One week ago, I discovered Terracore, and it became my new obsession.
I jumped in with both feet, bought some $SCRAP, and hammered down some quick updates on Engineering, Damage, and Defense.
Newbie Advice
Don't boost anything more than once, at least until you get a feel for what's going on. Then focus on Defense, maybe a little on Attack, and deprioritize Engineering until you know what you're doing. You will keep more of your scrap and have a better experience if you wait.
Things looked great for the first day, until my 24-hr newbie protection wore off. Then the attacks started coming in. . .
Tools
I jumped on Peakd and started skimming old posts to figure out what different players are using to manage their game. I found some paid stuff (not for me, no thanks!) some alternate UI's (love Terracore Hub, highly recommend!) and some cool scripts. With a little tweaking and help from friends (undisclosed, but you know who you are!) I got into a good rhythm, and finally got my $SCRAP win rate above my loss rate.
I'm excited to see where things go with this!
The Give-Back
As per my usual, I'm now going to kick around a little Hive SBI. If you're not familiar, Hive SBI is an account-based curation program. You sponsor others for ongoing support on their posts, and you get back your curation share as upvotes on your own posts. It's been running for years, and it was 50/50 before 50/50 was cool.
I'm going to boost 
I'm also going to boost the top 5 accounts that I stole $SCRAP from, because I'm just so grateful to be the one that knocked down your doors! (
Affiliate Link
I'm a bit late to the party, but if you're not into Terracore yet, hit it for $10 worth of HIVE with my link and I'll sponsor you for $3 worth of Hive SBI.