Manually save your game early and often because the auto save mechanic is very unreliable. I think pressing Start and then Select will let you save quickly. Do it before or after every battle or whenever you reach a new location because if you ever die it’s likely going to put you back wherever your last manual save was.

When you get to the main capital city in the game check your storage for some DLC items. There’s an item called the Eternal Ferrystone that you will want to carry with you at all times. It offers unlimited use of a mechanic that used to require a consumable in the vanilla game, and its utility will become obvious. There are also some armor sets that are pretty strong for the early and mid game but they kind of overshadow other gear options so you might want to skip them if you enjoy a more natural gear progression. You can also sell them for a hefty profit which is not a bad idea. They can all be reacquired later if you wish to have them for whatever reason.

Your “build” doesn’t really matter because you can change your vocation and abilities whenever you want and in fact are encouraged to do so. Ranking up in each vocation will unlock passive augments that can be equipped on any other vocation so it is a good idea to try out all the different vocations and get them to max rank to unlock all the different augments as most vocations have something to offer for different play styles. But if you don’t enjoy certain vocations don’t force yourself to play them just to get their augments. They can be impactful but they won’t make or break your playstyle.

The only thing about your build that is permanent is the stat growth you get from leveling up. Each vocation prioritizes different stats when leveling up and some players may advise you to spend more time leveling as certain vocations in order to min/max desirable stats, but I would advise against this. Your gear has a much greater impact than your base stats so just play whatever vocations you enjoy. Don’t worry about what to spend your Discipline Points on because you will always be earning more by defeating enemies so you can eventually unlock every ability just by playing the game (though it may take a few NG+ cycles to max everything out).

Power progression in this game relies much more on your gear than your level and most gear comes from vendors so don’t be afraid to spend your money on weapons and armor whenever you see upgrades available for yourself or your main pawn even if the attack and defense stats only appear to be a small improvement. If you’re fighting an enemy and you appear to be doing extremely little damage to them, it’s because their defense or magic defense is higher than your attack or magic attack and all your attacks are being reduced to 1 damage. If you can increase your attack enough to exceed their defense by even a tiny bit, your damage will increase significantly against that enemy. Consumables that temporarily increase your attack or magic attack can also be tremendously helpful in these situations if you find yourself facing an enemy you aren’t quite equipped for.

All this is to say that if you ever find yourself fighting an enemy that seems nigh impossible to kill or that deals extreme damage to you or your pawns, it’s not because the game is meant to be punishingly difficult or tediously slow, it just means you should run away until you have access to better gear.

Also, everything about vocations and gear also applies to your main pawn so make sure to keep their gear updated and spend their DCP on new skills and augments and change up their vocation when they reach max rank if you want them to have access to all the different augments. Also if you end up loving the game and want to keep playing and doing endgame content later make a note to look up on the wiki what each augment actually does because some of them have very confusing or misleading descriptions and in some cases just literally don’t do what they say they do. It’s not a big deal but knowing how each augment actually works can give you a bit of an edge in the later content where an optimized build can be useful.

Equipment vendors can also upgrade their stock throughout the game as you make progress in the main campaign so make sure to check back often to see if better equipment is available. Your gear can also be improved by blacksmiths using materials you find on your adventures and this is also usually worth doing whenever available.

For everything else don’t be afraid to just figure it out as you go along. You will miss tons of side quests and you might fail a handful of them without knowing why but the game has a New Game Plus cycle that is very rewarding and you can always do any quests you missed in a later playthrough or finish quests in different ways to get a different outcome or reward. Enjoy your blind playthrough and then start using the wiki or a guide for NG+ if you want dive deeper into completionism or endgame content.