Silver~Mist;
If you haven't noticed, there is a difficulty option for the game; setting it to easy should help.
I am not familiar with the PC controls, but on the Xbox if you pause the game, hitting a shoulder button brings up a menu allowing you to use food, potions skills/spells, etc (or you can go through the main inventory menu). There is also an option to auto-pause at a certain level of health.
I never bothered assigning a hotkey to potions.
At the start of the game I would avoid opponents a couple levels above you. At level 2 I cleared out the level 2 and 3 goblins around the village, but the level 4 ones were a little tough, so I headed back to the village and did a few quests there to level.
You may find a gamepad easier than the keyboard and mouse controls (unless you just need to get used to them). I've never been a big fan of WASD for movement, and plan on using a gamepad whenever I get around to building a new computer.
Alvin;
That's ok, I stole it from someone else (Barta, maybe?). Someone posted a long time ago and got an answer and a 'welcome to the forum' smiley; they replied that they were very relieved (almost hadn't posted), as other forums they had tried to get help in were quite hostile to newbie questions, so I started adding that line, as well.
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