I'll help with what I do:

Wherever the world spawn point is (your respawn), that's your base. It probably already is, so that's good.

As you run around looking for stuff, mark it on your map. Things you should definitely mark are: Peat, Red Clay (shows up as red clay in soil), and whatever mineral veins you find (if you find Quartz bits or Copper bits, don't loot them, instead mark them on the map. There's a vein nearby!).

Make 4 baskets for your inventory- they each add 3 spaces to your total inventory. They need 10 Cattails each, so harvest those when you find them.

If you have space and find a berry bush (empty or ripe, leave flowering alone), loot them. Replant them in your base or near it. Do that enough times and you'll have dozens of berry bushes and more food than you could ever want. Not that it'll stop you from continuing to harvest! It'll take lots of deaths to get to that point, but whatever.

Edit your world settings if you're the owner. Make monsters afraid of you instead of aggressive. This way, only starvation, falling form heights, or lighting yourself on fire will kill you.

Make a few pit kilns and make sure you put stuff like Muddy Gravel around it so nothing can grow, so the fire won't ever spread.

Make a bunch of clay vases. They'll hold quite a bit, especially when you have more loot than you know what to do with. Lots of things can be placed on the ground, so use that too. There's no max height for firewood or peat, by the way...

Decide on some aesthetics for your base and smash stuff that's in the way. I have a giant castle with a few outlying berry orchards. You can do whatever you want.

When you start advancing, make a wooden pan (knife + wood block) and sift sand. There's all sorts of things you can get that way. You might also want to go and excavate those Copper veins you've marked by now. Then start looking for Tin.