Your starting kit
Every new character begins with a small fixed set of gear: a Rusty Sword, a piece of Leather Armor, a few Health Potions, and some Iron Ore. There's no vendor and no player trading yet, but some monsters do drop more of the same items when you kill them - see Looting below.
Inventory and equipping
Open your Inventory from the bottom-right buttons (or press I) to see everything you're holding. Equippable items show an Equip button - each item has a slot (weapon, armor, or off-hand), and equipping a second item into a slot you're already using swaps out whatever was there before.
Gear actually matters
Equipping something isn't just cosmetic bookkeeping - it changes your real combat numbers immediately. A Rusty Sword raises your attack power, Leather Armor raises your armor, and so on. Unequip it and the bonus disappears just as fast. Open your Stats panel alongside your Inventory and you can watch the numbers change the instant you click Equip.
Looting
Some monsters carry a chance to drop extra items when they die - a Goblin Scout, for instance, often drops Iron Ore, sometimes a Health Potion, and rarely a spare Rusty Sword. Right-click a corpse and choose Loot (you need to be standing close to it) to open its contents, then click an item to take it or use Take All to grab everything at once. For the first minute after a kill, only you (or whoever landed the killing blow) can loot it; after that, or if it's never looted at all, the corpse stays lootable to anyone until five minutes after the kill, then disappears for good.
Consumables and materials
Health Potions and Iron Ore can be held and stacked, but can't be used or equipped yet - think of them as a preview of systems still being built (crafting, item use) rather than something to plan around today.