You arrive with a letter in your pack. Read it — open the menu with M, go to Inventory, and click it. It tells you where you are and what the first journey is.
Then
- Walk to the village and talk to people. E speaks to anyone standing near you. Most of them want something.
- Chop and gather. Face a tree and press E with an axe in hand. Stone comes from boulders, with a pickaxe.
- Watch your pack. There is a weight limit, and it is not generous. Sell what you do not need to the Merchant.
- Get indoors before dark, or carry a torch (F). Night is genuinely darker than you expect and not everything out there is friendly.
The journal keeps what you have been told
— problems, rumours, people, places — in the menu under Journal. It
records what you learned, not what to do about it. That part is yours.