in regards to the stats, ill make a list of all the stats and their acronyms later cause im too tired right now
For a starting i like to head straight out to the scenic grove (usually you can go straight there from the main street but sometimes you have to go to the side street before the scenic grove), once there i rest till nightfall and head back into the side street. one of the options at the bottom is "Other Locations You Remember", this is a great place because it doesnt lead anywhere but you have a super high chance of meeting some bandits. keep killing the bandits until morning or until the limits of your group. doing this not only makes you respected in the town (depending on how many you kill) but it also provides you with a fair amount of loot. the bandits at this stage of the game usually only have V (Vital, Torso) leather armour and a club or falchion. the bandits with the falchions are best because the falchions sell for more than the club by a substantial amout.
one warning: DO NOT pick up clothing, it cant be sold and just turns into baggage that you cant get rid of except through dumping it on a dead body (in one of my first games of Darklands i once left a dead body with around 60 items of clothing
). once its morning head to the "Side Alley of Arms and Armour" and go to any of the shops and sell the stuff, in this alley of arms and armour are the local proffessional blacksmiths etc. and will usually have better quality merchandise than the foreign traders in the main market place. Once you have sold your loot and bought some stuff for your group you can either head back to the grove and do the exact same thing again for more loot and rep, or you can head to the market place (Main Road -> Market), here you can buy almost everything you need (e.g. a rope is very useful as is a lockpick if someone as artf - artifice) but you can also enter the Guilds of the Hanaesetic Leagues, the Medici or the Fuggers. The Medici and the Fuggers are banks and can store money for you but also they will often have jobs for you to complete (rewards depend on the quest but for minor quests its around 5 florins while major quests like Robber Knights can be around 10 florins ( 1 florin = 240 pfennings 1 grotchen = 12 pfennings )), the Hanaesetic league is a place for adventurers to grab jobs just like at the banks. And so once you have a job you might as well head out of town and get to it (dont forget to write down the job details, i usually write down 1) the reward 2) the job type 3) where to go 4) where the job came from). But dont think that once you have the job you have to do it a.s.a.p., the jobs will usually stay active for a long time so you can do some wandering around germany, in particular, if you have the option to save a group of merchants who are under attack, save it and go to their rescue, not only does a successful rescue improve local rep. but they give you a gold floring and an item of superb quality.
and finally, with the armour thing, when you buy/acquire something it will be in your inventory, but you wont be using it until you have equipped it. simply open your inventory, click and drag the item you want onto the small bar to the right that has your equipment details. once you have done that the armour/weapon should have been equipped. The two people you couldnt see didnt have any equipment at all being used and thats why you couldnt see them.
hope that clears a few things up for you
(im going by memory here so some of these area locations may not be totally accurate)