Don't Starve

If you are new to the game, play the original version without compatibility to any of the DLC, especially Reign of Giants. Using DLC will add in more seasons, sanity-draining wetness mechanics, expanded temperature issues, and other mechanics such as animals starving to death over time. All of these were designed for people already familiar with the game and will make an already difficult learning curve even steeper, so cut them out for a few rounds.

Autumn starts are significantly easier than spring starts, if you use the DLC. You want to spend some time in winter collecting ice to make Ice Flingomatics, as plants can spontaneously catch fire in the summer heat and you cannot get ice to make them during summer. Your painstakingly transplanted berry farm can and will burn to the ground without one.

Saplings do not need fertilizer to transplant, grass and bushes do. Poop can fertilize well but cheap rotten food is a decent stopgap.

For PC, there are several "common sense" mods that can make the game a lot simpler without really cheating. I use the ones that mark more things on your map, isometric placement, expanded needs UI, making the backpack in it's own slot (the most cheat one, but makes sense to me) and color coding the wormholes. The big one I would recommend for new players is the expanded needs UI that shows body temperature, it will be invaluable in learning how the freezing/overheating system works. They are all on the top of the Steam workshop

Charcoal is needed for a lot of very important food-production recipes but the method to get it is not very clear. To get it, you need to burn down a living tree then cut it once the fire's gone out. So get like ~6-10 pinecones, plant a small stand of trees isolated from anything else the fire could spread to, wait for them to grow out of the sapling stage, then equip a torch and right-click on one. This will give you charcoal you can use to make crock pots and drying racks to make dried meat, which is a very good staple food - restores a good amount of hunger and health, restores some sanity, and takes an extremely long time to spoil.

Catch butterflies with the bug net and use them to plant fields of flowers near your house. These will spawn more butterflies for you that you can either keep catching to plant more or kill for a pretty good healing item and a small chance at a rare cooking ingredient that also makes an extremely good healing item.

Make some bee boxes (you'll need to catch some bees with the bug net and break a hive to get a honeycomb) and put it near the flowers; being near them makes them produce honey much faster, and honey is used in a bunch of the best crock pot recipes.

Try to make a bird cage and catch a bird; you can feed the bird cooked monster meat to turn it into eggs, which you can either cook for food, let rot to make gunpowder (handy for some trap-based strategies) or make bacon and eggs and some other crock pot stuff.

If you hear growling, get somewhere with nothing flammable, and pull out your best weapon and armor.

Rabbits are a goddamn perfect resource, giving both food and warmth. Park your base somewhere within easy reach of a bunch of rabbit burrows.

Always have a torch available. Not just because it keeps you safe from the dark, but also because if you're about to freeze to death
you can set a tree on fire.

Starting out you want to find gold (for the science machine) and poop (for farming). You can get manure from beefalo or by giving pigmen food.

Your first order of business should be wandering around and picking up sticks, rocks, and grass while looking for a good place to set up your first base. Somewhere near rabbit holes is never a bad choice, as they're a consistent, combat-free source of food.

Food is almost universally better cooked than raw. The only exception, IIRC, is carrots.

When deciding where to settle, keep in mind that while trees can be transplanted easily, but transplanting grass or twigs takes fertilizer.

Farms stop growing new plants in winter, but plants that have already sprouted can stay there indefinitely without rotting.

Make a science machine and a crockpot ASAP. You can get coal for it by
starting a forest fire
. Stuffing it full of meat and plants will make Meatballs, which will be your staple food for a good while.

If you put more than one Monster Meat and/or Durian in a crockpot, you'll get Monster Lasagna no matter what.

Make some drying racks, too. Jerky can hang there indefinitely and even once you remove it, it takes forever to spoil.