Advice from a new starter to other new starters:
When you start the game, one of the tricks is DON'T TRAIN! Although it reminds you to train each day, don't do this as it dramatically impacts your Wellness.
Your wellness will come up much faster, or at least stay stable if you do the following ...
1. Work for a Q1 company (1 star), and
2. Eat 1 star food, and
3. Don't train, and
4. Have no house, or manage a company
If you take it slowly and simply like this at the start then your wellness will stay rock solid stable. They should have just called it HEALTH inline with general gaming speech.
To understand the relationship between working, training, housing, and wellness, check out the calculator here and put some numbers in to see the results. You don't need to try and understand the formula behind it:
Check out the calculator here (Sorry you have to cut and paste):
http://www.cccp-group.org/index.php?page=erepwellnesscalc
So, when you start, you need to:
1. Get a job - you have a skill level of zero so you apply for a low paying job in a 1 star company.
2. Stay in this mode of eat/work/don't train for a few days or even a few weeks.
Holding your job will get you experience in the particular industry work skill you are employed in. e.g. Land, Construction, or Manufacturing.
After you work in that job for a period of time, your skill will go up. Skill points are different to your overall experience level.
As your skill points increase you can then resign from your job and apply for a job that pays more for your higher skill level. To take advantage of your higher skill level you need to seek a job in the same industry.
With more money you can then start buying higher quality food which will dramatically improve your wellness .
Once your wellness is going up you can start training because the health loss experienced from training will be offset by the wellness gains from eating higher quality food.
While you are doing all of this, your Game Experience has been slowly going up (that's the white number in the green square, next to your Avatar). Higher experience enables you to participate in other aspects of the game such as joining a political party.
As you continue training your military skill goes up, enabling you to do things in the military side of the game.
Hope this helps,
-T.
http://www.erepublik.com/en/forum/topic/84618/tips-for-new-citizens/1