Before you get started:

Changing your language to English:

When you open the game you will see three buttons, click on this one

After that the Settings window will open. Click on this tab

Now make sure your settings are the same as mine, confirm popups, click on this button and restart your game.

Spending extra money:

If you plan on spending extra money on the game, buy yourself a couple of pets, they pick up items for you. I would recommend waiting on any other purchase till you are sure which character you want to main as things such as extra weight and inventory slots are character bound while pets can be used on all the characters in your family.

Beginning the game:

You'll start off in Olvia, the Black Spirit will guide you through some quests and you will get some rewards. Take your time and do some side quests, most will give you some gold bars and contribution xp. The gold bars are worth 100 000 Silver each and can be exchanged at any Storage Keeper. The contribution xp will help you start your worker empire, but I'm sure someone else will cover that topic. You can find the Storage Keeper, or any other NPC, by clicking on the little NPC box next to your map and selecting the type of NPC you want to go to or searching by name.

Once you get to Velia cash in some of those gold bars and buy some gear from they marketplace.

For armour people will usually recommend Grunil or Heve, they have basically the same stats but the set bonuses are different. Grunil will give you +7AP and +150HP and Heve will give you +300HP. Grunil also weighs ~60LT more and is more expensive. Out of the two I would recommend getting Heve, there is however a third set you could look at which is the Hercules' Might Set. It also has similar stats and also offers 2 Magic Crystal slots but the set bonus will give you +200LT carry weight which will allow you to farm for longer without having to spend any extra money on weight.

In terms of weapons different classes will want different things but generally a Rosar Mainhand will be good (2 Magic Crystal slots) and the AP or Accuracy Offhand depending on class. DO NOT BUY A LIVERTO. As a new player you will not be able to afford upgrading a Liverto, I know the stats look nice but don't.

Now as you go along the Main Quest you should get some Black Stones, use them to get your armour to +5 and your weapons to +7, after that they will start to fail, but that should carry you almost all the way to Lvl50. When you get to the 45-50 range you wanna get those to +15. Here's a nice resource for Failstacking (https://www.blackdesertfoundry.com/upgrading-gearfailstacking-guide/), but on cheap stuff you can just spam enhance and repair using duplicates (base item, not enhanced) that you buy from market.

That should be enough to get you started, have fun