I could recommend to you all the most powerful job/ability combinations, or what a good strategy for learning stuff is, but that would ruin all the fun of experiencing and learning the game for the first time.

Just note that the War of the Lions changed a lot of the names so you may have trouble following some of the things old die-hards myself are saying. I've played both, but it is probably over 500hrs of play time in favor of the original, so the old names are usually the first that pop into my head.

EDIT: Oh, and post a lot in this forum. It is far to ghost-town-ish for my liking.