The Basics

first things first heads-up this will show your health, sheilds, ammo, grenades and money.
with health its pretty obvious you have to make sure to maximize it but in borderlands it's a little different you can run through your sheild and get to cover before youve even lost your health.
There are elemental weapons and normal weapons elemental are the guns you want to look out for regular can be good but elemental is just better cause you can light enemies on fire electrocute them and take down sheilds.

The characters:

Lilith
Roland
brick
Mordecai

my personal favourite is lilith for her elemental bonuses and submachine gun power ups ( you find smg more than anything) but its all up to you on how you want to play the game.

finally multiplayer. multiplayer is the best part of borderlands if you want to get a character to about 35-40 lvls join an eridian promontery multiplayer game with four players and bang straight away youll get there.

thanks for reading the entire forum ill write more forums soon:)