hi there Moira, welcome to HeRO!
don't worry, when i joined almost 3 yrs ago RO was already like 7 yrs old... so what i did was read through websites like Ratemyserver, Doddler's, iROwiki, and ROdatazone as well as fiddle around with roratorio's calc to get to know the game and its mechanics.
oh and HeRO's own wiki is so much better now than what it was 2+ years ago, so spend some time on it
GL and HF!
-w-