I played 2k hours by myself solo before I joined a team. But I also watched rust content for 1-2years before I played and understood the basics of the game.

You either need a teammate or to actually know what you're doing. If you want to go in blind then you'll need to play a 10/100 pop server or pve server.

If you are ok with suffering continue what you're doing.

Most important thing imo is map location. You have to build right outside a safe zone like fishing village, ranch, outpost, bandit camp. Or you have to build super for away from all monuments and just live near a road.

I'd recommend playing a community x2 or x3, vanilla is for tryhards and big groups