First of all, when creating a char always choose "Advanced" at class selection. Other classes will bug out with stats and you want 2 hard to train skills at 50 to start with. Set your STR as high as possible no matter what char you're creating. Good starting skills for fighting chars would be resisting spells, healing, magery, poisoning, meditation. Blacksmithy, mining, alchemy, fishing, taming for crafters.

Actually, resistance should be mandatory on any fighting char. Healing would be perfect as a second skill for a new player. It'll make training and survining much more easier. Take provocation at 0 as the third skill always (unless you know better). Make sure you finish tutorial on every char or at least get to zombies for additional +10 to STR, DEX. It'll take about half an hour, but is worth it. After tutorial you'll get teleported to a newbie town Cove, you can get into it for a month. Your clothes and some items will disappear at some point, so get rid of them before that (that includes clothes, spellbook (NPC Mages sell empty newbied ones)).

New chars can't die for 2 weeks unless they turn criminal or gain a kill count. You'll get teleported back to newbie starting town Cove. It's a good time to train to be able to stand up to tougher monsters with better loot once those 2 weeks are over. Save few days for exploring the dungeons and lands too. Always helps knowing your surroundings and what is where.

First of all train macefighting on dummies to get to 60 STR to be able to wear full plate. Then use stealth to build up DEX, then choose a melee skill and train as a warrior (use shield). Spare money should go on bandies and don't forget to cut zombies/ghouls for bandies and skeletons for bones which you can either sell later or use to train alchemy. Later you can change easily to a tankmage or a mage if the need arises. Or create a new char for that once you have some money for reagents saved. The course should be similar: resistance mandatory, might change healing for magery, first build up stats with melee, then mage skills. Avoid starting as them on a new char without support, cause reagents costs or needs a better char to hunt for.

If starting with a crafter to earn some quick money for say a house, popular choices would be smithing/mining or fishing/cooking (could change cooking for a bit harder to train skill if you knew what skills he'd have already). Don't worry about training at first, just use it to earn money for the house, so you have a place for storage and training. Up to you when to switch to other chars or if to train them all at the same time.

Plan early on your final skills. Don't pick up useless skills as you'll have a total skill cap of ~670 in usable skills (with unneeded skills deleted) and removing skills with forgetfull fish (-10% from a particular skill) costs gold (skill locks doesn't work here). You can buy most of the skills from NPCs up to ~30% too. Approach one and say "train" preceded by his name (so the needed NPC responds). He'll give you a list of skills he can train you in. Respond to that with "npc_name train skill_name" and drag the indicated amount of gold on him once he tells you how much he can teach you. Check the profession of NPC in paperdoll to have an idea what skills he might be teaching. Other NPC commands include buy, sell, bank, move, guards.

Stats you gain by using skills. Some will get you higher in particular stats, some lower. The lower your stat and the higher can a skill you're using raise it the quicker you'll gain in that stat. You can use temporary -buffs to lower your stat and gain higher than the cap is for particular skill. This includes spells, getting drunk or wearing armor. Total stat cap is 290 which you can divide however you want, but try not to go higher than say 180 in a single stat, as getting to 200+ (including +buffs) might result in massive stat loss. The INT you lose due to wearing armor is still counted, so be carefull. To get stats higher than the skill can train you'll have to buy stat fishes (+1 to a particular stat).

Skill gain is not difficulty based on Obsidian so you train skills by using it with shortest delay or with lowest resources consumption. To earn money while training crafting skills make different items, see how much NPCs pay for them, count how much you get per resource and stick to the best deal. Item quality will usually influence it's price. You won't make much money killing zombies and skeletons. For quick money kill hinds and cows, cut them, cook their ribs (just make a temp char with 50 cooking) and sell them to NPC Inkeepers. Stay fed or you'll stop naturally healing too.

Gonna list in short what different skills do to help on chars planning.

• Alchemy - big help for a pvper, can earn good money once good, can be cheap but cumbersome to train.
• Anatomy - boost to bandie heal and melee damage, kept at 60.0 in pvp to heal through poison, easy to train.
• Animal Lore - helps taming if high enough, easy to train.
• Archery - a must for a warrior.
• Arms Lore - helps to repair successfully, easy to train.
• Blacksmithing - good money earner, more useful if there's a warrior, slow skill.
• Bowcraft/Fletching - almost useless if not for exceptional bows which you don't sell many anyway, easy to train.
• Carpentry - house decorations (needs tailoring), otherwise useless, average earner, hard to train.
• Cartography - hard to train, not worth it with the current treasure hunt system.
• Cooking - needed to cook fishes, easy but cumbersome to train.
• Evaluating Intelligence - helps meditate successfully, easy to train.
• Fencing - fast, fun in pvm, hard to go with in pvp.
• Fishing - good earner, forgetfull, stat fishes, boring to train.
• Healing - a must for any fighting char, fast to train.
• Inscription - hard, expensive to train, low earner.
• Item Identification - a must for identifying magical weapons, easy to train.
• Lockpicking - fun, easy skill, could earn some if you'd manage to dodge tough mobs around better chests.
• Lumberjacking - needed with carpentry, bowcraft, hard to train..
• Mace Fighting - a good melee skill, rare good one handed weapon to use with shield.
• Magery - usefull on any char except for warrior, as adds additional healing delay, expensive to train.
• Magic resistance - a must on any fighting char, can be lower on pvm build, very hard to train.
• Meditation - a must for mages, needs eval int, hard to train, needs Mage's Hat to use.
• Mining - needed with blacksmithy, tinkering, cumbersome to train, but semi easy.
• Parrying - good skill on warrior, blocks spells once high enough too.
• Poisoning - a must in pvp, allows throwing poison potions and makes poison spell stronger, hard to train from ~85.
• Stealth - fun, easy skill, could be made valuable in pvm or on crafters.
• Swordsmanship - good melee skill.
• Tactics - helps dodge melee attacks.
• Tailoring - good earner (especially with own cloth from sheep), special dyes at 90.1, easy to train.
• Taming - easy, helpfull skill, needs persistence and work to make money, needs Taming Stone to use.
• Taste Identification - needed to identify forgetfull fishes, doesn't need to be high.
• Tinkering - useless, easy to train skill, low earner.
• Tracking - valuable with taming, easy to train.
• Wrestling - very good for pvm with polymorph spell, otherwise useless.

Alt+O or "Options" in paperdoll to get to game settings. You'll want to change game play window to 800x600 resolution (needs restarting client) to see farther and play in a windowed mode (Alt+Enter to switch between it and fullscreen) to have space for map (Alt+R), status bar (drag on yourself), paperdoll (Alt+P or double click on yourself), journal (Alt+J), skill list (Alt+K), opened backpack (Alt+I) and other bags so all that doesn't hide your game play window. Make sure the "always run" option is unchecked (and try not to come to a complete stop when running), as that'll make the game think you're running even when standing still and stop you from naturally healing or make you fail more on skills that has a check for running. Consider turning the music off, cause it might have influence on crashing at particular situations. Take some time to figure out macro creation, those will save you a lot of trouble (single macro can contain up to 10 actions).