Newish Player with a few questions

[Wrack]

Hello P99,

Long time lurker, first time poster and filthy casual checking in. Played on Tunare during live, Necro/Bard through PoP and quit around GoD. Been around project 1999 off and on since 2015. Grouped some early on but I do quite a bit of soloing too. I've even been lucky enough to participate in a couple events (velious launch and halloween 2016) to a small degree which was a blast.

Highest I've been able to get to on my main is 36 (shaman). I usually only get to play 10-15 hours a week and I've run into a few questions and figured I'd reach out here and ask.

1) After looking at all the gear/spells that are required for a proper shaman I've grown a bit discouraged. Fungi, JBB, Torpor, etc seem almost out of reach for a filthy casual who's never had more than 3-5k to his name at one time. The only time I felt like I was making decent cash so far was camping treants. So maybe 3 weeks ago I started leveling a druid in hopes of generating more plat from porting people around. Didn't seem like a huge deal or investment pp wise since both toons can share a lot of wis gear. Druid is currently at 25 (twinked with 200 wis and decent hp gear) and I thought about stopping at 34 to be able port to a decent # of locations. Is this a viable plan? Or should I just stick it out with the shaman and grind out some lvls so I can farm specters or something better? I guess my end goal is being able to main the shaman and contribute to groups/a guild in the future.

2) I spend one night out of the week playing with a RL buddy doing an iksar shaman (him)/ monk (me) duo. We're lvl 20-21 and finally ready to run away from Kurns/FoB. We tried out Lake of Ill Omen but everything seems either green or very red. Does anyone have any suggestions on where we could head to maximize our xp by not having to move again for a bit?

Thanks much guys!