I've never played around with modding games but I decided to try with this game but... I'm going in blind... any idea how to guys? and any recommendations as to what mods tod ownload?

Some mods are reported to work and some art. There is a sticky thread in the Torchlight forum about which ones work, albeit a bit old and possibly out of date.

As for how mods work. I've never tried it but you apparently copy the mod into %appdata%\runic games\torchlight\mods\. %appdata% is a link that can be typed into Windows Explorer to open the hidden Application Data folder.