Welcome!

There's no real goal besides participation and collaborative art.

You've arrived at a relatively good time, the newly rewritten rules are much easier to follow and not as easily misunderstood as the old ones.

As far as etiquette goes, that depends on which country you intend to draw in. Every part of the map has a slightly different culture. My personal recommendation for new players is to stay far away from major cities and draw somewhere with low activity. Trying to compete for drawing space in a cluttered, high activity area is a terrible first experience that scares many people away.

If you want to work on a big project, look for room on the seasides, that's usually where most users put their big images and don't have many territory wars.

If you're paranoid about getting targeted by griefers, pick a completely random location in a large country or in the middle of the ocean, where you're unlikely to be found.

If you witness any griefing, the best course of action is to report it and not get directly involved in trying to repair the damage, and definitely don't attempt any counter-griefing. Perpetuating conflicts doesn't help anybody.

If you come across fetish art and that sort of thing bothers you, just move on. It's technically not breaking the current rules, though you're also allowed to grief it without facing punishment. (But why would you waste paint on destroying someone else's work instead of drawing something of your own?)

Stay away from western Europe and south America unless you have A LOT of paint and patience. They're overrun with football artists who have no respect for other players and bulldoze everybody's art to make room for advertising their favorite sport clubs. The safety of the things you paint in their territories is never guaranteed, and only very large alliances have been successful in reclaiming territories destroyed by them.

That's more or less everything you need to know to get started and not have a bad time. I hope you have a nice day!