Thanks for the answers guys. The problem for me, is staying alive long enough to even get to those things. I havent gotten to a point of investing or anything, at least in a way for it to make sense. I know its possible to build stuff in your cave, but i have no idea how. I will try to use the Videos for guidance as suggested by Bremen.
well if i understood you correctly, well in Elona you will Die of random stuff quiet often even when you have learned a lot of the game, it is just A LOT of random stuff happening sometimes, like being in a level 1 random encounter and suddenly after a time a new higer level Dragon will spawn on top of you...
(through save scumming whit "ALT+F4" is possible)
as fore investing in a shop, well that is literally go to a shopkeeper and ask to invest in them and give them money from your one pocket, but it increases there stock of item and quality of stuff they will have available in the future.
so one of the easier ways to gain money is to trade Trade Goods between cities from the trade merchant's usually located in a Bar or the Inn.
as fore crafting items, well usually you will need a tool or crafting sett of some type to do stuff like that, like Alchemy sett fore Potions Gem-cutter's Tool fore Jewelry or Carpenter's Tool to make Rod's, and so one, crafting recourse's get added to a separate inventory, and ingredients/crafting material are usually fond in Neffia's/Dungeons.
and to decorate your cave, you will need to interact whit a sign, i think one is already in the cave when you start the game, through you can also buy one from the embassy.
but to be honest the game is kind of set up in such a way that it pushes you to do different things thanks to the diminishing returns you gain from doing a singular activity, so you can eventually decide to get a farm and farming, or dungeon diving, or just wander the world map, or questing or training Coking to gain better Attribute's from Eating good food and such.
heck you can even decide you want to buy a Nuke and Nuke a City fore whatever reason if you want, maybe to get rid of an Aileen infestation?
hope you will have an enjoyable Gaming Experience.
Edit:
PS:
boosting your Charisma and Recruiting Pet's Early one will help a lot fore survival, one of the better companions you can get early will probably be one of the Pet's you can get from Worshiping a Godess/God, so get to the TrushGrond and start worshiping your chusen Godess/God.