• Game Difficulty Remember, you can change game difficulty anytime, you don't need to start a new game for it. Before starting the game, check out the game settings under your profile. And, as mentioned, these can be changed anytime without starting a new game
  
• Year length Setting - the more days you set, the more time you'll get to prepare for winter
  
• Disable autosave. It saves your game in the most unexpected and many times most inappropriate moments. I recommend to save your game manually. When on manual saving - save early, save often
  
• Hunters - I recommend enabled. If you want to play it safer, enable hunters and disable attacks. For more adrenaline, fun and so much needed materials, enable hunters and enable attacks. Good luck!
  
• Other settings are pretty much self-explanatory - I'll leave to you to change to whatever you prefer

• Be patient. If you're not patient, you're dead
  
• Be careful. Same as with patience - if you're not careful, you're dead. This is not Rambo-style shoot-n-loot-n-go game
  
• Lack everything. Indeed the game is true to its name. So prepare to be grinding a lot. If you don't balance your grind, you'll get bored by grind soon. However, there are many items/materials to grind for. And each requires different kinds of grind. You either gather, hunt or kill. If you add variety and balance on how / what you grind, the grind is actually fun.
  
• Plan ahead. Not much planning ahead is required, so no worries - the game doesn't require you to be a chess master, but some minor planning ahead will help you a lot in the game
  

And now to the Starting Tips - what I highly recommend on first few days and especially on Day 1:

1. Avoid bears / wolves. The game also advises about the same on start. Try to avoid them on Day 1 at least. When you approach bear/wolf, they'll make a growling sound. First one is okay (merely a warning for you), but second growl means it starts to follow you slowly (catching your scent). If you get too close, the animal starts chasing you - run for your life. Eventually they stop chasing you, usually after 3 bite attempts. While you're running you're safe from the bites - so don't stop running unless you're sure they don't follow you anymore.
   
   • TIP: you can kite wolves/bears away this way. If you spot something that you need (scrap metal / lootbox / rare ore node) and wolf/bear is nearby, get the animal to follow you (not chase though). When it moves a bit away from the item, run away, leave the animal behind and come back to safely collect the item
2. Look for any Lootboxes. If you find one, be sure to loot it. Always. All the time. Every. Single. One. (you'll know what I mean soon)
   
3. Scrap Metal. Besides lootboxes, also look for scrap metal laying on the ground. You'll also need those a lot. They're not as easy to spot but look for X-shaped 2-metal-piece on the ground
   
4. Respawns. Both lootboxes and scrap metals spawn randomly. So if you save your game and reload, the lootboxes / metals / fibers / berries will be wiped and respawned randomly
   
5. Respawn Timers. Everything respawns during night. So if you chop a tree, it'll be 'recharged' the next morning. Same with lootboxes, ores, scrap metals or fruits, they are respawned and randomly placed each day or each time you reload. Same with wild animals - also respawned randomly (except deer and moose)
   
6. Craft Bow and Arrows. First thing! Without bow and a few arrows, you're going to be starving a lot. Once you get your bow and 1-2 arrows, be sure to kill a few chickens first. You'll get meat (to keep your proteins up) and feathers - needed for crafting new arrows. Also don't forget to kill rabbits - for meat and cloth
   
   • TIP: Aiming with bow: Aim just a little bit above the chicken or rabbit to hit it
7. Craft Pickaxe early. When you see a metal node - get your new pickaxe to work. Even when you won't need metals and ore in early days, you will need all kinds of metals soon. Keep an eye particularly for special metal nodes - obsidian, silicon and lithium. Whenever you come across any of these, be sure to pick it up no matter the cost! They're harder to find and you'll need tons of those for crafting advanced stuff
   
   • NOTE: All metal nodes spawn on rocks only! (except sandstone, you'll find those under water only - in lakes / ponds)
8. Build your base early. Ideally on Day 1. Your starting base will not require much - just 3 building pieces: 1 foundation, 1 wall (windowed or plain, doesn't matter) and 1 ceiling. This'll keep your campfire safe from rain. So gather some wood, fibers, and medicinal plants. Wood and fibers you'll need for building pieces (along with nails of course) and medicinal herbs will come in handy for crafting fire starting kit (for this kit you'll need biofuel, which is made from the herbs)
   
   • Crafting a store chest on Day 1 is a big bonus - will help you keep your inventory empty, but it's not the end of the world/game if you don't manage to have chest on Day 1
     
   • NOTE: About BCU (Base Command Unit) - once you craft and place BCU, hunters and mountain lions will start to spawn. So placing BCU not only unlocks advanced crafting. Be sure you're ready
9. Keep an eye on your Fruit and Veggie, Proteins and Hydration bars. They influence especially your stamina recharge so keep all of them as full as possible at all times! If you don't, you'll find running around and especially running from predators very difficult. Here's how to maintain each bar:
   Hydration Bar - this one is easy to maintain - just find a water body or stream, fill your canteen with dirty water, boil it over the campfire to get pure water. If you lose your canteen, no worries, it's rather easy to craft new one from inventory
   Fruit and Veggie Bar
   
   • Kelp - easiest way to keep up this one is to dive into the lake or pond and gather some kelp. While diving, keep a close eye on your oxygen level (you don't wanna drown, do you?). Btw. while diving, I strongly recommend to gather pearls - they're found in giant clams which you can break with your axe easily
     
   • Fruits - they're hard to spot, especially in higher grass, so when you (very rarely) spot blueberries (or other fruits in other seasons, e.g. strawberries in summer, etc.), be sure to collect it and eat it. Also, you'll sometimes find fruits (apples or berries) in lootboxes, too
     
   • Vegetables - again, they can be found randomly around the map, and again they are very rare. I strongly recommend NOT to eat those, unless really and critically necessary. Instead of eating, right-click vegetable and choose 'extract seed'. You will need seeds soon, when you craft your Plant Bed
   Protein Bar
   
   • Small Animals Easy meat comes from small animals, like rabbits or chicken. IMPORTANT: Use ONLY bow and arrows; never use other guns on small animals. If you use pistol or anything bigger, you'll get a devastated (aka pretty much useless) corpse of the animal
     
   • Large Animals Wolves, Bears, Cougars, Deer, Moose, Boars. They all provide good source of meat, First three ones are tough. I mean really tough. You don't stand a chance in the open with bow and arrows (hell, not even 9mm pistol will save you) against them.
     
   • Tip on killing wolves and bears - use your base.
     Wolf Kill: When you hit a wolf and it starts chasing you, simply jump onto your foundation and the wolf will just run away. Chase it back, hit it with arrow, run back to your foundation - repeat until the wolf is dead
     Bear Kill: Bears, however, are not such cowards as wolves. When you jump on your foundation piece, bear doesn't run away like wolf but starts damaging your foundation. Actually, it hits it once and will start walking away slowly. Let it wander off a bit so you have time enough for 2 (arrow or whichever weapon of your current choice) shots while the bear damages your foundation only 1 time. Again, repeat until bear is dead, foundation destroyed, or you ending up dead while trying
     
   • NOTE: Wolves and bears are definitely worth killing. Just make sure you're ready. They give you meat (steak or liver), cloth (although leather would be more fitting name for the material) and fat. Fat you can later melt to biofuel (not going to spoil further, you'll soon find out yourself)
10. Last Tip - Don't Die. Or at least - try not to die often. Each death applies penalty - not only you lose some of your hardly earned HP/Stamina levels, but part of your inventory items vanish, too!

Eternal question - where do I build my first base?
On Single Player, it doesn't really matter where you build if we're talking about defending your base. Maybe only one important aspect about where to place your new base relating to defense - make sure you build on open space, with minimum (or ideally none) trees / bushes nearby. When your base gets attacked by hunters, they tend to like hiding behind trees / bushes.

How to Choose Best Spot
Near Water. Be it lake, small pond or stream, whichever you prefer. Water is life, remember?
Open Space. Ideally without any nearby trees / bushes. Hunters, when they start to spawn and attack your base, they tend to hide behind trees/bushes (pain-in-the-arse little buggers making it even more difficult to kill them)
Central Big Mountain. Somewhere not too far away from the central big mountain - you'll need cougars for a lot of sinews soon, so why wander half the map just to get there, right?
Base Altitude. Building too low (near lakes) or too high (near mountains), both have their cons:

• Low Altitude - it gets too hot during summer
  
• High Altitude - it gets way too cold during nights, rains, storms and especially winter
  
• I'd say somewhere in between those two points is just fine
  
• NOTE: Both cold and hot drain your food / hunger / hydration bars rather fast, so try to keep warm during cold or cool yourself while hot. Yet, both heat and cold can be turned by crafting certain accessories (not going to spoil here), but they're rather expensive for starters

Hope my little 10-point guide helped you with your first days! Good luck and have fun with this beautiful survival game!