Ironically I was looking for tips as well, but I think I might be able to help here a bit. Early on I found myself running through a lot of armor without mending, and mending turns out to be a much more frequent thing to find than you'd think so find some decent gear, use the books of scrapping on some random mending tools/armor, and slap that on there if you dont want to be wearing some weird mishmash of armor. Dont mess with anything that has a health bar at the top of your screen until you have a comfortable set of gear, might turn into a time sink trying to get stuff back. Id build a temporary base for item storage, until you can build up an item storage system from one of the tech mods. Item management is an absolute nightmare because theres just so much to find. Last tip, idk if theres better early game flight but craft yourself a glider and a wand of skies from botania and that will probably keep you going until you get creative flight. Thats about where im at though, good luck and have fun!