Here are some tips that will hopefully help any new players to Journey of Life. While the tutorial in the game does do a decent job at directing the player in the general direction they should go, it does leave out some of the details. This guide aims to cover some of the details that were left out and will hopefully accelerate your progress towards end game content by decreasing some of the tedium in the game.
Before we begin, some important links that will serve as a greater resource:
Wiki: https://journeyoflife.gamepedia.com/Journey_Of_Life_Wiki
Dev Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/56dcByz
Dev Trello: https://trello.com/b/Iu8L9eX5/journey-of-life-steam-offical-branch
As a side note, this guide is for version 0.8.5.5.9 of the Journey of Life. The game is in early access so things will definitely change later on.
For starters, here’s an easy way to know which items are near by. Press the N key to enable nearby items and click the little lock icon next to it to keep it pinned on the screen. Now you can easily tell what items are on the ground near you. You can interact with them and arrange your inventory by dragging it from the ground into your backpack by pressing Tab to bring up the inventory menu.
Build the Backpack first! You have limited space and the Backpack gives you more inventory space to work with.
For crafting, you don’t need the materials to be in your inventory but it does need to be close enough to you. I just dump all my items near my Workstation so I can craft whatever I need there. Items won’t disappear from the game world.
For the hot bar, you can drag an item onto a hot bar slot and press the right mouse button to set it on the hot bar. You can then make the item active by pressing the assigned number (one through six).
For harvesting food and early materials, you can simply press E to harvest. Larger trees, clay, ore, etc. need the corresponding tools like the Axe, Shovel, and Pickaxe. Hunger and thirst can be easily replenished by using fruit readily available around the island. You can harvest most of the fruit without using tools.
For recovering thirst, you can use many sources of water, from boiling water, to collecting fresh water using Water Collectors. To actually drink the water, you need to hold E with the cup selected to drink the water.
If your thirst and hunger meters run down, your health will steadily decrease until you die. When you die, you will reset to the nearest bed but drop all of your items where you died, so make sure to place your bed strategically. The Primitive Bed is made from the Workstation under Stations and requires 8 Alocasia leaves from the Alocasa plant.
Here are the places you can get the commonly needed, early game materials. The Bush can be harvested without tools and produces Birch, Plant Fiber, and the Straight Wood Stick.
The Yucca tree will produce the Dry Wood Stick but it may take harvesting a couple of trees before you find one. You need to fully harvest it by pressing E until the tree disappears or by using an Axe and harvesting it fully. The Dry Wood Stick is needed for the Firestarter.
To use the Fireplace, drag fuel (such as Birch) from your inventory onto the Fireplace. Place the Firestarter in your hand and use it on the Fireplace. It may take more than one try to start a fire.
Jagged Rocks Small and Medium, as well as High Density Rocks, can be found on the ground. Run around the map with the Nearby items display enabled and you will be able to find plenty. If you have a Pickaxe you can also mine the stone deposits or break flat rocks with the Hammer.
Tools do have durability but are not destroyed once durability runs out. You can restore tool durability by constructing a Grind Stone. To use the Grind Stone, have the tool equipped in your hand, walk up to the Grind Stone, and hold E until the white line on the tool icon is full. Now the tool is fully restored and ready to be used again.
After you place an item or workstation, you need to actually build it by using the Hammer and having the necessary materials either in your inventory or near you. Placing an item simply places a hologram of the item and it will have no functionality until fully constructed.
To use the Workstation, walk up to the Workstation and press E to bring up the Workstation menu. Here you can craft higher tiers of items as well as build other stations. To build another station, select the station, select place, and move around to find a suitable place, and press left mouse button to place it down. If you press any other keys during this process, it will cancel the placement of the station and you will need to repeat the process. Use a Hammer on the station hologram to finish construction with the necessary materials in your inventory or close to you.
The Lake will have contain many deposits of Clay. 
World map showing the location of the Lake.
Clay can be found at the lake near the Volcano. Clay is available in other locations as well. You will need a Shovel to harvest Clay. Refer to the map shown above. As you can see, the island is rather large and you can get lost quite easily. The method I use is to walk in a straight line to the volcano, and mark my vector back by building two Foundations at the base of the volcano to mark the direction back. I walk around the volcano and build two more Foundations marking the direction of the lake. This way, I am either always moving towards the volcano in a straight line, walking around the volcano to find my Foundation markers, or walking away from the volcano in a straight line to a destination.
To get one meter bamboo or logs, take a two meter bamboo or log and chop it with the Axe. A Long Solid Stick will cut down into Short Solid Sticks. Further chopping logs and bamboo will produce blocks.
Hopefully the things I went over will help you get familiar enough with the game for you to get comfortable enough to start exploring and figuring things out on your own. If you have any questions, comments, or things you would like for me to go over, please feel free to leave a comment down below.
Ducky Obrien 