It depends on your combat life. Combat is really the only thing in the game that requires stats. So, if you're using a sword, STR, magic, INT and bow, DEX. I would max one of those first. Then it sort of depends. I think VIT is helpful to max second, but it might've been because I used a sword. Otherwise, I think LUCK is the second or third to be maxed, because it increases crit chance and rare material drops.
As I said earlier, I'd say Gathering stats are a lot more important unless you have a higher level crafter making good tools(which is unlikely since you can't gather the stuff to make them). This is mostly for the special nodes though, which means it's mostly for progressing through the challenges, as gathering normal nodes require almost nothing. Even with a good tool and a decent skill, if you don't have the stats you can run into nodes you simply can't do.
For combat obviously more damage is nice, but at the same time nothing really requires more damage to beat, as long as you do "some" damage, which if you're using a kinda up to date weapon you will always do. Maybe not god rank requests and ancient tower stuff, but everything else including gold bounty bosses, you'll damage if you have a semi decent weapon even with 0stats.
Assuming you want to do combat stats though, it's STR for 1H sword(paladin), VIT for 2H sword(merc), INT for Magician and DEX for Hunter. Note that Merc can also use STR at the same ratio, but VIT also provides defense, while STR does nothing else but dmg, so stacking VIT is a ton better on a merc. After that every life has 2 secondary stats which give half the main stat contribution, full list at
http://fantasy-life.wikia.com/wiki/Stats
Luck is a great all around stat, but it doesn't help with "requirements" to actually do stuff. You'd probably want to keep it as a 2nd or 3rd stat, basically a stat dump once you have enough of your main stat and maybe of your secondary. I'd avoid it early on, I went 50luck myself at first and regretted it, was very happy when I eventually respeced out of it.