Avoiding early game starvation (for new players).

[Infirito]

      (v3.80 at the time of writing)

   As I see it, the main problem of the early game for most players is securing a reliable source of food: hunting, both passive and active, requires preparation and decent tools; fishing requires nets or a high skill, good spot and available bait for rod fishing; agriculture takes a very long time and harvesting might save you from starving to death, but you won't have much free time left for anything else.
  "What do? " or "Y u bully? " - I hear you ask, well I'll tell you: Be a man and get to that grind! Get some help. Many hands make light work, or however the saying goes, you don't have to do everything yourself so, might as well play a villager since you'll rely on crafting and trading until you can strike out on your own.

      Character creation high points (pick Custom - too easy).
 * Attributes
 Make sure your dexterity and touch are high, you need them for most of the useful crafts, having high endurance lowers your encumberance penalty and your character's mass determines your carry cpacity.
 Most attributes are important, these are just the ones that will directly affect this early game strategy. Visit wiki for more details.
 * Skills
 Firstly, skills that you can safely zero out to get more points:
Pointless: Weatherlore and Flail, there's no real reason to have and / or train them aside from roleplay.
Easy to train: Herblore, Tracking and all 4 Physical skills.
Optional: Shield, Knife, Sword, Club, Bow or Crossbow, Unarmed. Whichever to dump will depend on what you want to do with the character past the early game.
 Secondly, skills you should try to max out:
Carpentry (bows, arrows, different tools and utensils); Textilecraft (yarn and bowstring); Trapping (loop snares, paw-board fox traps and a higher chance for traps to catch something); Hideworking (quality of furs and leathers); Timbercraft (boards and arrow shafts); at least one ranged combat skill (Spear, Bow, Crossbow) and one melee weapon skill (Spear or Axe are the better ones imo), it's not uncommon to run into a wolf / bear right outside a village.
I'd also suggest investing into Physician, while it's relatively easy to train, you don't want to end up with a serious injury and being unable to effectively treat it.
 * Location
 You'll need to start near a few (5+) villages to have enough capacity for trading your crafts, if a village has too many of one thing, they will not accept any more of it in trade. You'll also need to star near cultures with a relatively easy access to metal tools: Driik, Reemi, Sartola should have decent tools in shops and good / master blacksmiths to order whatever's missing (Axes take ~2 weeks to craft, so plan accordingly).
 * Scenario
  Lonely settler starts you off with Broad, Carving and Splitting axes on the ground next to 2 unfinished houses, as well as a bunch of boards and logs. It's a good start if you want to get into carpentry right away, you can also trade off your Broad axe for the time being to get you started. It also allows you to start further away from South-Western cultures since you already have 2 most important axes.
 Not all who wander are lost starts you off near a corpse with some loot at the sight of a large fire (small chance for corpse to start on fire, burning all the loot) and an animal based on your character's culture. Animal can be used to carry stuff for you (bigger animals can carry more), or you can skin and butcher them to get fur / leather and a bit / a bunch of food. If you start in Spring, you can use one of the village houses to dry the meat you get (need to buy some yarn), you'll be staying in the area a while, so it should not be a problem. If you start with a dog, you will need to feed it. A dog can be used for hunting (as a companion or a pair of mittens).
 * Game course
 Living in the wild will give you a fresh Pike (fish) and a fishing rod for earlier tasks, as well as a boost to your Tracking skill, it's helpful, but not necessary.

   With the character ready, make your way to the closest village and get to trading.
 Your first target is Yarn, for a price of 1 Arrow you can get 2 balls of Yarn 50m each, now you can start making Loop Snares from 2m of yarn (half an arrow value each) and Bowstrings from 20m (one arrow value each). With this and whatever starting items you don't need try to buy yourself a Carving axe and a Broad knife (decent ones are okay, you can trade them in for better versions later), if you can, get a Splitting axe as well (helps with getting better boards for higher quality bows and fox traps). this will allow you to start crafting Short Bows (five arrows value each).
 You can also order arrowheads from the blacksmith and make them into arrows yourself. Price of 12 arrowheads is 10 arrows, with fine and perfect arrow shafts you can make fine arrows from regular arrowheads, but imo it's too much hustle for too little gain, and it's not worth buying arrowheads of higher than default quality.
 Trading in bulk is a good idea, since this allows you to avoid capping out with small trades i.e. if you trade in 5 fox traps, village might not accept more of them for the next trade, but if instead of several small trades you offer them 20 traps at once, they should agree to it. Also, do try to trade in your heavy items for furs, knives, arrows, etc. it will make it easier to carry goods between villages, I do recommend avoiding very high value items unless you intend to use them, since it can be difficult to trade them in later without losing out on value.
 Important note: clothes made by the player have only 20% value of their game generated counterparts, so do not waste furs on it unless you want to wear those clothes yourself.

   While you craft and trade, it's a good idea to set up a few clusters of traps near your base location for potential additional income as well as trapping and hideworking skills training.
 
   For the list of values on different items check out this topic:
https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=5408.0

[Brygun]

I'd also add that the light lever trap, the smallest deadfall, can help immensely. They take a slender tree trunk, branches and a stone (heavier than a rock). With searching and luck you might find these without having any tools.

With a knife or axe you can fell younger trees.

Like setting the loop snares from yarn you want a high number. I normally guard my sleeping shelters with these plus others at strategic spots.

Every day or two reset the traps that didn't catch anything. The game does a skill check when its set then needs time for things to happen. You don't know the roll when setting the trap.

The more times you reset traps or loop snares the quicker your trapping skill goes up.

There are more elaborate traps which take more resources to make, like a shovel to make a pit.

The light lever trap is my preferred one. Put 3 or so in row and your gameplay is a lot of the "r" repeat button. With loop snares you need to "a" apply each one. Slightly more buttons.

A lot of loop snares you can pick up to travel with you. Can't do that with deadfalls.

[Plotinus]

And always bait your traps as soon as you can. Birds like berries and most berries won't give you enough nutrition to live. Carnivores like raw meat, and most will eat spoiled raw meat. Some carnivores will eat cooked (dried, smoked, roasted) meat but only if it's not spoiled. Hare and deer like roots: milkweed roots, turnips, etc.

In summer, harvest lake reeds to eat. They're very nutritious.

If you don't have any bait at all for rod fishing, it's not worth, but you can use a club, spear, or javelin to get a pike. Then you can use pieces of the pike for rod fishing.

[Shadowdweller]

It is very difficult to start a char with a good flail skill.  But the skill DOES in fact have a use: Preserving hide quality as you finish stuff off in melee.  Killing stuff with blunt weapons results in better fur quality when skinned; at least if the weapon is powerful enough and you're skilled enough not to need a hundred blows to bring something down.  And flails can be quite damaging.  (Unlike other weapons, threshing can help train the skill, although painfully slowly).  It's often easier to train and outfit a character with a good club or mace though.  Most cultures start with a decent club skill.