In your first play-through, here are some common challenges that new players face:
1. You can't produce enough food for your characters and army. Army has fights and suffers a morale penalty as a result.

2. You are constantly low in fiber and cloth, but have tons of greens (herbs).

3. It is very late game before you upgrade your stations to rank 2, due to lacking key resources like metal, brick, and pots.

4. Your defending army has a low score compared to the invading army, and as a result you are losing battles and at the end, the war.

1. The key to having more food than you can handle is to upgrade your campfire to level 2. Once level 2 you can make 4 meals with 1 meat, 1 egg or vegetable, and 1 herb. That requires you to have a pot to upgrade, so see item 3 below on how to gets pots earlier in the game. There is also 3 pots to be found in "The Filthies" (docks). Once you have that, the key thing is to have enough meat for the recipe. You will want to build at least 3 rat traps for a constant supply of meat.

2. Running out of fiber/cloth? Build a dryer, and convert 5 greens(herbs) into 10 fiber. Running out of greens (you shouldn't)? Build a farm and have it produce greens.

3. Can't find metal, bricks, and pots to upgrade your structures? You need to first upgrade your storehouse to level 2, and then build the furnace, and upgrade that to level 2. Once you have a level 2 furnace you can make the metal, bricks, and pots that you need. Recommended early build order is saw horse, campfire, workshop, upgrade store house, furnace. After that you can get repair workshop and the herbal workshop. You probably can't wait too long on the butcher's table, but fit that in sometime between upgrading your storehouse and upgrading your furnace. The armoury is probably the last thing to build.

4. Your defending army score is too low? Here are some tips, each axe increases your defense by 1, a sword by 2, and a bow plus arrow by 2. The same soldier can use both an axe or sword, along with a bow and arrow. So, in theory the max defense a single soldier can increase is 4. The key thing of the above is 2 points for each bow with arrow. It means you definitely want to always keep your army supplied with arrows. They have to be replenished after each battle. Armor table level 1 can make bows, so you could quickly raise your defense by 2 per soldier quickly, however the challenge is spending lots of metal building those arrows for all the bows, so the usual strategy is make an extra bow or 2 in the mid game to help you get your defense score higher than the attackers, but don't go crazy making bows until the final battle or two.

The way to raise your defense in the early game is 2 fold. One is axes. Each enemy that you kill during the scavenging night drops a broken axe. You can usually farm 2 or 3 each night that you focus on killing enemies. Obviously there are drawbacks to killing enemies, but if you pick your locations carefully (an area you don't mind avoiding for a few days), it is a way to cheaply add more points to your defending army.

One area to not prioritize is armor. Armor helps a lot if you are losing battles, but if you keep your defender number as high or higher than the invader, then it doesn't really matter much. Armor does not raise your defense score. It protects against wounding and death in battles you are losing. Having the lesser armor is plenty in the game. It makes sense to repair the best armor if you get it, but don't build it from scratch.

1. When castle stage begins, slow down time. You want to be completing as many actions as possible during this phase, and a slow speed helps immensely.

2. Keep the chickens alive for the constant supply of eggs, but it is ok to let the pigs die. The fertilizer they provide is not that important. You can build a composter if you find yourself getting low in fertilizer.

3. During the night, leave a scavenge pile near the exit. You can dump extra items there in the middle of the night, and at the end of the night visit it to pick the best items to bring back that night.

4. In the early game, you will struggle to have enough wood to upgrade all your structures. As a result, don't go crazy building torches, and definitely not shovels. So long as you have areas with plenty to scavenge, you should be fine without additional shovels. In the mid game, build as many torches/shovels as you want, as you will have tons of wood by the end game.

5. While having enough food is a challenge in the game, water is not as difficult. You should have plenty of dirty water that can be cooked into drinkable water as needed. Building one rain collector makes sense, but that should be sufficient.

6. You can avoid building a farm, but if you need more greens, or are struggling having enough food, then a farm can help.

7. In the late game, building materials used to make metal, bricks, and pots is the limiting factor. The map only has so many, plus you can trade with up to 3 vendors in the game to get another 10 each. Keep some in reserve in case you find you are running low on a key supply like bricks.

8. When you get a shovel, don't be too quick to use it. Pull up the map, and decide which area you want to unlock next.

9. Ballista parts are a great way to increase your army defense. There are 3 parts scattered throughout the map, and each permanently increases your defense by 3, for a total of 9. Once you know where they are located, prioritize getting them for your city defense. Their locations vary based on what version of Edring's Last Stand you are playing.