This guide will cover how to get started, as well as include links to important resources you can and should take advantage of.
Forming alliances and working together with other players is a key part of Archlight, and while you can make a good amount of progress alone, the game is designed and balanced around tackling content as a group.
This guide is meant to give you a basic understanding of the core mechanics and features of the game, but it does cover a lot of material, so you may find it easiest to skim and return here to reference particular things as you delve deeper.

You begin at level 20 with basic equipment, but the rate of improvement for low levels is pretty good, you will find yourself getting stronger fairly quickly.
At the start of the era (Archlight’ seasons), experience rates are much lower than they are later on (they’re increased up to 300%) but progress is still fast.
Completing Tasks from the task counter will reward you with experience (occasionally other rewards) and a small amount of Energy.

Energy is gained at a rate of 20 Energy every 2 hours, and 30 every 2 hours once awakened (The cap for Energy is 1000 points); and is used in gathering Professions, which are critical to your progression, so be sure to get it where you can.

From 20-1500, you will focus on tasking and doing as many Solo Dungeons as possible.

Some monster Tasks that you can get from the counter will take you into a zone which also contains a secondary Stat Point task;
completing those tasks will grant you a permanent +1 Stat boost to the stat of your choice, and are very much worth doing whenever possible.
Some examples of early ones are Orcs (Level 8-50 Spawns), Pirates (Level 40+ Spawns) and Heroes (Level 70+ Spawns).
The task counters start off with Tasks for easy - low mid range monsters, while the middle counter contains some harder tasks, leading up to the top counter with tasks that can bring you up to level 1500.
All the way at the north side of the room is the Test of Strength task counter and gives you large boosts to stats in addition to experience.

You should also pay attention to Events, World bosses, daily things you can do, Tasks, etc. Everything helps grow your character a bit at a time.
Rifts are an especially great way at making progress, both pre awakened (500+ depending on vocation and power) and post awakened;
spawns every 2.5 hours through a teleporter by the Living Token Exchanger, which bring you to the rifts hub where you can take tasks for easy, moderate, and difficult monsters.
A 4-man party is recommended if you plan to tackle moderate and difficult tasks.

Finally a supplementary level tool is Monster Essence.
Keep an eye out for these, as they are a central part of Archlight and can provide great rewards that scale up with the difficulty of the monsters you kill.
Some of the late game revolves entirely around efficiently farming these, which is helped by boosting your Prosperity stat and getting better gear that has higher Essence Find.

Easily one of the most overwhelming parts of starting out is the amount of resources that are available to you right away, and which NPCs and functions you should concern yourself with as a new player.
On the first floor, you have the Token Exchanger that sells things like Mimic Scrolls (which allow you to copy the Regrades/Gems and Upgrades levels off of your gear, Enchantments off of weapons, and store them in the scroll to be used on other gear, a way to carry your upgrades from one set to another) and Regrade Keys (which grant 1 gem socket, up to 8 slots).
NPCs to the right of the temple are the Banker, Broadcast, Living Token Exchanger and two NPCs that buy items that drop from monsters you kill.
Therefore, when you’re first starting out, you can ignore basically all of the NPCs and just focus on tasking.

On the bottom floor are the Profession Stations / NPCs (the stations are where you do your actual crafting). This will be covered in the profession overview.

Additionally upstairs the Rare Goods Collector - this NPC does nothing for you until you hit Level 1500 (and Awakening Level 1), but at that time you can sell certain items like Dungeon Medals for experience.
At the Stronghold there is Vyktor that allows you to choose your Specialization after hitting 1500 and getting all 3 Promotions (2 purchased from the Token Exchanger, 1 gained as reward from completing the Warlords Side Quest).

There are also NPCs on the upper floors of the Depot, one of which is the Arena Master - this NPC allows you to enter an arena daily for a fee, starting at 2kk gold.
This arena throws waves of monsters at you that increase in difficulty indefinitely until you cannot survive any longer.
You are rewarded with 1 lord loot bag per wave you clear, which rewards a wide variety of items, of varying value.

There are two NPCs who trade in store bough items, the Living Token Exchanger and Promotion Item Trader.
Living Archlight Tokens (LATs) can be received by Donating, and Promotion Tokens can be purchased with LATs, and are also given in place of LATs in the next era when points are given to you.
(donating in one era will carry over to the next, all points you have accumulated throughout an era will return next era over time with point drops at various dates).

Finally, there are the Order and Chaos Feat NPCs. These NPCs charge you 20kk gold to undertake a difficult task.
Each time you complete these, you are rewarded with a feat point which allows you to unlock extremely powerful permanent upgrades for your character.
(You may obtain one Feat per 100 Awakened Levels. These have no cooldown, but are restricted by the time it takes to complete them, particularly because of World Bosses).

After hitting level 1500, you will automatically awaken, all experience gained from this point forward will give you awakening levels, and grant you 1 awakening stat point per 2 levels.
Additionally, every 15 awakening levels, you gain an awakening spell point that can be spent to further specialize your character by increasing the power of your main spells and even unlocking secondary effects.

Up to this point you should have started to obtain Archlight Tokens (AT), Upgrade Stones, Rune Soils, Soul Soils, and Regrade Keys, which are all used to upgrade your equipment, Emblem and Soul Rune.
Mimic scrolls can be purchased from the Token Exchanger for 10AT each, allowing you to move upgrades to and from any gear (unless that upgrade states that it causes the item to become soulbound, you can still transfer these scrolls on the same character, but they cannot be used by any other characters, including the ones on your account).

Upgrades are a great and necessary way to improve your power, as they increase the attack power, resistances, and essence find on your gear, and the damage on your Weapons.
Upgrade Stones have a diminishing chance to improve your gear by +1, up to +10, at which point you can use Legendary Stones to upgrade. (There is some RNG protection in place to prevent bad luck streaks).
Rune soils can be used to upgrade your Rune Emblems, to provide better healing (starting with Gold Emblem from Heroes Quest).
Soul Soils can be used to upgrade your Soul runes (Granting increased damage / effectiveness per upgrade).

Gems are also an integral part of powering up your character - Gems can be obtained through Jewelcrafting, which requires Gold Ingot and Coal Ingot (gained by mining, smelted into bars with Blacksmithing).
While your Emblems and healing spells will provide some basic regeneration that will be sufficient while leveling, once you reach more difficult content, you will need to invest in Mountain Gems (HP) or Ocean Gems (MP) to give you regeneration based on a % of your health.
Gems require regrade sockets on your gear, which are granted by using Regrade Keys. Each tier of key increases the slot by 1 (you must use them in order, you cannot use a Bone Key on regrade 2 gear, for example).
If you receive a roll you don’t like or want to try for a higher value roll, you can use a Gem Remover (crafted with 3kk and 1 AT, or purchased from players or in the Game Store) to pull the gems out and try again.

Quests are a major part of progression through Archlight, starting around level 500, all the way through high level awakening and power.
There are two types of quests: Side Quests, A few of which are designed to be done solo, and some must be done with a group (Seven Trials requires 1 players of each vocation, and some coordination to complete it's puzzles), and Story quests.
You must complete each Story quest before you are able to move on to the next one, and they get increasingly more difficult and require higher power and better coordination.
(You can think of these as Raids from other games, as you can complete them with party of players, and it’s wise to have a few tanks and healers if you plan to complete them early on.)

The first 4 side quests offer rewards that are available every 48 hours and can stack up to 3 charges if you don’t complete them on cooldown. It’s suggested to do these as often as possible for the rewards.
The Annihilator is a good quest to do on cooldown as it guarantees you a piece of Griffon equipment as a reward, which is sufficient to help you clear some of the early quests like: Voodoo (grants you voodoo Weapons), Heroes (hero Weapons and your Gold Emblem) and Eternal Tombs (which give Renegade equipment).

Professions are a large part of gaining power for your character - they allow you to craft items that grant boosts to stats, gems that give you increased damage, attack speed, health, mana, regeneration of hp/mp, potions, and accessories that buff your character in Different ways.
The collection professions are Mining, Fishing, Skinning, and farming (though farming is it’s own thing). Professions even offer passive bonuses and enhancements once you reach higher levels. Professions are huge, and deserve a write up of their own, but you can find all of the information about them here on the Wiki. Keep in mind all of these professions have daily quests that are located at the -1 depot. Doing the missions for these tasks provide 200% experience for that specific activity.