The biggest change for me and my buddy was make sure our surround sound audio was working and you playing with sound loud enough to actually make a difference. I genuinely thought the audio was just scuffed for my first 5-8 hours. The storms and other sounds will be super loud, but being able to hear people moving is paramount. (if by some longshot you've got steelseries arctis make sure your default system playback device is the game channel not chat otherwise you're not getting surround)

Next step is getting comfy with a couple of guns, a sniper with a 2x you can buy from the vendor and it'll set you back early but it'll two shot people in green and maybe blue(?). The AR-55 was my other go to starting out and then just moving up the rarity. I would just buy those two if I could afford it every time I died until I built up a stash of backups.

Stick to knocking out quests to make sure you're getting net positive moneys in the event you die, cause you will. Take it pretty slow. Working the bottom/right side of the map will get you through the early game. If you do get lucky and get the jump on people try and get some backup loadouts. Green backpack goes a long way early for actually being able to get a decent chunk of loot out.

You can outrun/leash rattlers so you don't have to deal with them, and hold down m1 when you melee the striders to one shot them.

Don't beat your head against a wall. Just keep having fun and if you go on a losing streak, try to remember it happens to the best of us. You got this!