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As you gain XP, the XP bar at the bottom of the screen fills. It has to fill five times (5x) for you to earn enough XP to level up (i.e. when you complete a rank divisible by 5). When you do, you have to visit a trainer to actually gain that level and its benefits. To multi-class, you simply visit the trainer of the class you wish to take for that level. (NOTE: Multi-classing is an advanced skill. Doing it badly can gimp your character severely. And it's often the most expensive error to fix. It's common to have to delete the character and start again.)
Enhancements:
Each time in any given level that you fill the XP bar, you're said to 'rank up' or 'gain a rank'. When you gain a rank, one of the rank indicators in the bottom right of the screen will light up blue. The fifth rank indicator lights up when you have earned enough XP to level up. However, there's also a benefit of gaining each of the first four ranks each level. That beneift is 1 AP (Action Point) to spend toward Enhancements that will allow you to tailor and empower your character further. By L20 (Heroic Cap), you will earn a total of 80AP. (You could have more than that if you bought AP Tomes or if you've done some Racial Reincarnations.)
'Sandbagging' or 'Holding a Level':
You can continue earning XP after having earned enough to take a level. That XP is not wasted, it simply accumulates toward the following level. In fact, it will only stop accumulating (or 'cap') when you are 1 XP away from enough to earn a second level. You can deliberately choose to wait to take a level you've earned. There are various reasons why a player might choose to do so, but the most common is to continue running lower-level quests while avoiding an XP penalty for being over-level. This is more valuable to F2P or Premium players, who may find the number of available free quests to run shrinks at higher levels.
However, once you've earned enough XP to gain a level, a problem arises if you don't level up. While the XP bar continues to fill and empty as you continue to earn ranks, the rank indicator dots don't continue to update. So some find it difficult to track when they're close to 'capping' (running up against the following level). There's a simple way to tell: You still gain ranks, so your numerical rank (shown behind your level on the XP bar) will still increase. The final rank before cap will be a multiple of 5. (Specifically, the next multiple of 5 after the one that earned the level.) Example: If you're L4, the end of Rank 20 is when you earn enough XP to take L5. You can continue to earn XP until the end of rank 25. So if you don't wish to waste XP, sometime before that you will want to talk to a trainer to take L5.
There's also another trick. Keep a 100XP Daily Dice Token in your inventory and drag it to a shortcut bar. A single click will tell you both your current level AND how many XP to the next level. If you're sandbagging, it will show you as the level you have yet to take and the XP remaining will be the XP to 'cap' (-100XP, the value of the token).
Pets (NOT Companions):
If you are of a class with a pet (Currently Artificer and Druid), don't forget to talk to the trainer about them after each time you take a level in your class. They also have access to Enhancements, though they only earn 2AP/level. Your pet has to be summoned in order to spend its AP. NOTE: Their abilities only increase when you level the pet-using class. If you multi-class, it will gimp your pet. (Mind you, pets tend to get squishy on higher difficulties and levels, so some would say they start out gimped. But that's another issue.)
So they will continue to earn more ap to use for their abilities. there is talk of a level cap raise sometime this year and if that does happen that means your wolf or dog will increase as well.
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This is only a beginner's guide to aggro and aggro management in DDO. It will probably be more than you'll need to know to reach L20 on anything up to Elite. But it's far from comprehensive. Consider it a springboard.
Aggro management isn't a new idea in DDO. Lots of games have it. The very basis is that monsters will decide who is the juiciest target to attack, but their decisions can be influenced by player skills and actions. If you allow them to aggro on squishy casters, they're likely to die quickly (low HP, low dmg mitigation). If they aggro on ranged toons or casters, you also get a lot of kiting with the melees running after mobs trying to get a hit in. At best, it's inefficient. At worst, it invites defeat in detail.
I'm no expert on aggro nor aggro management, neither in DDO nor in RPGs in general. The only reason I'm addressing this issue is because it's worthy of some consideration even for newbies (and because this thread is aimed at newbies).
Ideally, in a perfect world, a tank or melee toon grabs aggro initially and DPS (ranged, casters, etc) pile in afterward and never steal aggro from the 'tank'. In practice, ranged toons and casters are able to hit mobs before the melee get close (and often will in PUGs and poorly-organized groups.. which is most non-raids, ime).
DDOWiki suggests aggro in DDO is based solely on damage inflicted (except for some mobs that ignore the aggro system). The more damage, the more 'hate' is generated. This suggests that CC is a good focus option for first-life casters and that healers should largely only pull aggro from undead and only if they use AoE heals.
There are three basic elements to aggro management: Active skills and abilities, passive abilities and gear effects, and tactics (which includes both the former).
There are a host of skills and abilities that allow ranged toons and casters to 'dump' aggro and/or melees and tanks to 'pull' it. I won't even try to make a comprehensive list, though I'll note a few sources, especially the universally-available ones
Skills: (My descriptions are personal. Check the links for more definitive ones.)
Intimidate is an Active AoE skill (has to be activated each time by the player) that increases nearby mob hate toward the toon that uses it. With enough skill, it will put the user at the top of each mob in the area's aggro list. https://ddowiki.com/page/Intimidate
Diplomacy (Active AoE) reduces the user's profile on monsters' aggro lists, 'dumping' that aggro on someone (anyone) else. https://ddowiki.com/page/Diplomacy
Bluff (Active, targeted) essentially takes a user off of the target's aggro list entirely for a brief time and reduces the threat generated by following actions for a brief time. https://ddowiki.com/page/Bluff
Diplo and Intim are completely useless when you solo unless you have pets, hires, or summons. Bluff still has value. In fact, solo Rogues (and other toons with Sneak Attack) will find it vital, because it allows Sneak Attacks on the target for the duration. (Normally in DDO, you get SA damage on any monster that isn't actively targeting you. If you're soloing, ALL mobs are targeting you, so without abilities like Bluff, you'll seldom get SA dmg.)
Enhancements: Too many to mention specifically. They tend to fall into two categories: passive (always in effect) and active (usually associated with a specific attack). Either type can be designed to increase or decrease aggro. And they may only affect one or two of the three types of attack: melee, ranged, or spellcasting.
Gear effect: Largely passive. Can either increase or decrease aggro (incite or diversion). Sometimes affects only one or two of the three types of attack: melee, ranged, or spellcasting.
I won't say much about tactics. Mostly they're obvious. If casters and ranged insist on engaging first, use CC to keep mobs from getting to them and allow melees to intercept them. Fight through a narrow doorway and have melees block it while ranged and casters engage past them. Use active abilities to 'pull' or 'dump' aggro as needed. If you're in the dump side, switch targets frequently so as to never reach the top of any individual mob's hate list or target the badly-injured and finish them off (kill-steal, as it were ;) )
Note that there's always one foolproof fallback position to dump aggro from any mob that uses the aggro system: stop attacking until someone else has dealt enough damage to reach the top of the mob's hate list.
This is probably more info on aggro management than you'll need for quite some time and is mostly intended as a framework for you to understand the effects of abilities or gear you may encounter. If the wrong person in your group is consistently getting aggro, consider doing something deliberate to change that.
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DDO is a largely quest-based game. In order to get the most out of it, you therefore need to find quests to run. You probably have learned the very basics by the time you leave Korthos Island (the starting zone), or even from other games. Someone with a yellow chalice above their head will offer you a quest.
But it quickly gets more complicated.
The chalice above a questgiver's head indicates your status in relation to the quest they offer.
If it's yellow - You have yet to talk to the questgiver to be given this quest and you've never run it (this life).
Yellow with checkmark - You've completed the quest and can turn it in. Or the giver is also the entrance to the quest and you've accepted the quest but not yet run it. In either event, it indicates that you have unfinished business with this questgiver.
Hollow outline of a chalice - You aren't yet high enough level to run this quest.
Red - You don't have access to this quest. It's not F2P and you haven't bought its adventure pack. Or you're VIP, but it's part of an Expansion you don't own.
Blue - You've completed and turned in this quest. You can talk to the questgiver again and re-run it if you wish, at the same or a different difficulty. If you're not VIP, you may have to run the same quest multiple times at increasing difficulty as each run unlocks the next higher difficulty.
There are some quests that have no questgiver. These are known as 'walkups'. Even so, there is usually someone to whom you can turn in the quest after completion for an end reward. Expect to find walkups in wilderness areas.
Note also that some quests can be run even if you haven't been properly given the quest (either by talking to the questgiver or by having had it shared by a party member). This is known in DDO as 'redboxing' the quest (because of the angry color of the quest entry dialog you see if you aren't properly 'on' this quest). If you see the red box, you can ask a party member to share the quest. They'll open their Quest Journal to the appropriate zone, find the quest, and hit the 'Share' button there.
However, some quests can't be shared. And some can't be redboxed, either. As a rule, you can't redbox raids, nor any quest where the questgiver acts as the entrance to the quest itself. You also can't redbox a quest if you can't get there. If one of the previous quest outcomes opens a wilderness area and you haven't done that quest, you can't enter the wilderness to get to the quest. So even if you could redbox it if you were at the entrance, you can't reach the entrance. And finally, you typically can only redbox a quest if someone else in your party can validly run that quest. There could be other limits, but those are the ones I recall atm.
If you do redbox a quest, you get the usual experience and all the loot within the quest, but you get no 'end reward' from turning in the quest to the questgiver after completion. (You also get credit toward any Saga containing the quest.)
Some quests are redboxed pretty regularly. So much so, that some players maintain a toon as an 'opener' for that quest, just so they don't have to run the flagging quests that would make them eligible to run the final quest. For example, Shadow Crypt (a L9 quest in the Necropolis) provides very good XP and an experienced party can run it quickly, but the four flagging quests are annoying and difficult for various reasons. Thus many players have a Shadow Crypt opener.
And, speaking of wilderness areas, stepping into one will automatically issue you some quests. Usually, you'll get one or more quests to kill monsters in the wilderness (Slayer quests), to kill one or more rednamed monsters that may or may not spawn (Rares), and possibly some kind of quest to find specific places or notes (Explorers). These do not have a turn in or questgiver and award their experience immediately as the various objectives are met.
Sagas: Quests often come in 'chains' of linked quests. But even if the quests aren't otherwise linked, they may form a 'saga': a group of quests with a theme that will award a bonus reward for successfully completing all the related quests. The rewards for completing sagas vary by the 'average' difficulty at which you ran the quests, and usually consist of your choice of bonus XP, Guild renown, or a skill tome to permanently increase one of your skills (persists through reincarnation). As a rule, those who give saga rewards aren't questgivers and if you don't talk to them until after you've completed their saga, it won't affect the reward. You can run the same saga multiple times in the same life and receive the saga reward each time.
I have recently been reminded that there is one additional series of quests, known as the Campaign System Objectives. These are quests for newbies, designed to act as a sort of tutorial to lead them through certain elements of the game. They also appear when there's an 'event' happening. These quests have givers, but no turn in and no loot or XP is generated by successful completion. If/when you no longer wish to see them, simply look for the item in the Options and turn it off.
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If you open the Main Menu (Select the '&' in the lower-left corner of the screen and then select 'Main Menu' or hit 'Esc'), you'll see Options. Aside from the usual Graphics, Audio, and Key Mapping options, you'll find a host of UI Settings to customize your visual experience, as well as a few Gameplay options. There are a few that I personally consider helpful or important.
UI Settings
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Lock shortcut icons to the shortcut bar (by default, toggled by 'Ctrl-=') - avoids accidentally dragging icons off your shortcut bars.
Show cooldowns on shortcut bars - lets you see at a glance how soon you can recast a spell or re-use an ability.
Show the network status display - turns on a small icon that is green/yellow/red to indicate the health of your connection. Hover over it for connection details. (Sometimes it hides behind other UI elements.)
Hints and Campaign System Objectives are for newbies. Turn them off when you're comfortable that you know your way around the game.
Reset chat displays - for if you do something when customizing chat that you don't know how to fix.
Most of the remaining UI Settings seem to me to be either self-explanatory or inconsequential. Hovering over them does provide a tooltip with additional info. (Unless, of course, you have 'Enable tooltips' turned off. ;) )
Gameplay
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Most options are pretty self-explanatory. Note that some are reset every time you Reincarnate (specifically 'Auto-attack on double-click'). So you may have to return here each life if you don't like the default.