1. Play around as you see fit, gathering resources and levelling in the process, but the more you stray out of the the town's vicinity, the more you'll have to do corpse runs
   
2. Do whatever it takes to obtain a weapon you can clear your path with.
   
3. From level 5 onwards, you have access to straw buildings. Find a free and slightly out of the way spot near town and make yourself an little enclosure with a door.
   
4. For that extra safe feeling, complete the building with ceilings and close it off completely, at least for the first night. You don't want anyone seeing you sleeping and your chest of items next to you.
   
5. You're free to log out. Congratulations, you made it to safety!

An example of what I mean by safety...

Will try to keep it easy to skim over, so hopefully you enjoy the list format. Bear in mind these are for PvP server, so some of them might not apply to you if you're not in one.
General

1. Don't let anyone tell you off the game if you enjoy this style of game, this genre is not everyone's cup of tea. The moment I told one friend I'll start playing this, I was met with 50% "I don't know why you'd like it, since I don't like it" and 50% "look at all the complaints". I realized I should not pay attention when one of the complaints he conveyed was that there's no quests. In a game that says "sandbox" on the tin.
   
2. When you first start, make no mistake, there's not really a "casual play" option. I wish the game told you that. You need to commit a good streak of play to get to a safe stage, because otherwise it's for nothing.
   
3. The "avoid everything and rush to having a house built" strategy doesn't really work. You'd be surprised how just getting any form of weapon can make your life easier.
   
4. Logging out in town. Despite what MMORPGs have taught you, DO NOT do it. You wake up naked. Since your characters stays in the game, it just goes unconscious, which in PvP servers allows anyone to loot you.
   
5. Different weapons yield the same materials in different quantity. For example, while using axe on a tree makes the most common sense, using pick on it gives you a great quantity of Twine.
   
6. Don't be afraid to die in a safe place near the city. When hunger reaches 0 it takes ages for the health damage it does to kill you, and when you respawn it resets hunger. I've found this very useful if you're just getting by on berries and you have nowhere near enough to sustain yourself.
   
7. Expect to die and even lose everything. But each time you start over it's much faster because of what you've learned as well as having more schemas unlocked, and it's not as unfeasible to get to the safety stage as it seems.
   
8. You can turn off dodge rolling on double movement button double tap. Also seems to cause the action after closing the inventory for some reason, if option is left on.
   
9. It may either seem obvious to you, or completely fly over your head like it did for me, but you can sprint by holding Shift. Since the character already runs and the stamina bar could be used for dodge rolling (not too useful as far as I can tell), it took many hours until the facepalm of realization hit me.
   
10. You can mostly do whatever you feel like until at least you're level 5 and you have enough for a straw house (bunch of walls, ceilings and a door in a frame)
    
11. Food doesn't spoil at the rate it describes while you're logged out, if it spoils at all
    
12. Pick an alright spot near the city over seeking secluded perfect spot
    
13. Even thought this is not a concern right now, bear in mind the rules for building decay. There are different rules for PvE and PvP servers, but check them out further (latest news on that[dnlbbs.snail.com]) if you plan on not logging in for more than 3 days in a row and you have structures built.

Battle

1. Be prepared for the instant-death NPCs wandering just outside of town area. Currently all you can do is be really observant and run back to the guards if nearby.
   
2. Corpse decay. Most of my game time has been spent trying to fetch items from my corpse, but fairly late on I realized that if 15 minutes have passed, you should stop trying desperately to find it - it's gone for good, along with all your items.
   
3. There's no leash, the slow skeleton can definitely continue chasing you across the map for minutes.
   
4. You can hide behind any big good beasts you see, and they will often lesser creatures like wolves for you. Just don't bet on them when they fight a deathstalker.
   
5. You can easily kill levels much much higher than you with a weapon. Do whatever it takes to obtain a weapon you can clear your path with. You can pick anything you prefer, be it a sword, bow or a damaging spell equipped to your staff. Some people recommend grinding until you have a enough gold for an iron spear (costs about 10x as normal swords/bows) and you can afford a horse, but that's not something I can comment on as I chose that's not a playstyle for me.

Thanks for reading. My character is a lvl ~10 human called Clawdette on server EU Knight-2. I've sat down to play 3 times, in which I've started over from nothing 5 times. My game time so far has literally been more than 50% trying to get my corpse's items back. When I don't just wake up naked in town, that is.
Since yesterday I finally made the leap, I wanted to share tips from the point of view of an absolute beginner, offering a different perspective than the usual experienced player. Feel free to tell me if you found it helpful or have constructive criticism, I'll be happy if my efforts help even one person not get frustrated out of experiencing the game :)