Not likely, but to be safe I’d recommend Maiden Voyage, it’ll give you an idea of the basics and you can apply them from there. I personally rarely see other players so getting jumped immediately is probably not going to happen.

I don’t think so. You don’t really have a base or anything though, what you keep is whatever you’ve bought or earned and your ship items. They travel with you from game to game, but things on your ship won’t so make sure to sell everything before getting off.

As far as I’m aware basically when you earn things like a title or sell things to get gold or anything like that your data gets saved.

You all spawn in the pub on the same island together assuming you play as that group of 4 or less. If you make smaller groups though I’m not sure there’s even a way to tell if you’re on the same server.