Not terribly in favour of the prospect of mini-quests, but I can certainly see the need/appeal. Part of the problem with customs, is no matter how much Chalgyr and Enthor say they're not necessary... they -are- necessary. When you have a level 97 player complaining about how hard it is to kill anything that's worth something--and he's struggling to make kills of 50 exp at this point--with few if any customs then you know there's a problem.
One solution would be to reduce the mobile's hitting power at lower levels to reduce the reliance on customs at low levels for those who don't catch on that you need customs to survive the higher levels. Since groups are really not a reliable option for new and low level players (partly because the group range is so small, maybe it's time to expand base to 25 levels + 15 for sworn). Without reliable group access, customs become the necessity to make up for it.
Another solution would be to introduce a buff buy option at healers that grants, at the least, the sanctuary spell (which would reduce mobile damage by half), increase low level healing spells so scouts and priests are much more useful with cure/heal light/serious/critical. Getting rid of the quaff penalty(ie: getting full on potions/pills) so pills and potions of healing would actually be a viable option once more for novices so they could survive levelling much easier.
Perhaps a better solution than mini-quests would be some sort of in-game job, or something--like mining, fishing, or "farming(like farmville or harvest moon, as an example)" which could give bonus tokens, or maybe even special "bonuses" like reputation bonuses that give quest boosts or reduce timers, or something.
Yes we could use something to do between quests, but there are other things we could do to make levelling at low levels that much more plausible.
Also, get rid of hidden/invisible doors/exits in sub-100 level zones. Unless they remembered to get a faceplate in newbieland, and even then it's iffy, they'll be stuck on quests that require them to go through these hidden/invisible exits/doors until they can get customs with detects on them in the first place.