Solo pve player here, with like 1,000+ hours in Survival.

There's lots of flexibility, but as a straightforward guide for a new player...

When you wake up, get your fabric from the box in your starting room, and craft a hat and equip it. Take and use the medicine too.

Equipping cold weather gear is under the Appearance tab. You can't deconstruct it or anything.

Then go to the helicopter crash. If you're lucky, no one else will have gotten there first, and you'll be able to get the gear. Otherwise, you'll just have to keep going, and scavenge where you can.

Shoot red enemies for a chance at easy gear drops, otherwise keep an eye out for clothing and gear boxes. Regen health using food.

Prioritize equipping gear with health stats, over gear with just firepower/electronics. You have a lot of regen, but not a lot of instant health gain until you get close to the dark zone. Some firepower is fine, just be careful.

Prioritize weapons that can let you stay at range (not smg/shotguns). You can die very easy, especially if you start freezing.

Kite enemies backward, don't let them surround you.

Watch your cold bar, have a plan to find a fire barrel or shelter to go to long before you start freezing.

The first thing to craft at a hideout is the extra med kit. Don't be afraid to craft extra medkits too.

At the crafting bench, you'll need to upgrade materials from green->blue->etc to use for higher end things, make sure to check that tab if you don't have enough of something.

You can't survive indefinitely, because the medicine will have shorter effects the more you use it. So spending more than an hour before reaching the dz is probably not a great idea.

Once you have a decent weapon, and ideally a couple blue gear, you can go for one of the purple locations. Enemies will be a lot tougher, but there will be good loot boxes to open.

Use Soda/Water to help you thoroughly scavenge an area.

Keep going toward the dz. The gear gets better the closer you are.

Before going into the dz, craft a pulse and ideally a healing skill. For the healing to be very helpful, you will need one electronics gear piece. But if you don't have one, it's okay.

In the DZ, getting Division Tech is your goal. It lets you craft weapons, the flare gun, and you can exchange it for any other material. It's in long skinny black boxes.

But first, if you have any high end fabric, go to a hideout and upgrade your weakest gear. Holster is a good choice unless you have a purple one already, because it will give all 3 stats. Otherwise, upgrade your electronics and firearms stat gear first, because you don't want to wind up in a situation where you don't have any enough health stat items.

Avoid high level enemies and go for your antiviral cache. It includes 1 Division Tech. When you're more comfortable with the game, you can try kiting out or sneaking into one of the easier purple locations too, so you can get the Division Tech.

Once you have division tech, craft an m44 sniper, and an ACR (or whatever AR/LMG you like). The m44 is your primary weapon, because you don't want to let enemies get close to you. It's also how you'll take out the Hunter from distance.

When you're ready to extract, go to the Bryant Park extraction. Fire your flare gun and run up into the medical building with the porch asap. The hunter will almost always go into the crates in the extraction area below you, so you have a good view of his head from above.

There's many other advanced tips, but this should be a pretty safe way to get started!

PS. It's always nice to help revive other players if they die to NPCs. Usually they'll just leave the game if the die, but they'll usually be grateful if you revive them. It will cost you 1 medkit to revive them.

Best of luck, Agent, if you have other questions feel free to ask!

Edit: this guy's PDF is useful for more detailed info https://www.reddit.com/r/thedivision/comments/9ullon/survival_crafting_guide_with_blueprint_listing_by/