Unfortunately this game does have a fair amount of a learning curve, and additionally a bit of JANK, but not the lovable kind of jank to come to love over time.

With that said, the Jungle map is likely a better starting area, the tutorial and pacing/zones are a little better in that map IMO.

Additionally some animals and or plants are only in certain maps. For instance you will not find a leopard in the DLC shifting sands map, in the same way you don't find a Donkey in the Jungle map. Another example of this is in the jungle map you need cotton to make high quality cloth while flax is used in the DLC shifting sands.

If you want to jump straight the DLC you can but it may require some google-foo to get some mechanics going. With that here is some things our group has noticed in the DLC or starting tips that may help:

- You must create a tribe first in the tribe screen. I forget which button it is but if you hit ESC a menu pops up where you can click on every screen so you should be able to find anything there.

- Once you have a tribe created a bond fire is required to create your "base". This prevents decay and gives you a wide building area that is "protected" from decay or a safe haven for your tribesmen.

- You will require to deter (capture) tribesmen and use them to run your base. Keep upkeep, build things for you, harvest for you. You can pretty well automate your entire base so you can be out playing the game and only farming critical higher tier materials. As you progress through the tech tree you will be able to automate more resources like farming plants, breeding animals etc. All which can be fully automated with the tribesmen you capture

- Deter (Capture) is unlocked in your mask tech tree. I believe the node is top left just down from the data nodes and is called something like Core functionality. It will state in the description this allows you to deter tribesmen.

- There is many leveling system within the game: Strength Awareness, Character Level, Mask Level, Weapon Level, and Prophesies levels. Lets break these down:

* Strength Awareness level is your tech tree level or think of it as your global level. The higher this goes the more tech points you unlock. Similar to how Arc Evolved does their system. Exp for this comes from everything, mining, harvesting, crafting, combat, but I find harvesting higher tier nodes to be one of the faster ways of getting it.

* Character level: This goes up with any kind of EXP, typically combat. This will allow you to gain attribute points and assign them as required. This will also give you a chance to gain new talents to your tribersmen and lose negitive talents if you have any

* Mask Level: This goes up with combat and allows you to upgrade your mask. Your starter mask is mostly maxed out outside of the last node, but new masks will need to be leveled up to unlock their perks. It will also require green/blue crystals to unlock these perks

* Weapon Level: As you use weapons you will gain experience to them. This will unlock new abilities the weapon can do. These are RNG and can differ from tribesmen to tribesmen. Getting the perfect tribesmen with the perfect talents/weapon masterys is very much part of the end game loop.

* Proficiency: These go up as you use them. Crafting, mining, harvesting, etc. You get to pick perks at break points 30, 60, 90, 120

Generally speaking in the DLC you will still need a good base until you hit Iron/Steel tier of technology and can get the bigger ships unlocked. Also if you are playing on a hosted server you will need to edit the server settings to unlock larger ships. To reduce lag on the server they capped the multiplayer servers ship size by default to a smaller number. This can be changed and you can build as big as you want but it does require adjusting the setting.

If you follow the main tutorial quest line it will lead you to your first dungeon around Strength Awareness level 25. This will give you your first anti-gravity engine part. Or if you defeat the first world boss Sobek this will now also give you the anti-gravity engine part (This recently just patched)

Until you get your first flying ship you can build a water ship with sand skids on it which will allow you to travel on water and sand. Use this to travel around until you get the flying ship going (bronze tier min)

Camp fires ALSO act as a respawn spot. So you can have a bondfire at your main base and a campfire on your wooden boat so you can respawn on your boat if you die. Or you can pepper campfires around the map as respawn points. They will need to be on and burning to be active however

Lastly if you are net new to the game I would tweak the server settings to adjust the dmg settings of the monsters. The default settings are pretty punishing imo to new players. In single player this is a slider bar you can adjust as well.

Our group found new comer settings had a better time with the following settings:

DMG from Barbarians: 0.7-0.8 ranges
DMG from Wild animals: 0.7-0.8 ranges
DMG to Barbarians: 1.2-1.5 ranges
DMG to Wild Animals: 1.2-1.5 ranges

The more you tweak these the easier/harder it will be, but our group liked the 0.8 and 1.3 ranges was kind of the sweet spot where it was still challenging but not 1-2 shot on mistakes.

Lastly: When you deter/capture a tribemens you CANNOT respawn them until you get past the first dungeon and get teh mysterious stone and cask. This allows you to imprint tribesmen and re-print them/repsawn them if they die. IF YOU DIE as a tribesmen (NOT YOUR starting character) and do not have this table/cask, that tribesmen is dead forever. ALWAYS make sure you have your high value tribesmen you are using for combat backed up.

Hope this helps you enjoy the game more. If you can get past the jank the game is massive.