I am very weary of Oracle Restores !

The best thing that I can recommend is that you spend a few days doing all kinds of restores on a test machine. I learned an awful lot and destroyed the database 6-8 times before I started to see the logic of the whole thing. The resetlogs can be a bit dangerous because it starts a new era of the db.

I would never "learn" how to restore on a live production db. Once you F***ed up it may be hard to come back without a cold backup from before you started playing with the restores.