Quite a few things he doesn't see any particular use for, other than possibly expanding into more crafting possibilities.
He empties the canvas bag and, ahem, inventories its contents.
The canvas bag contains: 1 Copper Shortsword, 1 Copper Pickaxe, 1 Copper Axe. Now he has all of these things inventoried.
"You should do some mining to find metal ore. You can craft very useful things with it," says the person(?).
They're really big on the primitive recreation part, aren't they.
Mineshaft in ground. Pull up 100 Iron Ore. Replace dirt. Inquiring look.
That all makes sense, and now he knows how to get plenty of iron so he'll spend some on that Iron Anvil he saw before. But:
“How do I make a torch?”
"Once you have a wooden sword, you might try to gather some gel from the slimes. Combine wood and gel to make a torch!"
The likeliest candidate for 'the slimes' is those blobby round creatures hopping haphazardly across his landscape. They (and the bunnies, and the squirrels) only seem to exist within a fairly close radius of his body.
He has a copper shortsword. Hopefully that counts. Also, does he need to symbolically hit things, or —?
Slime #1: sword thrown at it.
Slime #2: speared on plain glass.
Slime #3: encased and displayed to the helpful NPC.
The sworded slime changes course and begins hopping directly toward him with his sword still embedded in its round green body.
The speared slime wiggles in place for a bit, and then explodes, showering its immediate vicinity in slime chunks - and a small number of inventory-sized items: 3 Gel and 4 Copper Coins, to be specific.
Now he can make torches at his workbench!
"Stars fall all over the world at night. They can be used for all sorts of useful things. If you see one, be sure to grab it because they disappear after sunrise," says the helpful NPC. Apparently he doesn't have any canned dialogue for being presented with a live captive slime.
Torches. Iron Anvil, next to the workbench on the now-expanded platform. Furnace, same. Ore in furnace.
The other two slimes can be experiments. Spear the rest of the slimes, because supplies for more torches seems worthwhile.
Where's the sun right now?
Descending, about halfway to the horizon, over thataway.
"Underground are crystal hearts that can be used to increase your max life. You can smash them with a pickaxe," says the helpful NPC.
The slimes all explode, yielding dropped items. Some of them had ores, torches, or extra coins in addition to their regular handfuls of copper coins and gel.
The Furnace instantly transmutes his Iron Ore to Iron Bars, at a ratio of 3 Ore to a Bar. Would he like a Toilet (furniture), Trash Can (chest), Bathtub (furniture), Reinforced Fishing Pole (tool), Cooking Pot (crafting station), Chain (material), Lamp Post (furniture), or Empty Bucket (tool/armor)? Because now he can make all of those, along with many more things.
Some of those things might be useful, but he doesn't know what will matter first, so he's going to take the tutorial advice.
Somewhere underground, a crystal heart gets ripped out of its grid square.
He looks at it dubiously. All this other stuff hasn't touched his body. But then, it's already touched his mind.
Eat.
It resembles hard sugar candy, sweet with a hint of cinnamon, except that hard sugar candy would take longer to eat than this.
When he has eaten the candy, he begins to experience a faint inner glow of health. It is cozy and pleasant.
Fine.
The forest around them gets scythed down. Some of it of it feeds the furniture factory, which is completely unimpressive in its functioning. A larger portion becomes wooden walls, floors, roofs. There is now:
A five-story building, with four apartments per floor. Just in case there needs to be exactly one door between inside a home and outside, there is no exterior door.
A hollowed-out hill with cozy little blocky bungalows lit with torches on the exterior.
And a wooden wall with a gap in it for an entrance around the whole area, in case it turns out symbolic defense is a thing.
Presumably it will take at least a little time for more “people” to “move in”. Or maybe he just needs to not look.
He goes to try something he should have thought of earlier.
He flies over to a fog wall.