Five things keep you alive: a roof, water, food, a forge, and the nerve to use them before dark. Here is the order.
The cabin is home base. Drink from the water barrel to refill thirst. Sleep in the bed to fade the day to dawn and restore willpower (it no longer fills your belly — eat first). The crafting table and the anvil live here too.
Walk into the Emberfall shop and buy what the forge and the body need: Trail Rations (food + water), coal (lights the furnace), seeds, and the tool molds (hoe / pickaxe / sword). Coal is light by the pound — buy before dark.
Forge a hoe first. Then: clear weeds/roots → till the soil → plant a Starberry seed → water it (do it 5× for the objective) → harvest and sell or eat. Crops grow when watered overnight. Food is survival and coin.
Mine ore, light the furnace with coal, smelt 10 ore → 1 ingot, then cast tools and a blade at the anvil. In the field, learn the verbs: Action (context), Dodge (spends willpower), Guard (hold), Cast. Every 3rd strike lands empowered — the Counted Cadence.
At dusk a wolf-howl rolls in and the dark bites. Keep light close (it sears the dark). Watch the top bar: it turns red when a Blood Moon is coming — 1 night in 7. On those nights the beasts swarm; bar the door, or stand and fight with everything you forged.
Screenshots load from wiki/img/ (cabin.png · shop.png · farm.png · train.png · night.png). Drop captures there and they appear automatically.