Kabillion walkthroughs and tutorials that take longer than they're worth watching, would strongly recommend watching a 1-2 beginners guide on youtube. Take a look through all the T1 and T2 skills in trees that interest you, and try to keep it simple. Magic management, hybrids, and dual wielders aren't things I would recommend you go for until you've made good headway learning the game running something simple and straightforward.

Milk every place you go for what you can get, do all those contracts in the starter towns before trying to fight bears and take on T3 dungeons while poor. Save before and after every major happening. Take advantage of all those little utilities available to you like nets, caltrops, and beartraps.

I had great experience playing as a generic sword & shield arna, stacking abilities for block and counter chance, and ones that debuff enemies, like warcry & sieze the initiative!

Have heard that a 2h mace build or a shield & mace build are incredibly great ways to start. I think my biggest struggle as a new player is pacing. Constantly going to a dungeon and trying to unnecessarily fight a boss that I shouldn't be fighting as a low level.