1. If you want most efficiency in leveling, I would probably point to Phantom or Beast Tamer. The first class can steal Holy Symbol, and other class skills for optimum leveling. Beast Tamer is really, really good for training and may be able to get into plenty of parties due to being rather Bishop-esque in all the party skills they offer.
2. The character deck will depend on your main. If your main is STR based, you need to level a Kaiser/Xenon for the STR boosts. Some nice universal cards though would be : Mechanic (+%buff duration), Zero (+bonus EXP), Battle Mage (% damage reduction), Beast Tamer (Ignore Defense).
3. I'll answer to the best of my knowledge for this one. Professions let you make stuff for yourself, and you'll need to figure out which one you want to go. Alchemy needs Herbalism to gather plants to make the ingredients, while Accessory Making/Blacksmithing has the same idea apply to Mining. You can learn both Herbalism and Mining, but you can only choose 1 of 3 creation professions.
4. If you like Windia, by all means stay. Starting in a new world can be a real drag if you don't know anyone at all in the new world.
5. RED Shop items. Killing monsters drop RED boxes, which can be opened for RED coins. There are quite a few good items in the RED shops, such as level 105 weapons with attack bonuses about equal to a level ~130-140 weapon for each class. A great way to keep up with training later on. You can only get up to 20 RED coins a day from the RED boxes, and the weapons cost 70 coins each. You can always choose to get a few to sell later on, since they don't become untradeable. That means you can equip a Revolution weapon, use it until you get a better weapon, and simple unequip and sell it later down the road.
6. There's the Beast Tamer Critical Ring quest. Get a Beast Tamer to 130, and you get a ring that gives a nice +Critical Hit rate and is tradeable in your account once.
7. There's supposed to be an Auction House feature that for some reason got pulled back. For that, you can put up an item for the auctioneer and they sell the item for you. Very sure certain restrictions apply. We'll probably see it again in the future.
8. Try to follow Tot's quest recommendations whenever you can. It's usually the best/easiest way to level up for any class. Of course if you're funded enough you can ignore it and power level away, but it's all up to you. Tot can also give you free levels at certain points.
Sorry I can't answer more. Hope this helps for now.
Thanks so much for the extensive reply. Expanding on 1 a little more, I'm going to be playing alongside a priest for the most part, which job offers the most dps/mobbin potential? And I've read that making a Mihile first is a given, why is that?
