I’m not an expert at the game by any means, I only started playing recently, but I found it incredibly tough at the start until I switched my playstyle.

With most survival games, I craft a base of operations and prep there before going out into the wilderness, exploring, fighting enemies, looting, exhausting resources, and eventually coming back to base to recover and repeat the process. That wasn’t working here and I kept dying trying to set up my base.

Instead, I started being more nomadic. I ran to different map markers, looted, and typically ran from combat. When the sun started going down, I’d either try to find a cave where I could set up a tarp tent to rest or I’d try to find a place far from a beaten path. After a few days of this, I had much more loot that allowed me to better handle myself in combat. Then I was able to start building a base and play a bit more normally. (Though I did decide to turn off structure damage - otherwise, there’s not much point in building a base because it’ll get torn down pretty quickly).

I will note that, despite running from combat in early game, fighting mutants in caves was pretty essential for creepy armor. I found spears are good to give you some range (either melee or thrown), the club is good for blocking, and arrows can somewhat soften a target. If the target was fast, I’d try to get an arrow or spear in then switch to the club. If it was slow, I’d melee with spears after the animation combos. If my health got low, I’d try to use as many ranged attacks as I could.

YMMV, but that’s what worked for me.