The helm is nice. For a mage, there are one or two pieces in the dragon tower that have decent AC and boost hp. Also, the elemental bracelet is ALWAYS in, even in multiple amounts. I don't think it has AC, but still...at least it ups hp. Also, the ruby rings up hp by like twenty a piece, I think, and they're non-rare. Took me forever to find them though. I had known about them on AR, then located them here, but just...couldn't...find...them. It was very frustrating.
Basic gear.
Basic invoker re-equipping plan: get a staff, hide. Once you're ready, go and kill someone, get all corpse; wear all. Repeat as needed. Tadaa!
Edit: Take a nodisarm and/or nodrop high-level staff. For goods, there used to be a nice requestable rare one next to Val Miran. No idea if it's still there or there's something better and easier to get. For evil ones, take whatever you can get your hands on, and work your way up to melancholic sceptre and the like.
(2) a small coin lies here.
-Aj'd
THis is why I liked playing Nekromna. I would die to a knight, summon two outlaws get a clay shield and a dented mace kill them and get my eq back. I seemed to kill alot more often just wearing that. That's a cleric though, they basically only need that.
when i first started becoming half-way decent in pkill i found i could always kill better when i was poorly equiped...finally i realized i was holding back to much when i was "decked" and that was giving my opponents an edge....now that i know how to equip MUCH BETTER than i did on past toons i find my pkills get better as i am not afraid to lose my gear. When i played
So personally i go 110% all out no matter what awesome gear i have shrug
For basic equipment, really there is no defined set...there are pieces that can sub in for other pieces...my reccomendation, explore the lesser aabahran. I personally played several different "style" toons lerning what sets worked for each...necromancer, invokers, rangers, monk all need different stats and perform differently. Another way to "improve" your game is to make a toon with identify and start your own dbase, a long time ago i made a battlemage, power ranked to 50 (excellent for eq gathering) and identified every piece of equipment i could find...there is no rule against keeping your own files of things and once you do you will be VERY happy with the results. Of course i am a very strong user of access and .net 
since i work with it for a living, but tracking things like the different saves, ac, hit/dam, health, mana, special buffs, procs like healing and poison etc and some remarks for location and mob can be a powerful
resource.
nothing beats being able to query a dbase for weapon sockets and see the stats and location of everyone in the game.
another pointer is to METHODOLICALLY explore...type area, go down the list...it seems like work at times, but boy does it let you focus on the other aspects of the game..like pkill and rp 