I recently DLed this, and I've been having lots of fun with it, but it always seems that as soon as I get a char rolling I get wiped by something stupid. Any tips for a for a C:DDA noob?
1. You get experience for throwing anything, even if you don't hit anything. That giant pile of nails you've collected from all the stuff you've smashed? Throw it on the ground one space in front of you, one at a time. Within 3 RL minutes you can have throwing up to 3 or 4, which is enough to reliably peg a rabbit or squirrel. Free food.
2. Speaking of rabbits and squirrels, hunting is preferable to eating scavenged food. By about two days in, everything that isn't canned will start going bad and just... disappearing. Those canned goods are a non-renewable resource, stockpile them in a base don't eat them. The exception is bottled goods like orange juice or cider. Go ahead and drink these, then use the bottles for crafting and for carrying water.
3. Speaking of water. Get a pan and a pot, keep them at your base. You can burn rags for fire if you can't find wood, they work about as well and you can purify water (to avoid food poisoning) and cook meat (raw meat is very demoralizing). You'll need a spear-like weapon to cook the meat, but it's well worth it.
4. Speaking of spear like weapons, the knife spear is a very solid choice for starting weapon. It's a tough call, the nail board is better for dealing with skeletons, but the knife spear is better for zombies and leads naturally into the javelin which is a fairly solid weapon.
That's about as far as I've gotten, but it's kept me alive and well so far.