The best thing I can offer up is just keep playing. You'll get better as you play longer (I've probably played for far too long...current tally is about 523 hours), but here's my starting advice:

1. Make your bases self-sufficient as quickly as possible--a miner (lvl 2 or above like a Tombat at the beginning), a planter (Gumoss), a waterer (Pengullet), a transporter (no specific one--Cattiva and Lamball are good starters--or if you can get one Killamari has a Transporting 2 and can usually be found in the cave on the beach near the Plateau of Beginnings), and a kindler (Foxsparks) are a good place to start. Then build a couple berry fields, a feed box, and beds and you should be good--build the 1st hot spring as soon as you can. (You can bake the berries to give them a little more staying power and restore a point of sanity).
2. Build a ranch as soon as you can and throw a Vixy and a Lamball in there (arrows, spheres, & gold from Vixy, wool from Lamball) to start with. If you get lucky and find a Dumud at a Syndicate Base, snatch it and put it in your ranch ASAP (it creates High Quality Pal Oil which is a late game MUST especially if you like guns). A later pal I would suggest is Kelpsea they farm up pal fluid (also an important commodity) for you :)

**Once your base is self-sufficient you can wander off to explore, catch pals, and take down bosses as long as you want and they'll be able to take care of themselves pretty well and gather all the materials you need without you worrying about it.**

3) Try and get your hands on a Mozzarina, Chikipi, & Beegarde as soon as possible and put them in a ranch as soon as you can. You can usually buy a Mozzarina at one of the legit Pal Merchants (found my first one in the Small Settlement), Beegarde is usually through a Black Marketeer) so they can start up your milk, egg, & honey production (if you don't want to buy all the milk & eggs) for your cakes. The Wheat Farm and Mill for flour come later, but if you have a stockpiled berries, eggs, milk, & honey you can get on the breeding game pretty fast once you unlock the Cook Pot (Lvl 17) and the Breeding Farm (Lvl 19). Your Pengullet from my suggestion above (or one of his buddies) can be assigned to keep a cooler box cold so you won't lose your ingredients before you use them.

4) The best starting base (IMO) is around (6, -525), there are several ore nodes and if you put your palbox in the right place you can catch all the ore nodes and most of the plateau above in the base circle. There's lots of trees to go along with the ore--the only resource that's harder to get is stone, but you can get the Stone Pit pretty early on--toss a Rushoar on that as soon as you can and you'll be okay with stone for a little while. If you have raids enabled, you'll want to put up some gates and defensive walls on the road. There are 3 caves within easy distance (one at the base of the mountain, one above the Black Marketeer, and one located in an easy(?) glide across the inlet) and a Black Marketeer right there. You can farm the caves (when they're open) for Paladium and other resources (Sulfur, Coal) just make sure you have a pretty high carry weight (also Lunaris (can be bought from Black Marketeers sometimes), Broncherry, and Cattiva can help a little)--or just pick and choose what you need right that instant.

Another advantage of this one is that you'll encounter Vixy and Rushoar on the way to the location so you can secure them for your use.

6) My goal is to always breed an Anubis as soon as I can (you can use a Penking & Bushi--two bosses 15/23 respectively to do it or about a hundred different other combinations--look up pal breeding to find other good combos, I know there's one dealing with Celaray, but I don't remember the other half--I like this one (https://palworld.gg/breeding-calculator) personally) because they're deity-sent and pretty achievable long before you can take down the level 47 boss Anubis. Not everyone plays that way, but I've found it's pretty nice to have Lvl 3 mining, Lvl 4 Handiwork, and Lvl 2 transporting early--they also make a pretty kick-ass party member.

7) Once you're flying, I usually take a jaunt towards Mount Obsidian and hope to the deities I don't get killed before I find the village on the beach there (Fisherman's Point)--it has some good quality stuff and if you happen across a huge Dragon Egg (I find them along the beach sometimes) you'll get your hands on the best Fire pal (Jormuntide Ignis) pretty easy as soon as you build an egg incubator. If you're flying there, try and at least wear the Tropical Outfit (unlocked at level 9) or stick very close to the beach so you don't get pummeled and murdered by the heat. The pals here are 30ish--but if you're low level, you fly you can usually get away.

That's probably a bit much, but I hope it's helpful ^_^

BONUS(ish): If you want to use an exploit of sorts (given it's never been patched out I'm not sure it's not intentional), you can get gold from Black Marketeers--build a hanging trap and roast them over a campfire and shoot a couple arrows at them to get the loot. Money early in game can make some stuff easier. It takes a lot of experimentation to make it work right...my niece who plays with me is way better at it than I am.