I personally level up Masterchef, Iron Gut, and Living off the Land with my initial tutorial quest points EVERY TIME.
I usually put my tutorial points into
- sex rex to reduce stamina use with weapons and tools
- Cardio for better running
- healing factor for being able to recover HP passively
- Lucky looter for better loot
The first 2-3 days are also good survivable with canned food.
Further gameplay depends. Hopefully the trader has burried supplies. They give you food and receips. Always hoping for the bacon & eggs receipe.
The first days i spend dukes to the trader and the vending machines for food. One burried supplies gives 560 dukes. The cans cost 20 dukes per 5 food, so with the first burried supplies you have enough dukes to buy for 140 food. I never needed to make boiled eggs or grilled meat. If i'm still short, i could do that additionally.
Next levelup point then goes into Miner 69er for duing burried supplies faster.
Burried supplies quests are mandatory. They don't give you anything you don't need. Cans, food receips, dukes and clay you need later anyway. And they usually are closer and you don't get overloaded.
If i get the receipe for bacon & eggs, i don't even put a point into master chef. If not master chef is the next skill at day 3 or 4. By this time i already have 10-20 eggs and more meat then needed with the eggs.
I harvest the cadavers on the streets for rotten flesh and nitrate and build farming plots asap. Lotl is not needed yet. I put points into lotl first when i have some plots, found seeds and the plants are grown. Usually not before day 4-5, maybe even later. (maybe lotl makes sense if you find a corn field or similar earlier).
Once i can cook bacon & eggs, i hold back canned food as much as possible for cooking even improved food sooner or later.
I also haven't crafted a single weapon in A19 yet. The skills points are much more usefull in other perks and i always found better weapons and tools anyway.
So yes, the first few days are for pumping up food supplies and improve stamina use.
Further then i put points as required
- if i find a wrench -> salvage operations
- if i find heavy armor -> heavy armor
- if i find light armor -> light armor (i prefer heavy armor and there was no game where i haven't found heavy yet...)
- depending on what weapon i use, usually the first point for the regarded special skill
- if nothing else, 1 point in pack mule
- 1 point in daring adventurer since i usually only do random looting rarely anymore
- Advanced engineer if i haven't found a forge receipe yet.
Next task is to go for a bicycle. So INT to 2 and mechanic. One point saved if i find the nerd googles.
It is usually day 7-10 right now and everything i skilled yet is for stamina, food and mobility. Absolutely no specilazation yet. Specialization starts NOW.
Since the gamestage raises much slower now (and also not affected by the difficulty anymore), it's also not required to increase weapons skills fast.
As many others repeatedly said: Up to like day 15-20 food is again no issue anymore.
It's also hard not to skill in strength and agility soon, as you find pistols or blunderbus first and there is a relatively long way to go until you are even able to find rifles, automatic rifles or junk turrets.
Up to now i haven't spent a single point into any base attribute, that one in int is the first.
For me it clearly looks like early game has been generalized. There are still options how to do it exactly but going fully for a weapon build from day 1 is not good anymore. And imho that is good.
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