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Hi AstroAJ, your question is not an easy one to answer and you'll get many opinions. One way you can go is to buy an Andrews 30mm UWA 80 degree eyepiece ($99) which will give a very wide field of view making it easier to find DSO's. The disadvantage of this eyepiece is that stars in the outer 1/3 to 1/2 of the field will be distorted, but to get the same field of view in a better eyepiece will cost several hundreds of dollars. Since you're just getting into the hobby it's not worth spending megabucks at this focal length on what is primarily a finder eyepiece.
Down the track after saving some pennies you could consider spending a few hundred on a high quality wide field eyepiece between 10 to 15mm focal length. Before doing that you need to get a feel for what magnifications you can typically use(depending on the stability of the air where you observe), so that the expensive eyepiece you buy will be useable almost all of the time.
The idea is to use the cheap wide field as a finder, then swap to the expensive eyepiece to get a really nice view of the DSO at about 80 to 120x magnification.
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