That's good to see things improve a bit as one levels up. I didn't even think to click the map to teleport. And here I've been running around lol.
The early game still not having them makes things go a little bit slowly, especially as far as getting money is concerned for forging. My criticism with Ahkma was mostly just the fact the location changed from WH. There wasn't much of a reason to have the move happen.
The merchants in the major cities default to magic items. I don't think you can buy outright vanilla ones.