Start planting crops ASAP. If you can, get your hands on some wheat or potato. You can make flour from these and flour does not decay.
The economy is currently way too generous, so you can sell a lot of the things you don't need for Ren when merchants stop by. Then use that to buy anything you need.
Castles are indeed fantastic (as stated by Stornwald), but keep in mind that making a fortress underground is usually quicker and easier to lockdown when attacked.
Each biome provides specific challenges, but keep in mind that Taiga and Tundra have cold seasons which can kill crops. Again, flour is nice to have because it can last you into the winter. Tropical biomes are quite easy with their seasons, but they tend to have more difficult pirate encounters.
Good luck and have fun!
The ol restart worked😁. Thanks for being such a responsive developer
Oh good! Unfortunate that you have to do that, but glad it helped.
Hmm, I've seen a few issues with stuck settlers but this is the first time I've seen those incorrect skill values. I'm guessing the ol', 'turn it off and on again,' doesn't change anything?
The live version has a few stuck settler bugs which have been fixed in the next version. Though, these are severe bugs and have no in-game solutions outside re-loading the save file which sometimes works.
Sorry I'm not any more help. Sucks when players have to encounter bugs like this. :(
Not sure if this is me being stupid or if this is a bug, but it looks like whenever food rots in my storage building (stone roofed building above the farm), the rotted food spawns on the roof instead of on the floor of the building/in any of the storage containers I have in there. I think this might be because I've completely filled the room with clay pots? I'm not 100% sure but regardless I noticed and figured I would share.
This should be fixed for the next update. Thanks for reporting! :)