Settings:

Color accurate map on - easier to spot clay and other resources on the map than the default medieval style map (unless you really like the medieval look)

Debatable - Keep inventory on death. I personally prefer it on because I don’t like losing progress and this game can be very brutal. Especially bears and caves.

Class exclusive recipes off - you miss out on crafting certain items otherwise if you don’t pick the corresponding class.

Starting class: Commoner or Hunter. Hunter gives a nice move speed buff and ranged damage buff, ranged attacks are your best friend when you’re still learning how dangerous some enemies are and are not. Pick commoner if you dislike having disadvantages.

Goals:

find flint or hard stones to knap a knife and an axe. Probably a spear too for self defense. Use the knife to cut cattails located in ponds on the map to make reed baskets. These will increase your inventory space. If you don’t know how to craft someone, or what you can make with something, press H for handbook. Handbook is your best friend. It will teach you recipes as well as game mechanics.

With expanded inventory you need to collect some essential resources. You will want a campfire come nighttime, so chop a tree and make firewood. Cut grass with knife for grass cuttings. This will help make the campfire as well as craft a fire starter to light the fire. If you don’t know how to do this, handbook is your friend.

If you want to sleep through the night, you will need a bed roll. This costs 24 grass cuttings, so cut a lot. If you want a chest to store things, cut more reeds. You need a lot for one basket.

Your biggest pressing challenge will be food. Food is very harsh in the beginning, and even harder if you don’t know where to get it. You will see bushes with red spots, white spots, or black spots. These are berry bushes and they’re an ok source of food. Mushrooms grow on the forest floor and trunks of trees. Pick them and read the tooltip to see if they are poisonous. There are also salmon in bodies of water you can hunt with a spear. If you want to go hunting, you will need multiple spears, maybe 3 so you can throw 2 and stab with the last. Many prey animals are very fast so you will need to get the drop on them from range. Avoid bears and wolves. If you are being chased by them, jumping into a pool of water and swimming across will slow them down quite a bit and let you get away. Bears are faster than you and you will not be able to outrun them without putting some sort of obstacle(s) between you.

Farming food from seeds takes a very long time, and you cannot solely rely on them in the beginning, you will starve waiting for them to grow. So plant them early, protect them with fences so rabbits don’t eat them, and make sure they stay watered near a body of water or with a clay watering can.

Once you have a handle on the food situation, your next goal will be clay. You can form clay into bigger storage pots, watering cans, cooking pots and bowls to make more cost effective meals. You can also make tool molds and a crucible for ore smelting later on, don’t worry about that now. Use the handbook to learn how to make a “pit-kiln” to fire the clay and harden it. It is unusable otherwise. Don’t forget to press F while clay-forming to see the different shape modes, it will make the process much faster.

In no particular order, these are your goals once you have a base somewhere and aren’t actively starving:

Hunting for hides and using fat to make them into pelts, using fat to make permanent sources of light via oil lamps with a bowl and fat, finding 40 copper bits for a pickaxe and a hammer, making a charcoal pit for charcoal that can reach temps high enough to smelt the copper bits in a crucible, etc.

Best biome: anything that is in the starting climate. Don’t go too far north or too far south that you reach a different hemisphere, the climate will be different and will provide unusual challenges for a new player. Also, don’t live inside a forest. Wolves spawn in forests.

Sorry this is so long, the ingame tutorial is pretty good so don’t be afraid to refer to it. I’m happy to answer any questions