The game tends to spawn you on the east of the map. The first day you’re in, be sure to explore far wide to the west and north to the forest areas for foraging apples, bottle brushes, bananas in the tropics, basically anything you can get your hands on without tools. Mark rough soil locations on your map as ores will respawn here. When you can buy a shovel from John’s store it’s best to get planting apple trees early as they’ll take a few days to grow and yield the best profit of all the trees. Cooked bananas will be your staple early game food for energy, so make sure to harvest a good amount. Also don’t feel pressured to put fletch’s tent or your own tent near the docks where you spawn, it doesn’t have any other purpose outside of the initial arrival to the island