Yeah, the game can be a bit overwhelming. The scope of what you can do in the game was what appealed most to me, i'd only played one MMO before (The Secret World) and really got into that, and for a while had been missing it but at the same time not really wanting to go back to it, so BDO seemed fantastic. However i treated it more like an open world survival like ARK, gathering tons of resources, unlocking new stuff i could build (buying the property to make stuff) and also trying to do all aspects of the game at the same time. I still have a tendency to do that, but im more aware of how its not that sort of game and its not ideal because progression is extremely slow if your moving 4-5 aspects (combat, fishing, horse training, gathering resources, cooking etc) rather than being a bit more focused.
A couple of useful pointers:
Combat Points unlock new or better versions of combat skills. Some skills unlock freely, particularly the basic move, after that as you level better versions can be unlocked with points.
Energy is used in a few ways, most commonly each time you gather a resource from a bush/tree/rock/animal it takes 1 energy. When hiring workers it takes 5EN to look at a random worker, it can consume a lot of energy quickly. Some information you'll need to get will cost energy (it will say '10 energy' next to the button etc), and the stupid amity minigames use energy too. You'll recover 1EN every 3min on the character you're using, any alts do recover but its much slower not sure what the timing is. Its something you'll not use much, but when you do, it can go very quickly. Knowing what its used for will hopefully mean you'll knowingly use it as you see fit so its not drained without realising.
Your total energy size can be increased by completing sets of knowledge, for example meeting all the main NPCs in a town might grow your energy total by +2. You can easily identify people you've not met as they have a ? on the minimap. Its worth trying to find everyone when you first arrive at a new location, or if your passing by and see one.
Contribution Points (CP) is pretty significant, you earn CP xp doing missions for almost everyone, some more than others. Unlocking CP allows you to spend it in unlocking property in towns as well as connecting towns to nodes. Some nodes dont do much for you, but plenty are resource nodes. Unlocking these will allow 1 worker to go there and gather that specific resource for you and bring it back to the warehouse in the town they're situated in. Node need to be linked, so you might need to buy
junk nodes just to connect to something you do want. Properties have a few functions, storage adds more slots to that towns warehouse, residences let you cook & craft alchemy stuff, workshops let your workers craft things provided the resources are in that towns storage, and lodges let you hire more workers (1 worker basically sleeps rough, additional workers needs more lodging).
Workers - Theres 3 types: human, goblin & giant, and 5 tiers of ability (white, green, blue, gold, orange). Humans are good all round, goblins are quick but have small stamina pools, and giants are slower but have more stamina. Each time they do a task, it takes 1 stamina, and you typically recover their stamina with beer which you can buy from the marketplace or make yourself as its a very cheap & worthwhile item to craft.
Professions - Theres 10 in total, each time you do some gathering, fishing, cooking etc you gain a little XP in that profession. As you level it, it lets you use better items, like higher gathering lets you use better tools with more durability and faster gather speeds. With combat stuff, your never really denied using stuff above your level. The life skills are the exact opposite unfortunately, its quite horrible early on, because everything breaks so quickly and take much longer to do something, you've not got many inventory slots to carry a bunch of tools, so its a real PITA. Its worth buying some green grade tools on the marketplace, they'll do 30 uses and are slightly faster, compared to 10 uses from a tool vendor.
You'll quickly find that you'll constantly be wishing you had just a few more contribution points, its these which tend to scale your ability to build your own worker empire, as you realise you could do with X & Y resources, and when you've bought those you realise you'll need another worker which requires lodging, and more often than not, the property you want requires buying those earlier in the property chain, meaning yet more CP required
Some useful resources:
http://bddatabase.net/us/search You can find tons of info on here, info on quests if your stuck, recipes for cooking & alchemy, where to find certain NPCs if someone on reddit/forums says go to them.
http://www.somethinglovely.net/bdo A brilliant world map, its fantastic for knowing EXACTLY where almost every resource can be found (every pine tree is listed, for example, wild animals, plants, rocks...) as well as helping to find resource nodes with what your looking for.
I have tons more bookmarked, but they're probably more useful to you in 1-2 weeks and are specific to certain professions etc.
Cooking beer (
recipe link) is a fantastic place to get started though, the 'cereals' your worker can gather from you around Velia, which is the first town you visit (2nd technically), and the other ingredients can be bought from an NPC cook in the bar. Not only does beer keep your workers working for you, but it has a chance of creating one of 5 different byproducts at the same time. One of those byproducts lets you exchange those dishes for contribution xp, another for cooking xp, the others are eggs, beer, and silver. So a lot of people grind CP through cooking more beer than they really need, its also something that sells on the marketplace relatively well - enough to pay for itself. You'll just be limited by how much of the cereals you can get hold of.
I guess thats quite a lot to take in, but IMO it covers a lot of the basics and explains what this stuff is that the game tells you you've just gained, why you want it, how to get more, and how you use it, so you that side of things doesnt confuse you or need googling with snippets of info (i think its a pretty complete summary of them).
? Im reluctant to pay for this game as i believe it's free everywhere else ? But really want to try it. Maybe a try of it myself may result in me changing my mind on it's value 
