Resources: stone, flint, coal, copper, amber (rare), wood, fiber, oranges, berries, sand, seaweed
Creatures: cows (meat + bones), chickens (meat + feathers), turtles (meat + turtle shells), sparkflies (night only), aqua butterflies (day only), worms
New skills: Wallop (reduces object health), Informative (allows you to see descriptions of builds), Alive (creatures spawn faster), Shiny (shiny resources appear with 8x loot and base 10x credits), Handy (switches to the correct tool automatically), Impatience (reduces crafting time), Swiftness (increased move speed), Frequency (fish spawn more often)
Monoliths: 150 wood, 3 leather, 15 copper ingots, 3 sparkflies

Starting out I would recommend building your first base of operations on the sand because it has the least amount of resources that you need compared to grass or stone - it will be most efficient to tear everything down later though you don't have to. You're going to want to gather enough materials to make basic flint tools, make sure to utilize the flint crafting recipe in the workbench instead of farming it all manually. Look at the credits required for the center monolith (the glowing altar located somewhere on the island) and make sure to fill it every time you get enough, this will allow you to unlock all of the skills on the island. Your primary focus for this island should be breaking trees and flowers and killing cows and chickens every time they spawn, while you gather copper and coal for the monolith, structures, and copper tools. Keep in mind that resources can only spawn if there's space available and there's a max number creatures on the island at once. You can survive comfortably off of oranges, cooked meat from the furnace, and mashed berries from the workbench, as long as you utilize the buffs they give to break resources faster which will consume less food (both mashed berries and oranges stack with their non mashed counterpart). Stay out of the water as much as possible as this drains your food quickly, but sometimes this is unavoidable depending on world generation. Cows and Chickens spawn much more during the day so make a sleeping bag and sleep through the night if you are running low on food or need hide or feathers, you will also need to sleep to regain your energy when your max hunger bar gets low. I would recommend making a spinning wheel as soon as possible for the attraction cape and work gloves. Once you have a bug net you should gather sparkflies whenever you see them, and you can also make a fishing rod to gather fish for more food if you like. After you research the anvil you get access to breakers which I recommend using to help you gather wood and copper, you can recharge them just by clicking on them for now. Once you complete all the monoliths you will unlock the second island, but I would recommend getting full copper tools and a good amount of extra copper before progressing. You can choose to tear down your base and rebuild it on the second island or just build a second base, but we are going to be there for a while.

Resources: stone, flint, coal, fiber, wood, oranges, berries, iron, beets, wheat, mushrooms
Creatures: cows, chickens, sparkflies, slimes (drool + bones), bees (produce honey at crafted beehives)
New skills: Precision (raises critical chance base 5%), Lost (lost chests and barrels start to spawn), Torrent (Creatures drop base 50% more resources), Jump (Get base 1 additional jumps), Thrift (reduces structures cost base 10%), Sea Abundance (20% chance caught things are multiplied by base 3x), Architect (boosts build range by base 5 meters), Rage (raises critical damage by base 12%)
Monoliths: 15 iron ingots, 10 honey, 5 scrolls of bones, 20 universal paint

I would recommend setting up base camp on stone rather than grass and placing some breakers on grass because wood will continue to be a bottleneck for a little while. It's a good idea to have multiple furnaces if you don't already because there are a lot of different things that need to be smelted. Continue killing all the cows that spawn as well as slimes for bones, as well as flowers for paper and 2-4 bees for honey production. You'll want to make an imbuing table and place it near your inscription table and anvil to provide synergies, then craft a bone staff so you no longer have to worry about killing every creature. You can also craft a charging staff if you want but it's quite expensive for now so I recommend doing it later, and the rest of the staffs can be ignored for now. I recommend skipping the iron pickaxe and going straight to amber, this saves wood and you will need a lot of amber later which is much easier to get passively than to farm it all through the personal cave (be aware the amber pickaxe won't auto equip like the others). However the cave can still be useful to gather copper without having to go back to the grasslands (sand can also be crafted at the workbench). You can make collectors for your breakers if you like, but you honestly don't need them. Beets are another +click damage food and wheat can be cooked into another +crit chance food but mushrooms can be ignored for now. Create a design investigation table and research foundations, chests, and the bed. This will allow you to build bridges between islands, make a base without obstructing resources and oversleep to gain bonus energy. You can also use foundations creatively with breakers to get more use out of them without obstructing a tile. For the universal paint you will need a carpenter workbench as well as water capsules (obtained from water pumps or farming glonna), seaweed (obtained from collection nets or the Grasslands) and lots of flowers. Once you complete the monoliths and some extra honey (at least 15) you can destroy your beehives and water pumps (unless you plan on farming with them) and progress to the third island.

Resources: sand, grass, coal, stone, seaweed, turtle shells, wood, coconuts, shells, cactus fruit, gold, pots (random drops), emeralds (rare)
Creatures: crabs (crab shells), worms of the sand (sand+drool+bones+amber), sand beatles
New Skills: Provision (increases drops from resources by base 30%), Monetization (30% chance of resources dropping base 20% more credits), Wrath (raises click damage to resources by base 15%), Infinity (enables infinite crafting option in crafting benches), Power (magic items and weapons deal base 30% more damage), Core (base +1 passive islands), Specific (enables crafting custom quantities in crafting benches), Tidy (entering a new island picks up all items on the floor on every island), Hate (raises click damage to creatures by base 30%)
Monoliths: 50 shells, 20 emeralds, 20 durasteel, 15 coconut cocktails

This is where the game really starts to open up and increase in difficulty. You get access to mining posts which are a larger range version of breakers with more energy capacity before they need to be recharged. I would recommend tearing down your breakers in Amberpath then creating a temporary base in Old Dust and setting up some basic breakers and slayers. Split coconuts from the workbench are a notable new food for +10% attack speed. Once you have enough gold you can make an island core and put it on either Amberpath or Old Dust (whichever you're on less) and then set up mining posts on Amberpath (click on a post with builder glasses after you place it to make sure you place them optimally). You will probably want to make a charging staff at this point and you can consider making a spark of displacement as well because you will be traveling between islands frequently (you can also just increase your Swiftness skill a lot). Once you unlock the Core skill you can also put an island core on Old Dust so it continues farming and crafting things while you're away, and once you upgrade it you can also put one on the Grasslands so you can continue farming copper (if you need more sparkflies just use the bone staff on grass during the night). You might want to place some slayers in the Grasslands or Amberpath to farm sparkflies as we will continue needing them for island cores. When you're ready to upgrade your tools don't bother trying to farm the materials manually, craft some scrolls of bones and use your bone staff on sand in the Grasslands during the day to spawn turtles until you hit the island max then convert them all to bones (and do the same thing without the scrolls to farm the turtle shells). Once you fully upgrade Old Dust now is a good time to work on leveling up your skills to speed up grinding - specifically Wallop, Provision, Thrift, Torrent, and Alive. You can also start experimenting with ranged weapons if you like because their drops will be collected by Tidy. Once you have a good amount of copper you can start crafting Electrifiers so you don't have to keep breakers/slayers charged yourself, you just need to provide some coal which they consume at a pretty slow rate (I will refer to this process of making breakers and charging them with electrifiers as automating, though true automation through the use of things like suppliers). These work really well on Old Dust and the Grasslands but not quite as well on Amberpath which is why I like it as a main base location, it's also in the middle of all of the other islands. The durasteel is expensive but besides that the only difficult monolith is the coconut cocktails, craft 15 bottles at an inscription table and use them all to milk a cow then place a cooking pot next to your workbench (past the cauldron on the research table). I would highly recommend mostly automating farming of copper, iron, and gold before progressing to the next island.

Resources: flowers, beets, stone, coal, wood, blushy leaves, luslite, yellow aahoo, sapphires (rare)
Creatures: scarablues, marshmallows (sugar), twig (branches + flowers), drowned twig (magic branches + flowers + sapphires)
New Skills: Greed (gain base 10% more credits), Intramural (resources spawn base 15% more often in your personal cave), Gluttony (you can eat food without hunger), Dash (you can dash by pressing the shift key), Duplication (base 10% chance of crafting a bonus item), Enhanced (duration of food and potions increased base 25%), Geologist (all rocks drop base 1 coal), Merchant (markets now collect base 100 credits every 10 seconds), Momentum (increases damage per click combo by base 0.05%)
Monoliths: 300 mushrooms, 25 reinforced thread, 20 luslite ingots, 15 crafting ghosts

The game opens up even more at this point. You get access to meat skewers at the cooking pot for another 20% crit chance and the Gluttony skill which allows you to eat all of your buff foods and eat cooked fish whenever you want which is really nice. You also get access to island blocks and rotating prisms at the carpenter workbench which allow you change the materials and positions of chunks of land on your island to optimize farming. I highly recommend crafting the cactus bug net for Scarablues but you should also upgrade the Core skill and get a core and breaker+slayer setup of your choice on Unseen asap because you are going to need to farm it for a while. Make an advanced research table and research the amplifier and chlorophyll converter as well as the spreader from the basic research table and set up the converter with a spreader and electrifier in a grassy area you can check occasionally (you may need to clear rocks/ores if they obstruct the whole area). You will need to supply the spreader with water capsules, just use some basic water pumps for now but you can eventually make v2 ones later that are significantly better. The next thing you'll want to work towards is the scythe from the anvil, it makes things you kill with it drop living souls instead of their normal item drops so it's not a replacement for your sword (but you will need to unequip your sword to use it). Gather 7 living souls and make an amplifier, this adds new recipes to the furnace, advanced workbench, and carpenter's workbench (while writing this you can access the carpenter's workbench recipes without the amplifier, unless you place one near it and then remove it). Once you place it and craft 5 luslite ingots (from the amplified furnace) you can make the lamp of mushroom to change your personal cave to a mushroom cave which you will need for gathering dimshade to make dimber ingots. You will need a lot of mushroom stems as well (2300) so be sure to boost up your Intramural skill and consider farming midnight mushrooms too (though the seeds do cost sparkflies). They only grow during the night and they show as onegon when you break them for some reason but they're mushrooms. I find the scroll of harvest v2 plus the explosive bow are the fastest way to clear the cave, and it also has the incredibly useful food Underground roots which give you +10 click damage. You can also make water pump v2s now since you have access to blushed planks (through the advanced workbench). If you want to experiment with potions or scrolls of density you will need to set up a farm for weird berries to make the bottles. If you do make a farm you can make a heater for it (in the design investigation table past torches) so they continue growing at night (unless the seeds have a moon symbol on it then this will stop growth). Once you have the merchant skill you can set up a lot of markets just to generate passive credits, this will help with the vast amount of skills + research + island upgrades you need them for. For farming souls the best method is still bone staff on Grasslands sand during the day (will never spawn bugs), you can kill them with a scythe until you make the summoning table then you can make soul eater ghosts which will kill them for you and drop more souls as well as their normal item drops. After you have your luslite tools you can honestly change the entire Unseen island to grass because you will need far more blushy leaves than luslite from now on (the shade of grass won't match until you restart your game). If you place an ancient pillar 1 next to a summoning table it will allow you to duplicate creatures using living souls, which is particularly useful for sparkflies and sand beatles. I'd recommend getting full dimber tools before progressing to the next island.

Resources: wood, stone, flint, apples, frozen grass, hill's chime, octanite, rubies (rare)
Creatures: rabbits (quality meat + hide), eye
New Skills: Unusual (shiny creatures appear with 5x loot and base 15x credits), Glider (allows you to glide by holding the jump key), Powder (soil miners drop base 25 sand per 50 stone), Bony (all creatures drop bones when killed), Expansion (purchasing new island parts is base 10% cheaper), Collector (collection nets collect themselves), Chlorophyll Extraction (extract twice as much chlorophyll from plants), Digestion (food gives you credits when you eat it by base 1x its value), Summoner (you can have base 1 more summons), Contagious (base 5% chance of passing shiny property onto nearby creature/resource upon kill/destroy)
Monoliths: 5 big skulls, 15 rubies, 20 reinforced durasteel, 15 spirit ingots

With this island you gain access to soul ferns and the lamp of soul which are both great methods for farming living souls, with the cave also giving bones and magic branches (can also just straight give you the big skulls needed for the monolith). You also get access to apples which give +15% attack speed and burgers for +20 click damage though burgers are very difficult to make. Upgrade your core skill and build a new island core and breaker setup for the new island, but be careful when using electrifiers. Any octanite within range will transform into charged octanite, so starting out you will likely want only some of your breakers being electrified. You can craft a crusher (past the clicker/spirit forge on advanced research table) to turn charged octanite into normal octanite then you won't have to worry about it, also if you haven't been automating you can use the crusher to turn octanite into the basic bars. Don't be afraid to place multiple breakers right next to eachother because the resources here are extremely healthy (especially charged octanite) but we will be getting an upgrade soon (wear station). I would recommend having at least 3 spinning wheels with one dedicated to constantly crafting thread because you're going to need a lot of it going forward. The craft wand is extremely useful for speeding up a bunch of different crafts at once and works on furnaces as well. If you haven't kept up with automating every island then the soil miners v1 and v2 will be extremely useful to you, if you have then they will be basically useless. I would also highly recommend getting an extensive market farm going if you haven't already, you are going to need millions of credits for the island upgrades alone. If you get a good amount of credits saved up and haven't maxed the Thrift skill yet, you can destroy all your markets then max it out and build a few more of them due to them costing less. Other things you can do to earn credits faster include maxing out your Greed and Merchant skills, crafting potions of greed and coconut cocktails, and fishing with the skills maxed out. You need quite a lot of frozen grass and hill's chimes compared to octanite or charged octanite so I'd recommend making most of your island grass with island grass blocks and having at least one area that's entirely grass so you can use an electrifier without having to worry about the charged octanite, it will still spawn but far less frequently. You are probably running out of space on your hotbar at this point so you may consider crafting the reinforced drill for more space, but I personally recommend just skipping straight from dimber to soul tools because they are very cheap once you've been farming White Peaks for a while and amassed some souls and bones from the Bony skill. The sword has a chance to drop souls so you won't need the reinforced scythe either (though you can make it if you don't want to farm souls from ferns/cave), but the soul tools also won't auto equip for whatever reason. Once you can start making wear stations you can use one of them to replace each of your multi breaker setups. If you don't have the spark of displacement yet you're going to need either one of those or a soar staff (catch the marshmallow from Unseen with a net or trapper), I'd recommend getting the materials for another set of teleporters as well (or just destroying the one on white peaks) before progressing on to the next island.

Resources: fibers, flowers, flint, magic branches, heavenwood, clouds
Creatures: pigs (bones, meat, feathers if they have wings), little clouds, irisias, warmlight
New Skills: Seller (items sell for base 10% more credits), Impulse (stay still and hold the jump key to charge up a super jump), Renewal (killing creatures grants you base +2 energy), Rings (impulse rings will start to appear around you), Stars (starfalls happen base 10% more frequently in all biomes), The Circle (you can craft the circle in the amplifier)
Monoliths: 300 clouds, 10 irisias, 3 holy prisms, 3 dark star fragments

Impulse and Rings are both ways to get up to the sky island but the easiest is to just place down a teleporter. Upgrade your Core skill for the final time and put down your final breaker+slayer setups, mining post v2s will be more than enough and you can use electrifiers freely again. When you unlock the Sky fallen stars will begin to spawn, if you've been automating you may notice them start to accumulate in your inventory but if not you can harvest a few of them until you have 6 fragments then you can make a meteorite finder (past the soil miner/trapper on the advanced research table), this can summon star showers and mineral or drool meteor showers as well. Past the rabbit trap you can now research a cauldron of spirits which is about the only use for trappers, you can add creatures to it for living souls and black bones but you can get these materials easily enough without this that it's honestly not worth setting up. For the holy prisms, past the teleporter on the advanced research table you will need to research and make the fuser (I recommend making 4 or at least 2) and the celestial view. Condense one of each of the 4 gems and some glass into quadstone then condense 4 of those into a quadstone prism at the spirit forge before transforming that into a holy prism. If you've been automating you should have more than enough gems, if not then you can use ancient pillar 2 to transmute them or ancient pillar 1 to craft them outright. Past the celestial view you can research the devourer get rid of one of your breaker setups in either the Sky or White Peaks and replace it with one then fuel it with some star fragments. This will consume matter around it to create dark star fragments, you can speed up the process with things like spreaders, scrolls of density, potions of resources, or the coal/wheat whisperer. Once you complete all the monoliths you can craft The Circle at the amplifier and sleep to complete the game. If you want to craft the holy tools you will need to make the octanite and reinforced ones if you skipped them earlier.