Ok. I’ve reached summer in static spawn, without finding a vehicle.
I’ve cleared my first town (nearly).
Here’s how I did it.
Priority 1: Find a frying pan or pot.
This is the most important thing you can do (Other than perhaps finding a water purifier, if you get lucky). With the infinite wood you can get from forests, and the nigh infinite lighters you can find, you will now have no problem making fresh water for yourself. Obviously you may need to find a toilet or river (or LMOE shelter :D) for the water, but that’s generally not a difficult task.
Food will be easy enough to get hold of. Either just survive off meat, or root about for vegetables once your survival is high enough. Whatever you do, you’ll be fine. Food is harder to get than water once you’ve got a pot, but it’s not really a challenge.
Priority 2: Get throwing skill up
Again. You want to work with what you’ve got available. Throwing is perfect for this, because you’re basically guaranteed to be able to make wooden spears, which are an expendable and reasonably strong throwing weapon. Make yourself a stack of 20, ride to the edge of a town, and you should be able to clear a couple of houses with throwing at about 4/5ish.
Throwing also gives you a way to deal with the CONSTANT cougar and wolf attacks. Seriously. You need a decent way to kill them off without having to stop to lure them into a bush every time.
Wake up every morning and chuck everything you have against a wall (excluding glass items) until you’ve run out of XP. Seriously, make this your only priority, and you’ll have 5/6 throwing by the first week, easily. That’s more than enough to deal with wolves and cougars, as well as spiders and even bears if you get some lucky shots and have good items to throw.
Eventually your throwing will be good enough for stage 3
Priority 3: Vehicle/take a town
Eventually you’re going to need to be mobile. There’s just not enough resources/ interesting stuff in one location to keep you there for more than a year or two. You want to be able to move your base somewhere new, and you will want a vehicle with lots of space to help you carry this around.
Taking over a town can be a good way to get vehicle spawns, since there’s usually a car park or two. Otherwise wander the countrying systematically until you find a sedan. You can upgrade them fairly easily with crap you find in the street and helicopter crashes.