well basically the only tip I can give you is max out your equipment. Go solo and fight blue and green single mobs out in commons and get some drops and sell the items to the armor shop in west freeport OR put them up for auction/broker.
You can get skills passed 2 but you can't buy them in shops.
From what I can tell you cannot transfer chars over servers.
If you want to tank make sure you use a shield and go pure ac. I recomend getting a group to wailing caves and do the doom stick quest. Its a great 1-h weapon that'll get you fairly far.
Oh and a funny tip here. If you are tanking and the odds are not in your favor, run around the group in a wide circle and the mobs miss you very very consistantly and it gives the group a chance to pick them off. This has saved my @ss at least 3 times in the last few days.