If you want to play ranged then dont use crossbows! The reason is that you need strength to get better crossbows, while dextery is adding you more damage to them. This means you would need to skill both attributes and will be a very long time weak because of this. While on the other hand bows need dextery to be used and dextery also gains you more damage with them, so you will need less skill points to get powerful.

The most important to know is that you will need to also increase the corresponding weapon skill. For melee weapons the percentage describes how big your chance is to do a critical hit (strength and weapon damage does count), because normal hits do much less damage (only strength or weapon damage counts, not sure which one it was). For distance weapons like bows and crossbows it describes for example how likely you will hit at which distance as far as I know. This means you have to increase this skills, even higher than the other skills and attributes at the beginning to be able to do at least any damage.

To Jacks quest: just leave it and come back again later.

Alright, finished the game recently myself so got a wealth of information compared to when I entered!

Not going to go into too much detail, I think part of the fun of games like these is figuring a lot of stuff out. But some stuff is really important to know to be able to function without rage-quitting. (<- Speaking from personal experience)

===

First things first, basic survival in combat. You start with VERY low health, MANY enemies can kill you in a single swing. Test EACH enemy type. Every enemy type (except humans) only deals an exact amount of damage, and sufficient armor can reduce this damage to 5! If you know how hard an enemy type can hit, you also know how threatening it is to you. Almost all enemies deal Melee damage, so if you focus on getting items that increase melee damage (Leather Armor, Leather Belt, Valentino's Ring and a Harness Amulet which can be bought from Hakon or Jora in the Khorinis marketplace) you will find yourself doing far better against nearly all enemies!

Second, you will, probably without exception, find yourself in melee at some point, so you will want to be able to fight in melee! The most important thing for any character to do initially is to increase One-Handed melee or Two-Handed melee (and I personally recommend One-Handed overall as it's much more responsive and player-friendly) to base 29 and then by 5 Learning Points (in this way you save 4 Learning Points). The reason why this is so important is because your damage, which is calculated by WeaponDamage+Strength, is DIVIDED by 10 if you don't get a critical hit (your critical hit chance is the number next to your One or Two-Handed skill on your character menu).

Third, and this is a bit more esoteric, gather a nice load of gold and donate 50 gold to Daron, in the Khorinis marketplace, repeatedly. He will give you a range of permanent boosts, including a huge amount of health, massively increasing your survivability!

More generalized advice: In the world of Gothic, there are many dangerous foes. Some are simply too dangerous for you to handle when you first come across this. That's okay, you will get FAR more powerful as the game progresses and you get better armor.

===

If your experience is anything like mine, this should give you a much easier start and allow you to figure things out without getting annihilated quite as much as you would have been.

I think the mistakes I made can be fixed by:
0. Set up the control scheme to your liking. I changed mine so that right click was right attack and left click was left attack. Middle click was parry. This was easiest for me. However, play it however you like.
1. In the first tower pray at the altar. You'll get a ton of gold if you do it right.
2. Altars are great.
2. Jump off next to the altar and work your way behind the tower for some scrolls and potions.
2: Don't kill or explore too much at the beginning. Get to the town and explore that town.
3. Don't kill all the wolves, just run through and try to avoid the wolves and reach the town. Why? Well, you can learn alchemy form many people and so you want to be an apprentice to someone other than Constantino. Bosper is great, but if you kill all the wolves you lose out on being his apprentice.
4. Explore the roofs of the first town, there are many potions.
9. Daron. Pay daron 50 gold for and hope your hp and other stats are increased.
5.Guilds are not Factions. Join a guild then choose your faction. This caused me many headaches. You can do a lot of guild quests before deciding which guild to join. Make the most of this and use the guild quests to explore.
6. You can get some friends to do your work if you aggro.
7. Use Lares to kill as much as possible.
8. Don't do more than basic skinning.

Edited for spelling (still needs work)

The best tip ever -

1. Play it, discover things on your own and have fun.

:)

First sentence regards no spoilers by the OP. The second post then drops totally unnecessary chapter six plot information. Gotta love the way d!ckheads use any excuse possible to ruin the game for players looking for basic information.

Regarding Daron donations, it honestly seems like an oversight. Here is what you get depending on how you donate the gold.

Continuous donations of 200 gold:
1. +2 mana
2. +150 experience
3. +5 life points
4. +1 learning point
5. +5 life points
(+5 extra life, when you have donated 1000 gold),

Continuous donations of 100 gold:
1. +2 mana
2. +150 experience
3. +5 life points
4. +5 life points
5. +5 life points
6. +5 life points
7. +5 life points
8. +1 learning point
9. +5 life points
10. +5 life points
(+5 extra life, when you have donated 1000 gold),

Continuous donations of 50 gold:
1. nothing happens
2. +2 mana
3. +150 experience
4. +5 life points
5. +5 life points
6. +5 life points
7. +5 life points
8. +5 life points
9. +5 life points
10. +5 life points
11. +5 life points
12. +5 life points
13. +5 life points
14. +5 life points
15. +1 learning point
16. +5 life points
17. +5 life points
18. +5 life points
19. +5 life points
20. +5 life points
(+5 extra life, when you have donated 1000 gold).

The first chart seems like the intended one to me. Not to mention that the amount of HP is ludicrous considering how early in the game you can get it and can absolutely break the sense of the early game progression. Gaining 85 permanent HP instantly the moment you scrounge up 1000 gold was 99% not intended and if it had been, they'd have ensured you get the same bonuses no matter the amount of donations, but the donated total. Feels like a bug that you get 5 HP no matter the donation, so I opted to just donate 5x 200 gold, because that is the only one that seems somewhat balanced, considering it's permanent bonuses.

Seems similar to how they didn't make sure to adjust the cost of training when you go to the next tier of cost for skills.
You can train a skill/attribute until 29 and then do a +5 at a trainer, going to 34 for 5 LP even though from 30 on, a single point should cost 1 more LP. So you can get to 34 for 5 LP instead of the intended 9 LP. You can exploit 4 LP this way every 30 points in a given skill or attribute. Thus I make sure to always +1 until the next breakpoint and only then resume doing +5 chunks to pay the intended amount of LP.

Not everything is about power gaming to the max to be honest, it also has to feel right for the game. To me at least.