At least at adventurer difficulty, beelining intelligence 10 and getting double trader rewards still works. I focus on the building and I play solo. I like a flat 4000 size map, which gives me access to most or even all biomes from one base, and I have a map of the map. I may up the difficulty later -- one thing I love is the customization. I did 150% XP and 125% loot for the first 7 days, which were the hardest. I might do another run-through, perhaps on the same map, at a higher difficulty level but at 200% / 200%. If attributes affect _all_ loot, that would explain why I obtained a low level stun baton before I could make it.
On my current playthrough, I have Wasteland Center, but I don't live there. I started with a base in Forest and now I live in Desert.
The dire wolves are death during the first 7 days. At this point, they don't have any feral sense -- if they did, wild animals would be deadly.
Screamers are astonishingly challenging in Wasteland but not elsewhere.
As I've shown in other posts in this community, I now have a defended base in the Jeffelon Zuckergates Estate with a complex zombie ramp / ladder created with the help of 100 steel blocks from a quest reward. I just got another 100 steel blocks and will build an animal ramp that I want to make too long for regular zombies to path on it.
I like the build-focused style of streamer Ditch but I also like the sarcastic commentary of FoxyProjct.
Adventurer, no feral. Max run. Most walk. ==> the speed adjustments allow you to carefully calibrate difficulty levels (but some animals are very fast).
Airdrops 7 days.