Welcome to the game.
Be prepared to have your views challenged, possibly twisted, and most probably insulted. Probably several times.
Now on to a few tips: be weary of people, as they tend to shoot you in the face as often(if not more so) than not.
-If you are solo with no help, a good build to work with is a simple Smallgun(referred to often as just SG here)crafter + whatever... burster/sniper in this case. Basically your combat skill doubles as your craft-required one, saving skill points. Of course the flaw of such a build is compromised Everything. Jack of all trades, master of none and such. It will be useful though, as you make what you need to get by, kill NPC encounters for other stuff you want, and then use your Crafting skills to supplement yourself. A balancing act based mostly upon taste.
-I suggest you try to use the wiki to familiarize yourself with some of the Perks and Skills ingame, as there are slight differences between this and the vanilla games. Such as presently: Barter does not function the same, Gambling has absolutely no function yet, and using Melee is an easy way to Death. Alot. Usually in a messy fashion. It's a fun skill but when people you are fighting have a bursting weapon, that's just throwing yourself on the sword there.
-The game has a Line of Sight (or however you want to term it) right now, and if you want to see your limits, used the Q and W keys to bring up two colored lines. One is for the range of your weapon, the green line is the extent and 'shape' of your sight. Really not sure how effective or absolute the shape is but anyway.
-The F6 key puts names over players heads. This will be useful for remembering who shot you in the face, as this will happen. It is a certainty.
Now as short as I had hoped... but that should hopefully help you a bit.
Oh, and there is always the odd quest for XP and caps/$$$. Again, look upon wiki or ask the IRC for information. OR better yet, ask ingame. I find the experience interesting to actually bother people ingame for that, then you have a reason to shoot them for the snarky reply!
