Hey, I'm new to VST architechure, too, and I am primarily after acoustic sounding instruments. I am wondering if there is a good, free sampler with plentiful free samples. The music store says HALion for $399USD and that it too much!

I feel oddly mocked by this new user's name!

Sounds like you want a SoundFont player, not an actual sampler (since you're not planning on utilizing your own samples).

Try poking around at the "Instruments" link (upper left column of the page) on this site.

- m