Hi! New to the game, still figuring things out! Welcome to any tips or friends or anything :)

Ok, tips.

You're just starting so a good idea is find the species you like the most and buy gp3 (those beasts with three green stars) cheap females on the Pet Trades.

You can breed for genes and colour quite easily. Level up the ones you like by fighting on Arena. It's free (don't bother with the Ridinghalls, it's too much silver).

Explore as much as you can in between. I recommend upgrading your stables and warehouse as soon as possible.

Look at gene combos and breed for the best in each species. It's much easier these days as there are so many perfect sires. Hover over the ? green dot next to genes to see what they do. Eg Sharp Feathers work with Rush.

Is there a way to learn more about what species are around to pick a favorite? 

thank you for the tips!

All those interesting items you can't use? Sell them, don't destroy them. They are mostly tack workshop things, eg chitin and feathers and so on.

Never get rid of cotton (for bandages), vermillion or lazulite or quartz or soapshroom or hops. They are very, very valuable. Granite is the most valuable material in the game I think.

Noted! I'll make sure to keep a watch on my inventory for those

Each species has its own special attacks and defenses.

So unicorns are good all rounders, except against Etelia in tundra. I bred a group of them specifically to kill etelia but they don't do well against other monsters so I have gone back to lykos and cockatrices for tundra.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

It depends what you want the animals for. Fighting you need elemental attacks and combos like counterstrike. If you just want pretty pets, you will probably go into breeding deviants. Deviants are rare and you can make a lot of silver by selling them, depending on species - pumas and gryphons are most sought after.

Elemental attacks are fire (dragon), acid (cockatrice), lightning (roc), ice breath (lykos and etelia), etc.

Some beasts have trample damage (eg defender throdama) which reflect damage back onto an attacker. Magic mirror unis can reflect the whole attack, but only 30% chance to do so. This seems buffed against wild etelia, hence my alternative build.

Some beasts have berserker, which increases strength cumulatively as the battle continues, buffing damage. I'm not entirely sure how it works.

Cockatrices are great because they can have acid spit, regeneration (renewing their hp during turns of a battle), and poisonous claws and skin. It's a marvelous trifecta of nastiness. Poison/venom in cockatrices and warrior throdama, and napalm in dragons, can activate in battles to halve the opponent's hp each time it occurs. Very useful.

I recommend looking at the List of Genes under the Help menu :)

Not sure how well they stack up to the others, but so far the Symurgh look so cute! XD 

Symurghs are lovely.

I can't decide if Musical larynx or Song of peace suits me best. I do love that they have Regeneration.

Okay so now I do have a more specific question, how do you sell items? It seems when you go to the item itself to sell it wants you to sell it to a specific person that you tell it? 

go to the item trades section under the trading tab. click on create lot high up, and select the item you want to sell from there