how to upgrade armour
You can either craft new armor or you can buy it from the trading post. The later is faster and easier if you have the coin. However, crafting will also gain you XP. Oh and some NPCs sell armor as well but at your level they are mostly white quality armor.
There are armor merchants in every city that will always sell you current gear. For example, since you’re lvl 11 they’d have lvl 10 and lvl 15 armor. When you hit 15 they’ll have 15 and 20, and so on. Same for the weapon merchant.
You’ll only get whites from these merchants, but if you’re a new player it’s going to be a lot easier than crafting. You can buy from the TP as well, and that’ll let you get masterwork quality and above, but searching and sorting on the TP can be a pain if you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for.
The NPC merchants will do you just fine while you’re leveling up. Once at lvl 80 you can worry about getting the good stuff. I would recommend dabbling in Jeweler at the very least so you start to get acquainted with the crafting system. Once you’re familiar with it and have more materials collected, I would start working on Armorsmith or Weaponsmith. Good luck.
Some of the “Heart” contacts will have blue and green armor and weapons with their levels being the same as the zone’s. Of course you will need to do their “quest” to access their inventory. As for who has what … don’t know but it might be in the wiki.
RIP City of Heroes