There's the wiki that should help a very lot :
http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/Elona_Wikiread about the tutorial so you avoid wasting some items while the NPC explaining things to you is laughing at you :
http://elona.wikia.com/wiki/TutorialI think a good way to start is focusing on making money :
-First, get in town, you'll be able to get a minion, the bear is useless so better get the little girl, as you'll be able to equip her with some good items that will get her into a powerfull ally with time, the bear will only get killed.
- Some NPC will give you a quest (the dog lost in puppy cave, the pirate hideout, the slime infested underground), don't bother for now, you're only going to get your character killed, he's way too weak yet.
-Go to the nearby puppy cave , it's going to be your source of money for a while.
Try to NOT get the little girl killed , she's stronger than you at that point but she's not immortal, and having to get to the town pub and talk to the NPC that has the call ally has a cost in money, and better not lose money too early ingame.
Dying yourself is not advised, even if while you're under level 6 you will not have malus to "potentials" when "crawling up" to life , you'll lose 33% of your carried money, that's a very lot so don't die early.
Don't explore too much of the puppy cave, as the monsters get stronger the lower you dive.
The puppy cave generate a completely new floors every time you exit it and re-enter it, so take advantage of this while you're weak to get an entrance in which you can quickly get books, rods and scrolls without risking too much fighting.
That's what you should do until you have identified most of the books, rods and scrolls.
To get their full sale price instead of ridiculous low ones, you need an item to be identified.
and fetch as much book as possible, books can sell for lot of money -if they're identified-.
Scrolls -identified- sell for less than books, unless you're very lucky and it's a scroll of Oracle , that is very high priced, you want to find them.
Rods can be nice to keep and to sell too, but before selling check the mission panel in the town center, it happens that sometime a "birthday" mission require a specific rod, if you have it, that's often a lot of money and items for you.
Sometime the "birthday" missions require a specific book, so always check the mission panel before selling anything.
For scrolls and books, in town find the NPC that identify item and get him to identify your books before selling them to merchants NPC, but warning do not select to identify you whole inventory early, you have certainly gathered lot of garbage that sell for very few money and are not worth identifying in the beginning of the game, and it costs lot of money.
For the rods you should have no need to pay to identify, go into a wilderness map, better in a corner so you can exit quickly in case it's a summon monsters rod (as it summon hostile ones) , press Z and see what it does, this way you'll be able to identify a rod without paying.
Once an item has been identified once, every item of the same genre will be known to you and will get the full price when selling without needing identification again.
After a while, you will be able to make some nice amount of money, assuming you don't die , as said the 33% loss of money penalty is really a big malus when coming back to life.