Caidyn

It's a long post i know. I took the time to highlight the actual questions in yellow if you want to skip over my life story

Ok i just recently started playing this game and i've really been enjoying it. I haven't really had a chance to interact with the community to much so i am not sure if i'm looking at FFXI community or runescape community. Mostly i just want to start partying and having fun with everyone but i need to figure some things out before i do.

First question. I've noticed that when i go into the parties that i have managed to join that my toon (as i believe they are called) doesnt really live up to its role. As a tank i would assume i would survive a long time and take a load of damage. Not the case, as i can't seem to survive the first group of enemies we come to without running through all my health inspirations and still ending up in the red. I don't really focus on Enhancements much. Is this a mistake? do they make that big of a difference at this early in the game? and how can i better distribute them if i should be.

Second question.
Salvage and Recipies. Do i sell them? keep them? use them? honestly i have found them to the point where the box for it was filled up. Luckaly i stumbled across pocket D and discovered the bank they had. but still, since i've been saving them all in case they had some great purpose later on, they build up incredibly quickly. What is the best way to go about using salvage and recipies at early levels in the game?

Question 3
Creating toons is probably the funnest part for me so far. but i'm always questioning as i level up weather or not i should try and focus on the primary skill set for my class, or to evenly distribute between primary and secondary. I'm sure this question will proove rather difficult to answer due to good character builds being a matter of opinion and experience. Currently I'm wanting to make my main toon a Scrapper with Broad Sword/Shield Defense sets. What would be a good way to distribute Skills and skill slots as i level up?

I have too many questions so ill wrap it up with this one.
Question 4
What is one of the more popular servers with alot of people willing to party and hang out?

Sorry for such a long post.

Yeah those were the ones that popped up. those three and something else. some kind of robotic valkyrie wings or something, i dont remember what they were called. i just went with demon wings because it looked like it went with my toon.

Well that will stink if i lose the wings. it seems to be the only thing extra i really got out of it anyway though. i'm gonna review the veteran rewards again and see if any of the others check out.

I had the trial but only for about 5 seconds, then i added the actual membership

Ok...i'm confused as hell now because i'm not sure if its something i bought or some crazy glitch. I recently created a villain character and got all the way done designing him and noticed at the bottom i had the option to give him wings. I thought this was odd because i recently did a little study on veteran rewards and it said i wasn't supposed to get that until i had several months of play. I didnt complain and went with Demon wings. the instant i entered the tutorial zone i was bombarded with maybe 10 badges, all of the veteran badges ending with 42 months. Tell me is this some sort of incredibly lucky glitch? Did i maybe get it when i bought the Good vs. Evil edition of the game? and why can't i do it with any other characters i want to make?
Oh and i have been playing with this account for about a week. Created the entire account on 5/9 i believe.