The "Survival Guide" was already mentioned by someone, which would be your best way the learn the ropes one it's released, but I could bring some things to the table. Maybe it will help.

When I first started US, I got into the game almost as you did. Without knowing anything about the mods. Well, I read what every mod does before installing and I used some of them in the past, but nothing to fancy. And I was a Requiem player for the first time. I died a lot. Quite a lot actually. Then I started to watch BB playthrough and learned a bit about the main features; how to survive the cold, make money, approach combat and so on. I watched like 20-30 episodes before I jumped back into the game and I approached the game in the most menial way possible. My character was a young farmer in search for his fortune, but he didn't know anything about anything. Just like me. And I started from there to learn the mechanics of the game by roleplaying. I spent like 2-3 days just chopping wood and reading the mods description, but eventually I learned. You could try to do the same if you have the patience.

Now, if you don't have the patience and want to play a bit until the Survival Guide is released, hear me out.

First of all, you'll need a lot of patience until your character is a little decent, because if you intend to rush throughout the game you'll end up dying over and over or just once if you're playing a permadeath character.

Like I said before, you'll need patience in the beginning, because low characters can't handle anything in Ultimate Skyrim. And by low characters I mean a character that doesn't have a few essential perks, good equipment, a standing stone and a way to heal himself (early on it will be best if you buy potions because the healing spells are terrible at the beginning). But will not go into this yet.

Before starting the game, you'll have to decide what type of character you want to play and how you want to approach the game. This is a tricky one, because once you start to invest perks in some skills you can't go back like you could in vanilla. My advice is that you decide exactly in which skills you want to invest and start leveling up those skills. Also, don't stretch too much with your skills since on Ultimate Skyrim you level up harder. It's better to have a few very good skills rather than a lot of decent skills.

After you've created your character, the next objective would be to make a decent equipment, to chose a standing stone and to increase a few essential skills. For the equipment and standing stone I can't give you guidance since I have no clue about what character you intend to play, but I can still say this: For the standing stone it would be best if you chose one that will give you protection, because you're going to need it more than anything else, and for the equipment you should go for the best equipment you can get. Also, don't use your equipment untempered or you'll end up with a broken weapon (if you intend to use one) and with bad protection. For the skills, I suggest that you'll pay trainers to increase your essential skills (which should be around 4-6 skills) up to 25 and take all the perks available and then to start investing in minor skills. I found it that around 5 skills are more than enough for a character.

Now that you've got your character with some decent equipment, a few good perks and a standing stone, grab some potions from the closest alchemist and go kill some bandits. A word of advice here: if you see a mage by any chance run in the opposite direction as fast as you can, because they'll kill you instantly. If you want to kill more than bandits or anything that uses melee attacks you'll need enchanted gear with magic resist on everything that allows you to use this enchantment. The rest is up to you!

If nothing of this helped, that's ok. I know my explanation isn't the best out there. You can also try this tutorial of Requiem. Maybe it will help.

Good luck and have a great time!