Here's what works.
Day 1: Starter quests to get camel pack, water, sapling. Block off pyrotheum flow. Go around the ship removing any access points to the top of the ship by either digging out 1-block spots or adding a block to make them 2 high. Dig trench, build dust wall inside trench. Dig some 4 deep 1x1 holes at the ends/corners of the trench to trap/collect mobs. Plant sapling. Enough room inside the wall for 2 trees is plenty to start with. Reduce doorway to 1-wide, then outside that put a 2x2 wall on either side so you can stand outside and then look up and attack normal/large spiders that can't get to you. Go inside and block the door with dust.
Night 1: Sift dust all night long. You want to sift dust until you have at least 24 stones. Use stones to make cobble to make slab furnace. Save ~16 dust for the morning.
Day 2: Kill any spiders with the needlegun. Go to your trench and drop 3 dust down each hole, pushing the drops from the burned mobs to the top and suffocating any still in the holes. If your tree didn't grow yet, bonemeal it till it does. Knock off 2-3 wood. Make a crook. Crook the leaves for extra saplings. Make tinker benches with the wood. Make a bone weapon---I like the frying pan early on. Do some more trees, use some of the planks to smelt some iron for shears. Shear some leaves. Make some nihilo wood barrels. Compost leaves for dirt. Use some dirt for another tree, maybe a garden by the leaking water outside.
So there you have the ability to make dirt by day 2 which can be combined with empty bottles to make dirty water which you can cook in your furnace for water bottles. Dying of thirst shouldn't be a problem.
The first 2 days are about time management. If you waste your time on non-essentials you're going to die.
