OK, I'm only a level 31 and this is my first world (rank 386, Arizona), but I would like to kick in with some advice.
First, listen to JoxerTM. He has given you excellent choices on how to spend your character points and that, for me at least, was the biggest concern in the beginning. So, be a (basically) pure something or other (trapper seems to be the most popular).
Join a town that is active: 10 or more members, shops level 5 or higher. That way you are going to get the benefit of good items and people online to chat with. Because there are HIDDEN QUESTS in this game and junk like that. But you're going to have to get that info from your teammates and from the in-town forums. I don't want to drop any spoilers here. Just know that they exist and you NEED them.
It may not seem like it now, at a low level, but energy points are actually precious in this game. Learn how to maximize them. For instance, if you see you are about to level up, set up as many jobs as you can beforehand and even do some duels -- anything to drop your energy down close to zero, because you're going to get all that back when you level up.
Another conservation method, don't sit around for long with your energy points at 100, because then you are not regenerating so you're essentially losing those points.
Visit Weststats.com - there are some cool tools in there for managing items and jobs. You may not need it now. But you will soon. Because you'll soon have many items to juggle with many different bonuses and set options.
My personal favorite helper utility is this Firefox browser add-on:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/fi...he_saloon_bar-3.0-fx.xpi?src=search&confirmed
Start to collect those items that are part of sets. Look out for them in stores. Here is a link to the clothing sets:
http://www.weststats.com/Itemsets/
The farmer set is pretty easy to get early on and it adds +2 to all four attributes plus a bunch of labor points. But, then, I am in town CCB and we have the complete farmer set in our store, so ... (contact Jane Average in-game if you're interested in joining).
Hmm that's all I can think of for now. I'm sure others will want to present their own little tips. (That's what she said.)