I chose a fairly wild location on the planet I was assigned to at the start (Berlyn), and now I’m wondering how I can get to a place where other people are, ideally with shops. Will I have to change planets? Or just wander around Berlyn til I find a city?
Your compass will have the capital marked in orange. Once there you can follow the portal networks (purple compass markers) to many shops and the rest of the worlds.
These forums are a great place to search for answers and are highly active.
Even though I started on the US West region, if I travel to other planets, will it automatically change region? It seems like way more people are on US East than US West.
Every world (server) is hosted in a specific region:
Boundless deals with latency really well so you probably won’t even notice that change. The most active worlds currently are Therka (EU) and Solum (US East).