I had started to write up some stuff on BnB, then I decided I was making too big of a fail (and wimping out and dropping to peaceful far too often) to be giving out advice like I knew it all. Still, I'm at least confident in my task list for getting past the first night:
- You may need to regenerate the world a few times to get a viable start. You need to be in or immediately adjacent to plains or forest, or you probably won't be able to get enough food. And if you spend more than 2-3 minutes searching for gravel, you might as well start over. Turn on the bonus chest so you get 4 torches.
- I grabbed whatever food and cotton was close to my path. Don't eat any berries until they can be juiced if you can help it. Depending on the terrain near spawn, you might be able to grab some nearby coal if it is in plain sight, but it should definitely wait until your shelter is ready.
- Find gravel, and dig up 6 blocks. Turn those to 2 flint. Note that unlike MF, it's only 3 gravel per flint, not 4.
- Go to the nearest trees, and punch down 12 blocks of wood. Make a crafting table and 5 patterns, then the stencil table/part builder/tool station. Make the axehead and shovel pattterns, then a flint hatchet and shovel.
- Cut down several more blocks of wood. Break down your crafting blocks and take them with you.
- Head back to your gravel, pull up about 12 more blocks of that, now with your shovel.
- It's probably getting close to dark now. If there's a suitable nearby cave, block off the enterance and the back with dirt to keep the nighttime monsters out. Suitable includes having a mount that you can exit from and not get immediately gibbed by creepers and helmeted zombies & skeletons. Otherwise, build a dirt hut. Don't try and use a door yet, just block the exit up with dirt and break out when you're ready. Leaving out a single block out that's high enough that skeletons can't shoot through will let you know if it's day yet.
- You're now locked in for the night. Put down the TiC crafting stuff, and make yourself a pickaxe. Also make a chest or two to set your stuff down in. If you grabbed enough cotton, make a bed as well. Put that down and use it to set your spawn (you can't actually sleep though).
- Dig down a bit. By the time you've grabbed a stack of cobble (the new 16x stacks, not the usual 64), if you haven't found coal and didn't manage to get some earlier, just sit there and wait for the end of the night. Mining is going to make you use hunger, and you don't want to be eating your berries before you can juice them.
- When morning breaks, use your shovel to open a doorway, then SPRINT out. Don't stop until you're about 10 blocks away, unless you like having your home blown up. Turn around and wave hello to the creepers, skeletons, and helmeted zombies, then deal with them as you see fit. Remember that hatchets make pretty good weapons.
- Get some coal from a nearby exposed vein. Make a furnace, then smelt at least 3 cobble so you can make your juicer. You can now keep yourself adequately fed by picking berries, but wild ones are going to run out soon enough.
Other things to watch out for: No infinite water or automatic health regen. Jumping mobs require nontrivial walls to keep them out; I've been going up 4 blocks, then out 1. Ditches adjacent to your exits keep you from being jumped just as you exit.
One more thing - some metallurgy alloys are quite nice. Damascus Steel is a combination of bronze and iron, but pickaxes made from it have the same mining strength as alumite. They're slower than bronze, but do let you skip leveling up a bronze pick. It also makes good armor, with slightly more armor value and 33% more durability than iron. You're still squishy with it, but at least getting caught in a red gas explosion won't one-shot you.
