Getting Started:
    The swordsman class really needs to be able to take more damage than certain other classes.  So when you pick this class, be prepared to take some punishment.  This class doesn't have any flashy dodging or hiding skills.  However it does have the shield skill, which will greatly reduce your damage at higher levels if you have a shield equipped.  Currenty the "Protection" skill isn't quite implemented yet, so using that is a waste of time, but the shield is an automatic skill, so it'll be leveling on it's own.

    The warrior apprenticeship comes with 2 skills, Impact and Block.  The Block skill is automatic, so it works on it's own and you don't need to level it, however you must have a shield to use it, so I suggest you grab a quest to make enough money to buy one as soon as you get out of the villiage head.  This skill may not be helpful to you at the next skill level since protection is not implemented yet, but the higher the skill level, the more effective your shield blocking will be.  And that leaves impact, use this skill as much as possible.  I recommend you use this puppy on every hit during your early training.  Sure this will drain your mp like a fat slob eating a chicken leg, but since you're below level 10, the healer is free.  That means you have practically infinite MP, so use the crap out of it.  You should be able to get this puppy close to level 20 by the time you even become a swordsman, and having rush will be more helpful in your training.  However, you'll notice that if you use this tactic, that your shield skill increases much to the speed of molasses going up hill in a blizzard...  Unfortunately, the drawback to using the impact skills is that your dodge rate is lowered for the next turn and your shield blocking is unavailable... but oh well, that'll level up quickly on it's own, you'll be happier with your impact skills up.

Stat Distribution:
    For a swordsman you not only want a good deal of strength, but you'll want a lot of constitution.  That would be easy, but the thing is, you'll need a good amount of dexterity too.  Constitution is the stat you want to start on, because the earlier you start pumping constitution, the more helpful it'll be in the long run.  The amount you should pump is highly disputed among swordsmen, and really all warrior classes.  Therefore this should definitely be a personal choice on your part.  Personally, I'm not a big constitution pumper, I only pumped my swordsman up to 35 con.  Some go as low as not pumping it at all, and some go as far as pumping it to 60+.  But having more con doesn't guarantee you get more HP, it only increases your chances.  I find 35 con a stable point, however, more can never hurt and will help you take damage better.  After you have a sufficient amount of con, your focal point will be strength.  And allong with strength, you'll want a side of dexterity.  I use my normal 2 str to 1 dex pump rate for the most part until dexterity is around 50-60, then go gung ho into strength.

Now that you're at level 10, you've finally become an swordsman.
    Now you've gotten 2 new skills: Double Combo and Sword.  From this point on you should ALWAYS use a sword.  If you use a weapon other than a sword, all of your sword skills will be unusable and will not level.  This includes blades, don't use blades, they may look like swords, but in this game, they're not.  Now that that's clear, get started on leveling up your double combo.  This skill just gives you two consecutive normal hits on a single target, but it's much more useful once you get it to triple and quadruple combo, so get cracking.  Sword you won't have to worry about, the level 1 skill levels on it's own, then at level sword skill level 15, you'll get flying sword.   The good thing is, while you're leveling your sword and combo skills, your shield skill has a chance to take effect and level better also.

Pets:
    A new trend with a lot of swordsmen is to get themselves a healing pet for combat.  This isn't really necessary if you make a decent character and get yourself a good armor pet.  With high defense and a good armor pet, most things won't be doing more than 1 damage to you.  No need to heal if they can't hurt you.  As for other combat pets, well that's up to you.  As a swordsman with high defense and attack power, you'll find a combat pet less than useful most of the time.  You'll be able to solo just fine and won't need the assistance of a pet in combat.  But it won't hurt you either.  Except fo the fact that since swordsman have naturally low MP and Int, so having too many pets will drain your MP.  I recommend that you have 2.  One to enhance your weapon, and one for armor.  I would just leave it at that.  You'll be able to take massive damage and inflict such insane amounts of pain on the enemy that you won't ever care that you don't have a pet in combat.

    This brings me to the next point, another new trend for swordsman is to get earth pets or other pets for defense, they're reasoning is that "the swordsman's defense is already high enough, the mud slime will help dodge better."  I highly discourage your from listening to those people.  Since defense is added from a pet in armor by a percentage of defense, that means adding a high con pet to a swordsmans already high defense will increase it that much more.  With the amount of defense a pet such as pie aibo or wood crab can give you, you won't care about dodging.  Dodging, no matter how high your AC is, is still random.  Your defense is constant, it will always be there.  So I'm not putting AC pets in this list.

Weapon Enhancement- Red Beetle, Flame Pegasus, and Red Butterfly.  Fire Bear, Fire Skeleton, and Flame Tiger.

Armor Enhancement- Wood Crab, Pie Aibo, Wood Poli, Wood Hog
 

Where should I go to beat things up now?
Since you're a single hit melee fighter, you'll want to stay out of the caves and stay in the open areas to avoid being ganged.  If you go into a cave area against 6 mobs, you'll have to take them out 1 by 1 while they beat you down.  So stay out of caves if you go solo.  Also the pet you're using on your weapon could make a difference in where you train, but I only listed fire enhanced pets.  So I'm assuming that you'll have one.  If you don't the training places would be pretty similar, but in the list, I'll avoid listing places with water beasts.  That'll be the only difference for you guys without enhanced swords.  But if you're not using an enhancement I recommend you go get one.

10-15- This early in the character, stay around the village you started.  Just find a spot where the pets levels are about the same as yours and go whack them with your sword.  This would be places like behind the earth temple in northern grasslands, southern grasslands, GB Suberbs (outer circle of goldburg), or even the far back of Smiling Forest.

15-20- If you've been whacking enough things, your sword skills should be close to 15, so it should be in this level area that you obtain flying sword.  This will help you train as it doubles the damage of a normal sword attack.  The Western Grasslands is a good place to train around these levels.  You won't have an elemental advantage, since the mobs are light and dark.  But they aren't too bad, and give you good exp.  However, they do have high dex, if you don't have a decent dex stat you may want to train in dwarf hill. 

20-25- By this time your skills should be well on their way to doing some good damage.  From this point on you should be able to 1 hit KO just about anything you go up against as far as wild mobs go.  For training I recommend Genie Desert.  Much like western grasslands, you won't have an elemental advantage over the light/dark mobs, but the experience, again, is great.  If you don't want to train there, you can go to Secret Plains or Snow White Forrest.

25-30- Around these levels you should be close to getting windy sword.  With this little skill you can triple your damage dealt in a single blow.  This means a definate 1 hit KO against any mob you fight around these levels, as long as the hit connects.  Since that's the case, most of the map is your playground.  You still shouldn't venture into the caves solo though.  No matter how powerful you may think you are, getting gang attacked by mobs is not fun for swordsmen.  Playing around at the back of Snow white forest can bring some good exp.

30-35- Here you can venture into some higher places.  Candy Mountain, Crystal Mountain, Pinapple hill.. get it, higher places... Hahahaha.... fine don't laugh, screw you pal....  Anyway, around these places you should find your element as an advantage and get some great experience.  Just watch out for those metal pets... they can be hell on your armor enhancement if it's wood.  But your defense should be high enough it won't be too bad.

35-40- You can stick with the previous leveling places for another level or two, but you might want to start moving towards the back of them and fighting the higher level mobs.  Soon you'll want to head into the far back of candy mountain or pinnapple hill.  Moonglow might seem tempting, but the mob spawn there is 6... so you might want to rethink strolling in there.

40 and beyond- Here, like all other classes, you can still solo level for a while longer, but eventually, you're going to need to find yourself an AoD to help until the new patch comes out (which might even be before anyone reads any of these... in that case I guess I'll have some more writting to do..)