Sell or Salvage? General help appreciated.

[Neonetik]

I've just started playing this game and am currently out of the tutorial area and am now in the first village. I don't generally play these types of games, and I'm trying to get my bearings, but the whole thing is rather overwhelming. There are already several buildings around me with all sorts of random stuff, several quests I have accepted to do, and even though I just looted around the area and got some hammers from the lake, my equipment burder in also mostly full.

I saw that you can sell things to vendors, but you can also salvage them to get component. How do I know what to sell and what to salvage?

If it matters, I intend on making a purely might focuses character that uses hammers and greatswords. I hear some people saying that there is a difference between heavy and light armour, but I don't really understand. Is this like Dark Souls? Does light armour make you move faster? If it doesn't, why would anyone use it when they have heavier, stronger armour? Is there a place I can store things just in case?

[Lorska]

1. you practtically get the modifiers in that equipment so if it has bad stats or is at a low level, don't expect much, this is also only useful if you wanna go blacksmithimg, so if you want money, sell the items. Just remember everything there is kind of random so you can also get ♥♥♥♥ out of a top notch equipment...

2. hammers suck but use what you wanna use ;) I really advise you to also use any fast weapon though for some encounters

3. might armor grants %blocking at hogh armor, rogue armor increases crit at medium armor, mage armor increases mana regen and has one part less with low armor, but you need the points in the trees to unlock them, so you won't be able to wear anything decent except for might armor all other stats are randomized and available to all equipment types (except unique stuff). no speed reduction whatsoever.

4. the first storage you can get is in webwood, after a few quests you get the house there.

[sinsorrow1]

after a few hours into the game you will have more gold than you can spend, if you don't mind spending a little time crafting I recommend that you max out blacksmithing and salvage everything you can, and making your own mastercrafted armor and weapons

[Dead Ringer]

Sell to start with as until you build up craft points you can't make better weapons or armour than you can find or buy. As sinsorrow1 says eventually you will have so much money you can't spend it.
As Lorska says, hammers and to a degree greatswords are too slow, particularly when dealing with multiple enemies but what weapons you adopt or are better for you depends on what type of charecter you build.
Be a little careful of taking on too many side quests early in the game as although you will level up more quickly, you will max out at level 40 and when you reach that level you can become virtually unbeatable, which takes a lot of fun out of the game. You can always return to most of the quests later on (unless you happen to kill off the quest giver).

[Neonetik]

Oh don't worry. I'm not actually DOING the damn side quests. I'm just accepting them all. As for hammers and greatswords being slow, I personally just love slow and powerful weapons, so I want to use them, but seeing as my build is going to be all might based, I'll have upgraded my skills in longswords anyway.

[Kendrick_Yes]

Salvage!

Money is useless.

Sure, the stuff you salvage is useless too...

[EolSunder]

There isn't any reason to salvage components unless your focusing on smithing and making your own stuff, which you really don't need to do until later in the game. Vet players can do it early to make some better gear, but new players really shouldn't worry about it at all, and just enjoy playing. You can easily buy or find items almost as good so making your own stuff isn't that important. Again, usually its only for vet players who know what they are doing who will make better than normal gear during their game.

Plus the fact you need your skills set up to do it takes away from skills that are used for actually playing the game and having to re-spec them into crafting skills and back again. A little much of a headache for minimal benefit. The higher level you are, the better gear you will find/loot and in turn the better items you can salvage later. Even with great skills you won't salvage great gear until later in the game so its not worth worrying about early on.