I basically memorized the entire wiki before I even really started playing the game, and even then I played it real safe. I started out dying as per usual, then eventually putting points into archery, fabrication, and tailoring at chargen. Enough points to make a longbow, arrows, a duffel bag, a cloak, etc. With this, I played a ranged archery character and got pretty far. Cataclysm is a game that mostly follows logic, thing tend to happen as you would expect IRL.
Throw molotov, it makes a fire. Lead zombies to a house, burn said house down with a molotov.
Dig spiked pits and lead zombies in, simple.
Clear a forest to get a large vehicle through, burn it down map tile by map tile.
It took me a while to figure out layering, clothing, and encumberance. But after a while, I got the hang of it, and even went as far as making my deathmobile and mutagen by my 5th playthrough.
Crafting interface was pretty user friendly. I got the hang of it really quickly. Especially keybinds, those are more user friendly imo than other similar games that i’ve played like nethack or dungeon crawl stone soup.
One thing I did have trouble with in my first few playthroughs was figuring out that health can be regenerated by sleeping, and finding out that zombies revive. Having a handful of fat zombies gnaw at me in the basement of my evac shelter after killing them a few times was pretty irritating.
Ever since my first playthrough i’ve always taken a slow and steady approach to everything risky that I did, and it payed off. As I got really good at the game, I made a guide while I was at it.