Hello community. I have spent many hours looking at UE, prodding and clicking things, watching utube and generaly wandering around. I am completely new to UE but have done some work in DAZ Studio. Would someone be kind enough and patient enough to tell me where and how to start with UE. Maybe recommend a utube video perhaps. Thanks guys, have a nice day.
Not going to recommend YouTube at all. Its great for quick recipes or emergency plumbing (fixing the toilet 
). But honestly, YT doesn’t empower you for game dev at all. Seriously… So many tutorials are filled with mistakes / bad habits/ out of date. YT creators are good at creating convincing presentations, but behind all that often lies a whole lot of dunning kruger. 
Instead, why not be specific about what you want to achieve. Write it down and compare your progress at 6 months from now, and then again in a year or two, and just see how it goes.
Start by downloading free & paid templates that get close to what you want for starters. Take projects apart and learn from them over time, while adding your own cool features.
The trick with Unreal is figuring out what you don’t need to learn RIGHT NOW (as its HUGE). 
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Wow that was an amazing reply @game-maker … I’ve found myself drowning in the ocean of YT tutorials.
I’m glad you mentioned the bad habits part, hadn’t thought of that. Personally I just picked one or two good and in-depth intro tutorials that just show you how to use the engine and work it, otherwise there are endless videos LOL.
Are there any other resources you recommend for beginners?
And any other tips?
Any recommendations for a good source to get these paid templates from other than the UE marketplace?
Thanks for your help
Epic has a dedicated portal with tons of content:
Tutorials, learning paths, entire courses…
Not paid, plenty of examples:
Very hands on, take it all apart at your own pace, see what makes it, ehm, Tick.
This is great if you have previous non-UE experience or have a reasonable understanding of the engine and want to solidify it:
YT can be OK if you want an answer to that one thing, and you know the right keyword and can filter nonsense - but finding the right vid can be a hassle, indeed.
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The best advice on this may actually come from new users that are further ahead of you right now. But for now here’s something to consider… Lots of users start out by trying to create huge terrains or characters / cars in a 3D app. If so, make sure both seriously interest you, or you may spread yourself too thin. BTW: Don’t even use landscapes at all, if you can get away with just using static meshes. In fact, don’t even do tutorials on landscapes / materials / particles / character creation or whatever at this stage if you don’t have to. Just basic tutorials on navigating the editor…
Here’s why…
When starting out, you don’t need to know everything about everything (you won’t retain it all the first time anyway as gamedev is seriously practical - think rinse / repeat). There are millions of free assets floating around if you look (models / materials / terrains / particles / characters / vehicles). So just tweak some of those freebies to start with. In the same way as you can build things with lego bricks without having to worry about making your own bricks. There are some other beginner mistakes to avoid as well. Avoid anything with Physics or Multiplayer if possible. As its better to stay clear of those for now. Its hilarious how many times new users want to combine both as a first game. But hey, Flight sims and Planet-sized space worlds are hell. So its best to leave GTA multiplayer / Rocket-League / Sea-of-Thieves type game ideas for later (if you can)…
Wouldn’t risk it. Quality control is a definite issue on other marketplaces along with trying to get refunds. You have some assurances at least that FAB marketplace products meet a bar set by Epic staff or their contractors (most of the time anyway - not always). Start out by collecting all the free packs every month to build up a library of useful templates over time. Follow posts by Clockwork / Everynone and the occasional paid mod, and bookmark packs / plugins as they get recommended in new user on-boarding threads. If you want to do an advanced search you can find some of these now from past posts. But first pick a game genre and stick with it. So, yes specialize now. As so much depends on the type of game you want to make. FPS / RPG / RTS / Space-sims / 2D are all very different. Trying to be too general only hurts your chances at this stage. Anyway feel free to consider the advice if it helps. But this is game dev, so there aren’t any real rules that can’t be broken… So YMMV.
It helps to find a hook to keep you going, something about the engine / tech that interests you the most, that will keep you coming back again and again on days when nothing is working. Could be anything really: Level design / Character creation / Gameplay mechanics… Whatever… Just find something, so that when you hit a roadblock you don’t give up. Game tech is always advancing rapidly and so keeping up with all the new developments is extra hard work. Often new users just give up or quit after realizing this. Sure game dev is fun, but its also a brutal amount of work with long hours. And yes while AI exists to help, AI can’t really create an entire game, not yet anyway despite all the media hype.
**TLDR: **
Start out by -tweaking- pre-existing materials / particles / landscapes / meshes / characters / vehicles, instead of trying to become an expert at creating your own. Just get on with building things while you learn and remember to have fun, as game dev can get pretty heavy at times.
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Along with everything above learn c++ for UE and study vector math. ChatGPT 4 + a few well reviewed books should make it easier.
Can’t stress this enough.