wanting to improve both general photography skills and technique both with cosplay and with general subject matters (scenery for example) and would like some suggestions for some affordable kit.

So i have a Nikon D50, and a tripod, i have a 50mm lens coming in the post. Any suggestions for a decent flash? or some other lenses would be great! also i'm not too familiar with the settings on my camera so i usually stick to Auto. (any tips and tricks along this route would be awesome too) I do experiment just not very good at remembering what worked and what didn't even with exif data

would appreciate any help! !

I'm a Canon user myself so don't know anything about Nikon kit.

Reading the wiki entry for the D50 it says it's
"backwards-compatible with mechanical autofocus lenses (Nikkor AF series)". Might want to research if older lenses are any good with the camera. They might be cheap but won't be any good when you upgrade to a new camera.

Seems to me that more money you spend on the flash the faster the recharge time. 6 seconds can seems a long time!

Don't use auto, start off on P(Program mode) at the very least.. it's pretty much the same as auto but you get a little more control.. AND it won't auto-pop-up the flash in P.
I would suggest you learn how to make the most of what you got before considering getting a flash, start off small and work your way up.

There's plenty of reading material on the innernets you can use to learn how to take photos, a good place to start would be learning about the exposure triangle, which is something *every* photographer should know like the back of their hand no matter what skill level.

Here's google to start you off http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=exposure+triangle&meta=