So this is what I've been playing lately. Its had a rocky launch since I bought it. First I had serious problems connecting to servers, the game would just hang 3/4 of the time on connect and required me to kill it and restart to get in. Extremely frustrating. Then, they were suffering constant DDoS attacks on an authentication server or something that kept almost everyone from playing. Those two things were patched up and then apparently hacking was a problem. Some one did no clip and steal a small cache of resources from one of my shacks during that.
The latest patch (last Thursday?) has supposedly implemented fixes for through the wall box looting and door open and no clip hacks. I can't say if its perfect now, but I have not been looted through the walls since. I play on lower population servers though.
Anyway, the game is weird and there certainly seems to be plenty of areas where its quirky and could be improved...yes, there's a spark there that to me keeps me coming back. There's an adrenaline rush when you encounter others that just isn't in most games.
First off, skip the official servers. In addition to being wildly overpopulated and filled with players further along than you are, they are obviously hacker target number one. You'll hardly get into them anyway and IMO the map is not large enough to support the number of players those servers are set up for. If you join the PVP servers you will be slaughtered nonstop while naked. If you join the PVE you'll run around unable to find any animals or rocks because there's so much competition for them. Just get off those servers. I play on servers with like only 20 people on them and I actually see other players all the time.
Start playing on a lower population server. I play on ones that max at like 20 players. The map seems huge and impossible to navigate at first, but its actually not as big as it seems. There are precious few landmarks, but you'll start to recognize the different bland rock formations and can navigate using the sun and the large mountain and/or ocean as reference points. The road is a circle and when running flat out does not take that long to full traverse. Using those facts and a reference map its a lot easier to avoid getting lost.
I haven't been playing that long, but here are my survival strategies. You'll start starving pretty quick so find some stone to make a stone hatchet and kill a pig. The other animals are to fast or to dangerous to kill with the hatchet.
After that Priority number one is to get a small base so that when you die you don't lose everything. I don't mean a shelter. I mean a 1x1 foundation base with a metal door. You'll need like 450-500 wood (or more) and around 40 metal ore, plus some stone and 20 animal fat for a furnace. Its a decent undertaking to craft that all together but if you hide the base where it can't be easily seen from the road it is cheap and pretty secure. Then craft a sleeping bag and storage box and throw it inside.
Its here I should mention a couple things that weren't obvious at first. When you're cold at night you think "I should start a campfire" to keep warm. Wrong. Crouch in your pitch black base and craft while freezing or failing that sit in the dark in a rock crack and freeze. All you have to do is eat extra meat to compensate. The campfire is a beacon that screams "come fuck with me" to other players at night. Cook and smelt during the DAY as its less noticeable. I've had bandits surround my base at night and harass me because my campfire led them to my hidden base.
For most of the night you can actually see...poorly. This is an important time of the night that your helpless character can use to get resources and raid rad towns with less risk. All the NPCs are incapable to catching you if you sprint, although wolves and fast zombies cannot be easily escaped. Use the bow and arrow because it costs almost nothing, is pretty powerful against NPCs.
Keep dropping off the resources at the base so that if you are killed by a player or NPC you lose very little. If a player engages you, just run away. Run into the woods and the mountains, double back around corners, go through rock formations and then double back and triple back and try to lose them. Worst case scenario they kill you and you're out the small amount of resources you gathered. Once you have a base with a few resources in it all you have to do is craft a new hatchet and bow and arrows and you're ready to gather again. Losing those means essentially nothing. That, food, bandages and sometimes rad pills are about all I carry most of the time. Once you have enough resources, build another 1x1 dump away from the first and continue doing this until you have a few to spread your resources and thereby reduce any loses when a raid occurs.
The frustration of dying seems a lot less once you've established yourself. From there I've been raiding rad towns for blueprints and trying to decide if building a big base is even worth it.