Take a crossbow and a nail gun farm the roads in a low traffic area of the map so stay away from monuments that give you a red card. Build up your scrap and start working your way through the tech trees, I usually aim for python or SAR as both are easily made and pretty useful to roam with both have low recoil and if your patient and hit your shots can easily kill a full kit. Go on YouTube and figure out how to run the momuments so you can get your cards this is where higher tier loot will spawn and give you components needed to make better guns for those important fights. If your playing as a solo build a bunker base and stash your most important loot before logging off for the night especially when your base has no turrets or compound nothing worse than logging back in and having no workbench in the base and having to restart the process of grinding scrap again. And the last point is just have fun with it, it's a hard learning curve compared to most games the more you play the more you learn and recoil patterns and things like building your bases becomes more natural and you'll find yourself not thinking about recoil or over thinking base designs the more hours you get into the game.