For starters, if you're in protection mode (you will be when you first signup), other players can't touch you. They can't spy on you. They can't steal from you. They can't attack you. Monsters on the other hand are a bit mean and sneaky and will go ahead and attack you even if you're small and just started.

You'll want to pay attention to, and attack the monsters. You get Experience. You might get a little land and gold. You also might get MAGIC ITEMS and ARTIFACTS. Hitting the monsters is a six hour attack for your characters. Find the monsters either in your clan forums or coven forums if you aren't in a clan.

There are 5 types of monsters:

Orcs - These guys aren't so bad, they're fairly weak. If they land in your coven, and they happen to attack you, and they "break" you (i.e., they have more points than you), they'll take 10% of your land. Mean little bastards.

Spiders - These guys are kind of wimpy, if they attack you they'll kill livestock (food) and population, if they make it past your defense. You get decent chances of magic items hitting them (better than orcs, but not as good as Giants or Vampires).

Dragons - Nobody likes the dragons :'( When they're around they're the only monster that will show up in EVERY clan's forums. Dragons will arial attack your city, raining fire from above in great sheets of burning chemicals. There is no defense when they attack and you get no experience, you simply lose 5-10% of your buildings.

Giants - Nobody has said anything nice about Giants either... They have the potential to injure characters in battle, adding six hours to thier lag. If they break you militarily you lose 5% of your land.

Vampires - These bloodsucking fiends have been known to persecute a coven for days at a time. In battle they reincarnate 50% of a player's losses into more vampires. If they break you militarily you lose 5% of your land.

Don't feel too bad if the monsters attack you, it is free experience (well, except those pesky Dragons), unless your characters were off base, then it just stings. You get advance warning in Coven News of incoming monsters, so you can kind of prepare, often you'll see a monsters thread in your clan forums listing coven news of incoming monsters.

There are "normal monsters", which are at full strength, and there are "noob only monsters" which are at 1/5 strength, but, you won't even see the noob only monsters unless your land is less than 75% of the average of the game (counting empires over 249 land)... So, if you're small, there will be small monsters for you to attack. Also, you get full experience failing on monsters if you're under 1,000 land or if you're small enough to hit noob monsters. The current size limit for noob monsters is listed at the very bottom of the competition page.