Decent Guides?

I have been looking all over for some decent guides for this game, but I haven't come up with much that is useful.  If anyone knows of a site or is interested in making some quality guides that would be awesome.  I'd like to see a mining and crafting guide at least.  I also think creating a spawn map would be helpful for a lot of players because I gotta tell you it took me a while to find where the heck I was going at all when I started playing.  Oh and I still haven't figured out what the hell to do with excelsior pieces.  I bought the catyalst things, but they don't seem to do anything.  Do I have to be a specialist or something?