What really does kill you is the speed difference between you and the zombies. You start sick and greatly slowed. Against normal speed zombies, you have to get lucky to survive. But try with ‘Slow zombies’ enabled, then maybe buff up the zombie numbers.
What also can save you is a basement with only 1-2 zombies in it. If you can take them out, the place is your first quiet spot.
It seems RBD starts can get quite interesting, at least with the latest (1-2 week old) builds. My current game is an RBD start. After a couple of failed starts, I managed to escape the city, and to my luck, there was an LMOE shelter not too far outside the city. I ran towards it in the middle of the night, wearing only jeans. I was freaked that I’d run into a bear or a landmine or something. What made the whole thing interesting was my lack of a light source. No flashlight, no lighter, nothing. I got to explore the shelter in the dark, so it became a game of bumping into much needed things, and then trying to remember where they were. Then it became a game of hauling some of those items to the topside, so that I could see to craft in daylight. Even after I was done exploiting every resource I could (think of), I was still far from combat-ready. Wildlife was very much a threat. There was a coyote hanging around in the vicinity on the topside, and a bunch of spiders, and I had to keep the door open to let the light in. So there was this constant fear that I’d get surprised by an animal while crafting, because the doorway was facing a river, and not the plains, so I couldn’t basically see anything approach the shelter. If I had been jumped on while crafting, that would mean I’d be stuck inside the dark shelter, and that’s assuming I’d get lucky enough to get a chance to close the door first. On hindsight, I have to admit, facing the river gave me the best visual cover. Not that I could think about it that way back then.
