Important General Point
Don't level too fast - it's tempting to race through the content, but you'll quickly regret this as you get above Level 100!

Starting Out
Run through the Tutorial quests, and get to grips with the battle system. You'll be levelling after almost every quest, at the start, but try to use some of your stamina for a few Battles in between each Quest - it'll optimise your income, and give you a good grounding in the very basic mechanics of the game.

Think about what sort of Champion you would like to be, and what race you would like your army to be. Don't even get started with using units from more than one race - you'll have the resources and opportunity to do so early on, but you'll be wasting precious resources that can be optimised to give you a decent starting advantage at the early levels.

With all of the quick levelling up, at the start of the game, you will quickly amass free Blue Crystals (BCs) - don't be tempted to spend these until later in the game (Level 35ish), when you are ready to begin raiding.

Champion Stats
Early in the game, you are best using your Skill points from levelling up to increase your energy. You want to aim to increase your energy to 125 points, to ready your champion for Raiding once you are in the 30-40 level range. After you have increased your energy to 125, you will want to increase your power and stamina and life. Increase your stamina to at least 30-40 and aim to increase your power to around 150, increase your life to at least 1,000. Once you've achieved these levels, you can work on increasing all of your stats further, and by this point you'll probably have a clearer idea how you would like you champion to develop.

Networking
There are lots of Facebook groups established for all aspects of the game. A couple of decent groups to get a beginner started are:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=...339600229&ap=1
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=...000816155&ap=1

Join these groups and begin to make some contacts with people that are playing at your level. Add your details to some of the ally groups / threads / documents that are available and begin to amass some allies in the game. Ideally you are looking for allies that gift energy on a daily basis, as this will extend your playing ability each day. Conversely you need to ensure that you send energy to all of your allies on a daily basis too. Group your AoC allies into lists of 26/32 people, that you can use to quickly choose and select all from the AoC gifting page.

As you begin to collect more and more allies, the process will become self-sustaining; and you will quickly begin to receive gifts in large quantities every day. You will probably want to use an automatic gift accepter at this point - Giftbox+ is one of the many scripts that are available to use freely.

Quests
Work through the quests that are available, and take the time to max out all of the recurring side quests that are available - these usually provide you with a nice injection of cash and/or an item for free. The quests will introduce you to the background to the game and some of the basic mechanics and are well worth working through.

Battles
As you gain levels through questing, make sure that you use all of your stamina for battling. Try to upgrade your troops as soon as new units are available and purchase weapons, shields, armour, runes and talismans for each unit. As you gain levels, your 'respect' figure will increase enabling you to support more units - try to use this figure as an indicator of how many troops you should have as you increase in level (later on this may be unsustainable, but it's a good indicator in the early and middle game).

Optimising Level-ups
Always keep an eye on your XP bar. If you are very close to levelling and you have excess Energy or Stamina, you will want to use these up before you level to ensure you optimise your progress at each stage. There is a fishing quest available in Scalesong Village that costs 2 energy, and gives 0 XP plus a Fish. You can use this quest to use up any excess energy prior to levelling and then sell the Fish back to the Village for 1 XP each and some Gold after you have levelled up. To use excess Stamina got to the Battle screen and select the weaker option twice or three times - attacking weaker champions will not give give you any XP but will still give the standard 20 gold per level.

Advisors
In addition to your racial units - you also have advisors that can increase the stats of your units or your champion. Later in the game you will be able to purchase BC advisors which are some of the most effective purchases you can make.

Titans
Titans are large units that are released as you increase your allies - you also need you allies to help you out to activate them - click on the 'call for help' button on the Titan screen to post a link on your FB wall - you can also copy this link and paste manually to give your requests more bredth or depth.

Raiding
Once your champion gets to Level 35ish, you will have amassed well over 30 free BCs. Go to the champion store and purchase an Offhand [OH] BC Weapon. There will be much less choice for an OH weapon that for a mainhand weapon, and they will be less powerful than the mainhand weapons that are available. However, you need to consider this - once you begin raiding, you will be able to access mainhand weapons for your champion that are more powerful than the BC weapons and that are FREE! At this stage, there are no offhand weapons that are available from raiding or crafting, so you are far better spending your BCs on this item than any other.

You may also wish to purchase some of the champion equipment that can be bought cheaply with gold to kickstart your raiding career, but don't worry about this stuff too much as you'll soon get better from raiding.

Raids are collaborative with other champions - to begin with you will probably want to join a raid that another champion has summoned (either a Rinijn or a Dracolich). Later you may wish to summon your own and invite other champions to help you out. You can find raid links on this forum and on lots of the FB groups.

There are a few things too bear in mind when raiding. Attacks - only use the strong attacks that cost 20 energy each - each time you use a strong attack you will charge you ultimate attack gauge - once you've made six strong attacks the eye on the ultimate attack gauge will open allowing you to do an extra strong attack for only 5 energy (this is why you want your energy to be at 125 when you start raiding, as each full energy bar will allow you to make six strong attacks and one ultimate attack). Once the raid creature is dead, you will be given some loot from the loot table that is shown beneath the raid monster - the more damage you do the more items you will get - there are plenty of charts available on this forum that show you how much damage you need to do to get more items. If you kill you raid monster quickly, you will get extra items and increase your chance of getting the rare loot - again, there are tables available on this forum that provide the details for each of the raid monsters.

Mace of Dracolich
Once you're ready to begin raiding properly, concentrate on Dracolich the undead. Join Draco raids and use a full energy bar on each raid. You are aiming to get the Mace of Dracolich to use as your mainhand weapon, but Draco has lots of other equipment that your champion can use (Dark Chain Helm and Armour that are better than nothing, and Helm of Dracolich which is a very good Helm).

Crafting and Raid Badges
You will also get ingredients from raiding, and raid badges. The ingredients can be used (along with gifted ingredients) to create items for your army and champion. Raid badges can also be used to create items for your army, and to boost some of the items you can create from the standard alchemy page.

Prismatic Gear
Once you have the Mace of Dracolich, you are ready to begin raiding for dragon scales to craft the Prismatic Shield - you need three scales each from Rinjin, Bahamut and Tiamat.

You can also create Prismatic Armour using three eyes from each of the eyestalker raids; Prismatic Wings / Pauldrons using three wings from each of the three leonid raids; and the Prismatic Katar using three venom sacs from each of the spider raids.

The Prismatic gear is really powerful equipment for your champion to use whilst battling.

Raiding and Battle Suits
As you get further into the game, you will want to collect two outfits for your champion - one for battling and one for raiding. For battling, you can use your Prismatic gear, and try to purchase clothing and body items that provide bonuses for your army. For raiding you want gear that increases your damage primarily and your crit%.

Buildings
Increase your available building spots by increasing your allies. Concentrate on military buildings for one race. Purchase the relevant technology building for the equipment you are currently using, and sell any for previous equipment, as you don't need to retain these like the military buildings. Purchase as many farms as you can. Towards the end of the game, you're going to end up with 10 farm building, 4 military buildings and 1 technology building. You'll need to upgrade your farms as you go along to enable you to purchase more, higher-level, troops for your army.

Misc
Purchase two BC advisors for your chosen race, as the next BC purchases after your OH weapon. These are essential if you want your army to be competitive. There are also personal advisors available for your champion.

You may want to join together with other champions in a guild. Guild members can support each other with gifts, energy, mutual raiding support, and titan cranks. Guilds can also undertake wars against other guilds with wagers on the outcome.