After having spent the best part of a week trying to use K2, I am absolutely at a loss as to what the supposed benefits of it are....I've tried to follow the very few guides to it that are out there and all I seem to be able to do is make an absolute mess of any site I have installed it on....The "leading count" and associated settings do absolutely nothing, despite what they are set to (articles just display on top of one another in a straight line, despite 2 articles/2 columns being set in the parameters).

For something that has been around for as long as K2 has, are there ANY resources/tutorials available for someone who has NO prior experience with K2 and could benefit from a very simple "step by step" guide on creating even a very basic site ("this is a category", "this is an item", "this is how they link/work together, and why").....The forum here sadly just seems to be full of highly-specific problems with absolutely no resources for those of us who are completely new to K2 and have no idea of how to structure a site using it.

The fact that there are 118 different permutations/settings in the Edit Category section alone sadly makes this extension nigh on impossible for a beginner to use....I have seen the words "easy to use" associated with K2 and I can only surmise that those particular words were used by someone involved in K2s development...I know that it is a free extension and I am sure that if someone is skilled in its use then it is an amazing piece of software but I (and some others I know of) are simply on the verge of giving up with K2 and removing it because of the absolute lack of documentation and step-by-step tutorials available for beginners.

Have you seen this video, it is most recent posted
getk2.org/documentation/videos/item/764-build-a-professional-grade-joomla-k2-website-in-1-hr

There are older videos there that are helpfull as well

I would also like some very basic getting started tutorials. Having built several Joomla sites using Rockettheme templates, I'm struggling with how to integrate or utilise K2 into these.

William, the video you refer to isn't great sorry - bad sound, it's a video of a live presentation and you can't see the screen, and most of all he doesn't built a website in an hour - he ran out of time and just gave a presentation on how it could be done.

Any useful links to tutorials and guidelines would be appreciated ;-)

Hi. I agree with you. Very poor documentation on this extension. I'm still searching for how to use the social buttons in articles... But if you want a basic tutorial on K2, and so far that's the only one worth seeing, go see this:
www.ostraining.com/
You have to be a member, but the videos and tutorials are worth it for the price. Once a member, go to:
www.ostraining.com/blog/joomla/k2/
www.ostraining.com/blog/joomla/k2-part2/
So K2 developpers, if the competition starts to come with the same awesomeness but with great tutorials, you are going to lose it. Get on it, we are waiting for you. But for now, we have to try, retry, mess around, which is a tremendous waste of time.
Hope it helped a bit