Finally got the hang of playing the game. My latest world spawned an awesome area with a military outpost next to a cave within 15 tiles of a lava flow. Unfortunately the cave and bunker are too far away from eachother or the flow to be much use, and the cave is facing away from the lava. I decided to tack a 10x10 wooden house onto the back side of the cave, closer to the lava. During construction, I used a tent that I looted from the nearby town to read at night next to the lava.
After building the house and adding a floor/roof tile on the rollmat in the lower left corner to cover during rain, I went out and deconstructed a bunch of vehicles for batteries, controls, solar panels, and general parts. I managed to find a wheelbarrow at the hardware store on the edge of the town which also happened to have a metal scrapper, yet another major score. I lugged all the parts (and yet another lucky find, a welding rig pictured left in the first image) back home. I added a solar panel to the rig and then built a solar powered mini fridge with a truck battery for food storage (pictured lower right).
Throughout the course of my adventure, I found some funnels and two barrels, a 30 gallon and a 55 gallon. It rains every single day without fail and wildlife is absolutely rampant around my house. The surrounding area is covered in pulped mooses (meese?), squirrels, bears, and even the occasional giant worm thanks to my crossbow covered in additions which includes an underbarrel shotgun. I like to imagine that my character wanders around with something like
just with more lasers and a damn shotgun.