The First Day

The first day is always the most difficult. Especially if you're new to the Cataclysm, this guide is intended to help newer players develop the proper equipment for their situations and begin planning the rest of their journey into the Cataclysm. (This guide assumes that you're playing the game with mostly default settings.)

Arrival

Blink. Look around the room. You're alive and breathing, you'd be surprised at how long you can keep that up given patience, knowledge, and as always, a tad little bit of luck on your side.

(side note: you may make an offering to the RNG gods before you start if you feel particularly inclined to do so.)

 Your first concern upon starting should be to smash a locker to bits.  Keep on kicking and punching at it until it crumbles to your might, yielding a pipe for your troubles.  Don't grow too attached as we'll soon need to turn it into something far more useful.  wield the pipe if you haven't done so already and take a peek out of the various curtains surrounding the room by examining them, if you see anything that looks like it could pose a threat to your welfare make sure not to alert it's attention.  Some of the most common early-game dangers are deadly animals, such as a wolf or a bear.  If it is safe to do so, take a cautious walk around the shelter and grab a rock from the floor.  We'll be using this to craft a makeshift crowbar, the all-in-one tool for breaking and entering, as well as not being bad at a bit of skull-crushing if needed.     
 After scouting out your immediate area, head back to the shelter and use & to bring up the crafting menu.  You can use the < and > keys to navigate the main categories and the directional keys to navigate the sub-categories.  Craft the makeshift crowbar and head down the stairs to enter the basement.

Basement

Keep your guard up when you enter the basement, there could very well be a zombie lurking in the shadowy corners of the room.