Just bought the game

Any class is a good start, genuinely. PoE is very good at letting you somewhat play how you want, if you know what you're doing.

My biggest tips,

As you're going through the campaign you'll want to be slowly increasing elemental resistances (don't worry about chaos until later) and your DPS( this can be done in a multitude of ways)

It helps to have a goal on the passive tree, have a good look at it once you know what you want your character to be, then head straight for a strong passive (you can "inspect" passives and it'll show you DPS increases and such)

If you're VERY new I cant stress enough, BUY TABS!!!

I fucked up when I bought the game and didn't know any better so I bought cosmetics with my 300 coins lol, the currency tab and unique tabs are unbelievably helpful, like I'm not joking, youll need these tabs. And if you want to sell any items you'll need a merchants tab too.

Hope you have fun with the game! It's what I hoped diablo 4 would be lmao

Druid is a fine place to start because Oracle (one of the subclasses of Oracle) can do just about anything very well. Caster or ranged or melee. Any class can use any weapon, and I have seen Oracles clear all content with plant spells, lightning spells, comets, quarterstaves (monk skills, such as whirling assault), and bows (poisonburst arrow, lightning arrow, etc), and there's no reason they wouldn't do well with spears or crossbows. Talismans, however, are the one that lets you shapeshift, if that's what drew you to Druids. There is a viable bear build, wolf build, and wyvern build.

With that said- melee builds are playing the game on hard mode, especially if you're new. Players who play as monk characters typically start using a bow because the early monk skills are substantially worse at low levels than bows.

Exalted orbs will drop for you, and honestly they're better to be used to buy gear with through trade than actually using them. The Vaal Temple (new this league) will have crafting tables that basically teach you what the basic crafting orbs do anyway. After completing act III you'll be able to just take the orb out of the crafting stations in the temple, but until then, just liberally use those crafting stations because they'll vanish when you close the temple.

I use a controller and it works pretty well for the most part, in case you were trying to avoid tendinitis/carpel tunnel issues.

YouTube has some good new player tips videos, but check the date on them. Some of them will be outdated, as every 4 months there is a major patch that can really shake things up. I haven't watched this one, but Spud has given me some good insights before, so I'm linking one from them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhjekN-quao

Just play whatever looks cool to you. I wouldn’t worry about min maxing anything yet. Just enjoy a new game.

1. First play through, I implore you to not follow a guide. Just play as you want, whatever class and skills you want. A guide will suck the fun out of it. Learn at your own pace. It's still technically early access and you have plenty of time as things are going to change anyway.

2. Don't quit when you get to the wolf boss, just save all the cold resistance you can up to that point and equip it for that fight.

3. check your vendors after every level up, there's actually good stuff there.

Enjoy the campaign on your first run. Don’t speed run it. We have almost two months until next season. Use this time to understand the mechanics. Most items that are not top tier or just below top tier are dirt cheap on trade.

The mtx store tokens you have. Buy the appropriate stash tabs (mapping and currency) first.

Druid is a great class. Check out either plant Druid or walking calamity guides. They will take you through the end game.

Armourer’s Scrap (crafting item you’ll get when breaking down armor with quality) is worth about 7 exalts right now on the trade market. I was sitting on piles of the stuff while struggling to get gear. Had no idea it was so valuable.

Most things are viable, as a new player you cant really make any "wrong" decisions, just enjoy the game.

Fyi you have bought early access

Which technically is the game. It's just not finished.

The early currency is pretty worthless so spend it as you please making gear or trying to. Exalted orbs hold the bare minimum value. You could also sell crystal leech while running thru the campaign to make actual currency. Follow a league start build and gear for resistance and whatever defense your build calls for. Some of the bosses are rough for no reason.

Rampage druid is also a really good league start. Bears are cool

I wish I had not wasted so much currency crafting on random gear at low levels. Also check venders for your gear upgrades everybtime you level up, until you hit maos.