Ok, so, here we go. This will be a mighty long post as it is going to cover quite the tonnage of information. Much of this is found by playing through the game and reading stuff, others are from forums, and still more from my own experiences.
Without further ado....
It starts...
What exactly starts? well, your character in fact... Create your character if you haven't already and go ahead and do the tutorial. This will get you into the tune of things a bit. Not fully, but it will help with some of the basic movement and fighting moves. Next start doing quests, all of them that you see that are yellow !'s (the blue !'s are for dailies usually, which are noted below about).
As you are doing your starting quests, you may see things around on your minimap that when hovered over show as "mountain demon grass", "zinc ore", and "ash wood". These are where nodes of gatherable materials are. If you're doing your quests, you'll actually be taken to get all three gathering skills as part of a chain of quests. These gatherables are for crafting skills and donations to guilds. More on the crafting and donation bits later.
One of the first things that pop into everyone's zone chat at some point in time while in Howling Mountains zone:
"Where's Treasure hunt #? at?" Well, while you may think this isn't much of a quest... it in fact is the start of the longest chain of quests in the game.
Ok, so, after you get the quest, you should actually re-talk to Lola again, you don't even have to look at the clues... just talk to her, and guess where the location is, and she'll tell you if you're right. The first time you actually MUST do this, as the pile doesn't trigger sometimes if you don't talk to her. The locations of the hints and stuff are in the order of difficulty of the little caves... the lowest level cave with monsters in it is in the south, I forget the name of it all the time, but it's on the south wall LOL.
The next difficulty cave is actually moongorge ... now at this time, there's usually another question that pops up
"Where is Mr. Pumpkin" ... just outside moongorge is a little tent with a guy by the name of Justin, talk to him about it

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Then you go to the dead tree caves, then to barrens cave.
The last one can be tricky as sometimes there's an elite monster back there that can pretty much pwn you if you're not ready LOL. Once you've gotten the part 4 done, you'll have a full treasure map thing that even has some coordinates on it that you'll want to go to, on that map is an accept quest button, click it to activate the pile, then take that to Lola to finish that part off... this quest chain leads around the world, ending on an epic level 50 rated quest

and it is quite hard that last one... no way to do it solo.
GAH How do I dismount!
Well, while this question comes up kind of rarely, I've seen a couple posts about it before, so I figure it deserves mention. At some time in your early life in the game, (I believe the second gift bag has a 1 day) you'll get a mount. Be it horse, or wartiger, you'll need to dismount that beast! Well, there are a few ways to do this. First, which is the way they most recently added in; If you've got your beast on an action bar slot, you can re-use that button and it will dismount you. Quite nice of course. The next way, which was the way everyone told you how to do before, and some still do of course; In your top right corner of the screen are your buffs and debuffs, any buff you've got can be right clicked to dismiss that buff yourself, including that of your horse. And the last couple ways, either start fighting something, cast a spell/skill, or start gathering ... all of these will take you off your mount and start doing whatever you were telling the game to do.
Gather nodes? Crafting?
Ok, so I mentioned a little bit ago about the gather nodes and crafting. After getting all of the gathering skills, the lumber trainer will actually have a quest for you to gather some ash lumber and refine it if I remember correctly. Watch your minimap, and when you see a brown icon, that's a lumber node, head over there, and when you find a node, make sure that someone else isn't already gathering from it (you'll see them swinging an axe, pickaxe, or look like they're messing with something in front of them when they're gathering wood, ore, or herbs) and go ahead and gather from it. I say make sure someone else isn't already gathering because it's quite rude to start gathering on someone elses node. Each node will have randomly between 1 and 6 gathers on it.
Once you get up and over to Logar, you'll see the crafting skill trainers. You can actually pick up EVERY craft and gathering skill in the game! Now, the crafting skills take a good deal of time, effort, and a metric tonnage of gathered materials to level the crafts up. Each and every skill you've picked up (gathering, crafting and planting) if you've picked them all up, you may have noted that the trainers said something about maxing out at 20 skill. And that's true. Each skill you grab will have an initial max point of 20. Once you get a skill up to 20, you can get a quest to un-cap that skill. You can un-cap 6 skills to be able to max out at level 40. Again, when you get a skill to 40, you can get another quest to un-cap it. This time, only 3 skills can be un-capped, and they will go up to 60. Once you get a skill to 60, yet another quest will be available. But this time, only ONE skill can be un-capped to get maxxed out at 80.
You can downgrade an uncapped skill down one notch if you need to bring something else up and beyond. When you re-cap something back down a notch, if you were to later uncap it again, you would need to re-grind it up from the cap you just had it at.
Dual class?!? When / how / WHAT?
Ok, so, the next thing that may pop in your head: When do I get dual class? Well, that's easy... at level 10, you'll get a pop up message to talk to the mayor of Logar. He'll have a few quests for you to do, and they all lead you to Veranas.
To get there, head north out of Howling mountains into silverspring, following the road (there shouldn't be any red named monsters that you can't handle at this point) to the northeast you'll eventually find a large bridge, this is Veranas.
Just by the bridge is a guard that will take one of the mayors quests, then head on over to the left side of the bridge, you'll see a blue clothed girl, talk to her and teleport to the class hall. Here you'll need to go around a wall and talk to your current class's instructor, where they'll tell you about doing dual class a little bit. You'll then be able to pick your second class. now ... WAIT ... don't just choose "I want to become a XXXX" ... you can NOT change your secondary once it's chosen (unless they have another sale of the item shop item "Fruit of Forgetting" ... but don't count on that much).
Here's where I go against the flow of things a bit. First and foremost, you need to think about what job/class you'd like to also level up on the side. Most people pick their first class that they mainly want to be at character creation, sometimes not so much ... in either case, this secondary class is basically there to support whichever class you'd be playing mainly. BUT where I go against the flow is to say to do what YOU want to do, don't go cookie cutter just because it works and is fully uber or whatever (the vast majority of the servers seem to be either Mage/Priest or Knight/Warrior (or /Priest) .. this is vastly due to the overpowerdness of these class combinations currently for solo play. I myself was going to do the cookie cutter rogue/scout ... as that's supposedly great for DPSing, but I found I couldn't stand playing the scout side of things... I got lucky and actually managed to get a fruit of forgetting to reset my secondary away from scout and got mage ... something I enjoy doing anyway. I had created a new character just for the rogue/mage combo just because the fact that you can't re-choose your secondary at that time... now I don't have to worry about grinding two classes up I can just do the one ... but that's stepping away from the subject LOL.
Take up what you want to do on the side, or even sometimes as your main. Knights are great for tanking, they get to wear plate. Warriors can wear chain and can use most every weapon in the game. Rogues get dual wield at 16, and some great dodge. Scouts are ranged attackers and the only class that can use bows/crossbows. Priests, well of course they can heal... but did you know they can cause MASS damage too? and even put a shield on other players to keep them from taking damage while you heal them up. Mages, yea... thermonuklear devices those things LOL ... nuke the HP right out of everything, they also have a minor shield thing (doesn't last as long as priests, nor does it absorb as much damage, but it's still nice) that covers only themselves.
Guilds & Donations
Vary it be the nature of things, you may have seen up to this point while leveling some zone chats about joining a guild. You may have even seen some scrolling messages at times saying that "such and such a guild is formerly established". There are many types of guilds in every server. Ranging from full on raiding guilds that like to set up regular raids on some dungeons, to social guilds that just like to chit-chat between the members.
Each guild requires some donations to level up. These donations are in the form of the gathered ore, wood, and herbs, along with gold donations. There are also the Guild runes you may have picked up here and there (they're more common now than they used to be), these are donated into "magical essence", which are used for guild castle upgrades. When donating, it is advisable to refine your gathers to the green quality (first refining) before donating, as it earns quite a bit more than raw materials or further refining. There are other posts here on the forums about the guild castle and it's expenses for the upgrades, so I won't go into that here.
Leveling your secondary
Now comes the question: How do you level up your secondary class? ... well, you actually have to either talk to the class administrator there in the class hall, or you go into your house and talk to your house maid. The only class that gains experience and TP is your current primary. "But XXX class is my primary not YYY... I chose XXX first!" no, get that thought out of your mind ... your primary is whatever class that is currently getting exp from kills and quests.
Ok, so quests, yes, they're the staple of leveling up here. Grinding is not a very feasable option unfortunately. Well, you've already done a bunch of quests around pioneers camp and Logar... probably not much more for you right? ... wrong... there's a nifty spell you'll get in your skill book's general tab that is called "Transport: Reifort" ... this is a second starting area that is made especially for leveling your secondary class! This place is huge, it's got some interesting quests and can bring your secondary class from 1 all the way to 23 very easily if you do all the quests here. Use one side of the world for one class, and the other side for your other class. Please do make note, that the Howling mountains / Silverspring / Aslan Valley areas all have set equipment you can get from quest series, the Reifort / dragonfang ridge areas do NOT. So you may want to actually try to level whichever class you really do like to have as a main class over in the first areas for the good set equipment, and your secondary over in the other.
Teleporting? what?
Ok so just out the north exit of Logar is a Snoop dog ... and I do mean that literally ... his name is Snoop, and he's a dog... go go devs having fun LOL. Just outside Veranas is another Snoop dog, make sure you talk to him, as that will open the teleport gateway between Veranas and Logar (10 g Trip cost). There is one Snoop in every zone, usually near a city/outpost. These different teleports are not open to everything (you can't teleport from Logar to Lyk) each one has specific connections that you have to open to be able to use.
Now that I'm talking about this... when you go to Reifort, the first thing you'll probably want to do is head on up to the northeast, towards Obsidian Stronghold (OS), inside the entryway, behind a pillar, is a teleport girl, use her to teleport over to the battle square... now, BEWARE .... head to the northeast, you'll see snoop off to the left... DO NOT GO PAST HIM!!!!!!!!!! I say this because this zone you're in is full of level 40+ monsters and quests

and they won't blink to eat a newbie. Once you've opened that telepoint, you can go from here to Veranas for 50g and not have to worry about having your recall or Logar Delivery spell available. Head back to the teleport girl there at the battle square, now go ahead and teleport to the trade square (where you initially came in from). head on back to Riefort and do your fun there LOL
Runes??
Well, this IS "Runes of Magic" .. runes are little gems of sorts that when attached to rune slots of equipment, will give you those powers on that rune. You have to note that not every piece of equipment has rune slots, and therefore can't take runes without using a cash shop item. Also note that you cannot put a rune that is a higher tier than the item you're trying to put it into (You can't put a Tier 2 rune into a Tier 1 item). There are some special runes you can make that combine stats, but you shouldn't have to worry about this for a LONG time...
Gift bags!
So you've been leveling, probably opening up that gift bag right? ... probably running out of inventory and no clue what some of those items you're getting are right? ... no worries. Items that you get from the gift bag will sometimes have "Item Shop Item" in yellow written on them. Don't store these in your backpack! ... in your backpack there's a button (you probably chose to not open it every time you open your backpack) at the bottom for the item shop backpack (little present icon). This Item shop backpack only holds things that are marked with "item shop item" ... this is also where your item shop purchases will go. So don't feel bad to abuse it and put all those things in there to save you some room!
Every level you will get a new bag inside the bag ... up to a point at least ... at level 20, the bags start coming every 5 levels instead of every level. Upon opening your level 30 gift bag, you won't get a new one and probably wonder what happened. No worries, by this time you should probably be out in Ystra area, there's some "cold weather trainer" people around that have a chain of quests that if you complete the chain, you'll get the level 35 bag, and from there, the every 5 level bag will come to you from the previous bag, all the way to 50!
Yellow stars on equipment
What are they about? well, that's simply the rarity of the item... the more stars, the more rare it is to find.
Arcane Transmuter? ... what is it and what's it for?
Ok, so at level 10, also in the class hall, you'll get a quest that gives you the arcane transmutor (AT) and 10 free charges on it. Well, this little gem of a tool sits in your backpack as an icon at the bottom that looks like a treasure chest. Opening this grants you another free 5 inventory spots you can throw things you want to keep... but that's not really what it's for obviously LOL. There are MANY things you can do with it.
Firstly, you can take 5 runes that are of the same tier and combine them in the AT to make a single rune of the same type, only one tier higher. Seems like a bit of a waste, but it's not that bad.
Secondly, you can make whole NEW runes! ... you can find out about these via the RuneCraft addon or from other posts with the recipies. Each combination takes up an AT charge.
Thirdly, you can have the TRUE purpose and reasoning behind the name of it ... and that's to transmute stats onto different things! This part gets really complicated, so if you're not fully interested in this, or if you're just wanting to look at it again later... go ahead and scroll down

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There are little items called fusion stones. The item shop has purified ones for sale for diamonds or phirius tokens (gotten from dailies more on this later). These purified ones are to be able to pull some stats that you desire off of another item without "dirtying" it up. There are also some fusion stone vendors in Veranas and Obsidian Stronghold.
When a fusion stone is combined with a piece of equipment (weapon/armour/accessory), you create a mana stone of a tier that is USUALLY the same tier as the item that you transmuted from. I say usually because there are some exceptions ... level 10 break items (10, 20, 30, 40, 50) may say one tier, but transmute into a lower tier, or in the case of level 50 epics, go UP a tier. Whatever you decide to take stats from, gets turned into a mana stone, the item is destroyed.
So, now you've got a mana stone of some tier, with some stats on it. One thing to make note of, think of all the stats from everything that is in the AT when you're combining as being put into a sort of pool. Each stat that is there has a weight ... higher tier stats are heavier and sink to the bottom of the pool, while lower tier stats will float gently to the top. Please note that double named stats (Yellow names) have a tier on them as well, but you should double that number when considering weight for them... (a yellow V version stat is weighted like a green X stat) When whatever is done in the AT, the 6 lightest stats will be put onto whatever the result is.
Once you have a mana stone with some desirable stat on it that you want to put onto something else. ... well, take into note what I just had stated with the whole bit of the heavy and light stats. Now, to put a stat onto another item, you need THREE mana stones of the same tier with whatever item you want the stats to be on. Remember, EVERYTHING that is in the AT contributes to the "pool" that the 6 stats come from.
Now, there is also some other things you can do here ... three of the same tier MANA stone will make one mana stone of the next tier up. again, watch the pool.
If you take three mana stones that are the same tier ... we'll say they're tier 4 ... then apply those three tier 4 mana stones to an item ... that item will not only get those stats from the pool, but will become tier 4 itself! ... Now remember what I stated earlier about the runes and rune slots? You could then make a tier 4 rune to put in a rune slot of a tier 4 item! Of course, this takes A LOT of AT charges to do some of these projects, so it's advised to not look too much into this kind of thing until you're 45+ (unless you've got money to burn).
When you do the above little trick with the tier 4 mana stones and everything, that is known as "tiering up" an item. There are two ways to Tier Up stuff... you can do it clean and low, or High and dirty. The clean and dirty terms I use are in reference to the stats that are being transferred over to the item. Usually tier 4 is done clean (as stated earlier some 50 epic stuff turns into tier 4 mana stones) and then applied to whatever they want to have with the great stats. And then another thing is severely tiered up, and is advisable to be done to whatever weapon you are wanting to use for a long time, as tiering up will make that weapon have much higher stats for attack/magic attack. So the stats that get transferred over aren't really cared about.
Please take note that tiered up items can be turned into a mana stone, but be aware, that the tier of the mana stone will be the tier of the BASE of that item, meaning what it would have turned into for tier before you tiered it up. (If you took a tier 2 item and tiered it up to tier 7, then made that item into a mana stone, the mana stone would be tier 2, not 7)
Dailies
So, every day you can do up to 10 Dailies for free (I say for free, because you can reset your dailies with an item shop item) ... This means you can get (usually) 100 phirius tokens. I say usually there because there is a level 37 daily out in a hidden part of Ystra area that will give 20 tokens instead of the normal 10, but you can only do this once per day... so max of 110 you can get in a day.
You can pick up dailies (and other quests) when you are within 2 levels of the daily (unless it's a special daily like the wanted ones in Logar, which are meant for a party). Dailies will reset at 9:00 AM Eastern time (GMT-5). You can turn in these dailies (and other quests) when your level is within 10 of the difficulty of the quest (get a level 22 quest on one class, and if your other class is only level 12, it can hand in the completed quest)
Here I'll mention those Phirius tokens that you get from doing dailies... what they're for is in the item shop there's a tab for spending these tokens. one item you may look at of course, is the ability to have a semi-permanent mount! ... for 14 days worth of dailies (1400 tokens) you can get a brown horse that will last for 30 days... so you can pretty much always have a horse available for you to use as long as you do all your dailies every day

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So, sorry for the LO~NG post, and everything, but hey, it's a bunch of infos.
This is basically a re-post of what information I put up on my guild's site, with some minor edits here and there. I thought it was good enough to put here too

enjoy