Frame rate drops badly in Field of Bone

[Weaselblighter]

I have been playing in the old-world zones for a while and never had any performance issues other than a little lag/frame rate drop in the Qeynos newbie area, where lots of mobs are tightly packed. I tried creating an iksar, though and when I go out to FoB to the newbie area I get a horrible performance drop when looking straight out to the open area.

I have tried the steps given in the FAQ; tried compatibility mode for eqgame.exe (to windows 7 and XP both), tried turning down my max frame rate in game to 30, tried running as Admin, even tried installing and running under WinEQ2. No effect, I still get a problem in FoB.

I don't know if there are any other zones that cause a problem; the only other Kunark zone I tried (other than Cabilis which didn't seem to cause any issue) was Swamp of No Hope, which seemed OK.

Are there any specific settings I can try in the display options or any other steps I can try to make FoB playable?