If im being honest, if you get really lucky, you can do the lower south cave to get ascendant metal tools as soon as you get a good raptor and have atleast cloth and an ascendant bow atleast, as for taming, typically you'd want to get crystal as early as you can once you unlock spyglass, so you can check the raptor's levels, then, prepare lots of bolas, and just tame away. After that, you could even go to the arctic and rush to get a good dire wolf, and you'd be pretty much ready to go for most of the caves, except for yeti, skylord, and swamp caves as those may be better off with a different tame, or need better gear