage will often get them selves killed, the key to controlling them are bind a button to their interact with target key, something close to your control key and target things click it and they will attack that particular target.
Like with your self hirelings will gain more abilities the higher level they are and they will not fit on a single quick bar, expand the hireling quickbar to show more of their abilities, this is especially useful for caster hirelings, where you then can control exactly what buffs you want them to cast.

Yes you will lose xp for recalling and jumping back in but you didn’t mention that a quest will reset itself if noone in the party is inside (takes 5mins to do this or a quick reform of the party does it instantly) and so you will not lose xp.

Also in DDO the quests are instances which is very important to know. Like you have mentioned, you only get xp for completely and not for amount of monsters killed. What is also important is that when you enter an instance, only people in your party can effect it. Which basically means that no other character outside of your party can interfere or affect the instance you’re in.

Maybe as a new player you missed the importance of the favour system. As you do quests on harder difficulties it unlocks favour tiers for a player which will give little extra bonuses. One of which is House Deneith which will allow you to buy stacks of +3 returning arrows -.^

There is so much to DDO that it is hard to put it all down in one article but I think you have done well

I’ll hit you up ingame, I play under redrumm and glutezahg dercleric, don’t laugh its a long story.

That hasn’t changed. Expect to spend two hours running around town trying to find the proper merchant to sell your _______ (Armor: <500p, 501-1000p, 1001-2000p, 2001-3500p, etc.)… And the run around town looking for the right merchants for your ______ (Jewelry, Weapons, etc.) all of whom also have five or six merchants to locate and sell to.

It would be a lot easier if they created fixed backpack slots. But between the disorganized inventory and annoying Hunt For The Proper Merchant you will still spend more time dealing with inventory issues than you will playing the game.

It’s a shame.

“Some of the character details are rather bland, being that most of the faces look alike.”
Well, the image give a wrong impression … as it shows only elf/drow … you still have the possibility to change skin, eye hair color at character creation as well as several different details…

If they not completly change the Favor model as it is in the game actualy you even not need to ‘buy’ the drow race. After completing Quests you usualy get Favor Points and for a total of 400 of those Favor you unlock the Drow Race in the Character creation.

*Favor: Each Quest is usualy given by a representive or member of a Syndicate (Coin Lords, Free Agents, …). While solving Quests for a particular Syndicate your Favor in that Syndicate slowly increase till you are granted access to some house-benefits like buffs or a special shop for Syndicate members only.

mana pots on the other hand are rare things. a budding spell caster has to learn when to burn through the mana, and when to conserve it. so its probably wise to bear that in mind and not throw a ton of cash at the mana pots from the store. unlike healing your not supposed to be able to fill your backpack with tons of mana pots with your gold.

i bet blindness removal pots will sell well though, that one always catches players unaware when a certain necromancer hits you with blindness for the first time i’ve seen blind players lead out of a dungeon and through the streets to a vendor for a pot before, i’m sure the store will come in handy then!