Best Of

I played a bit early on when there were quite a lot fewer choices to make, and even then things felt overwhelming and complex compared to other IRE games. This isn't necessarily a complete obstacle for me, as I'm not against learning to do more complicated things. I do have a few questions though.

1. I know this is a pretty standard one. "Which is the best class to play?" But I'd like to put a different spin on it. Which classes (archetypes) are the easiest to pick up and decently good for PVE undertakings? Hunting, influencing, lower lesson/credit investment to be able to be decently effective with it. I'm not particularly interested in PVP on the whole, so if they lack in that area? Not worried about it. What races complement these archetypes for those things best in terms of racial abilities? I'm not looking to create a purely min-maxed character, but I want to know some of the better possibilities to think about.

2. Another standard with hopefully a bit of a different twist to make it easier. Which cities or communes are fairly active, preferably more good-leaning or at least dark for a good cause, and fun for RP that isn't pretentious against beginner/out of practice RPers? I'm a bit willing to compromise on theme of an organization if it means having a decent number of people to lean on for help.

3. Are there any good up-to-date resources for explaining the basics and/or beyond in learning the game? It seems like a lot of the information on the Wiki and the forums both is simply out-of-date, incomplete, or leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

I realize that there are other threads like this, but it seems like a lot of them are people focusing on different aspects of the game or are from quite some time back, including prior to what I believe were revamps.

Thank you in advance.