Hi banedon17 and welcome to the community! I believe that I could offer some sound advice on this one. Much like yourself I am a purely Offline Singleplayer myself on console myself (ps4). Furthermore, also like yourself this was also my first survival game too. I will offer the same recommendations I do to most other new Singleplayers I have the pleasure of discussing this with.
The most fundamental ones I recommend are as follows:
I) Go into Sever Settings > Survival > and ensure that ‘drop equipment on death’ is unchecked. You will no longer lose all of your equipment when you die.
II) Next go back and to Server Settings > Abandonment > and make sure that ‘disable building abandonment’ and '‘disable thrall decay’ are both checked. This means that you structures will not decay and disappear if you dont log on for over a week loke on official online servers.
III) Return to Server Settings > go to Purge > and uncheck the ‘enable purge’ box. *note- this is up to you. However, I always advise new players to turn it off until they get a good feel for the game. You can turn it back on at anytime when you get better established. As someone new to the genre, the last thing you want is to have your hard work razed to the ground while you are still learning the fundamentals. But for the record: when you are ready to start taking on purges adjust the ‘purge level’ slider to 4. This will maximise your chances of getting a human purge, and those valuable T4 (named) slaves. Turning it to 5 or 6 will make you more likely to receive a beast/animal purge.
IV) Finally, from Server Settings > select Pet and Hunger > adjust the ‘food container range multiplier’ slider right up to 4, and ensure that ‘use minion population limit’ is unchecked. The later will ensure that you are not limited in the number of Thralls(slaves) and Pets you can own.
V) Regarding harvest rates. Just my personal viewpoint here, but I honestly dont know that you need to mess with them. While your gather rates are a little slow initially, you will gain MUCH more harvesting power as you progress to higher tier tools. For example, when going from stone tools to iron ones. And by the time you hit either black blood or obsidian tools, you will be getting around 9 wood, stone, etc per swing. You can also increase the numders on any tier of tool by attaching tool upgrade fittings found in the ‘apprentice weaponsmith’ Feat, and later in the game by applying a weapon oil. But…if you are resolute that you would like to increase your harvest rates, then go Server Settings > Harvesting > and adjust the ‘harvest amount multiplier’ to a level you find suitable. I think that 2.0 is plentiful.
*General Tips: should you require any of these regarding weapons, armors, how to gain slaves and pets or for that matter anything else, just let us know ok. We are here and happy to help!
Early question & tips->
-which god did you choose when you created your character? Do not invest points into unlocking other religions, as there are NPC trainers around the map who will teach you them without having to fork out points.
-practice and master dodge and counter attacking, and you will be in great shape by the time you hit level 60.