New Player

[Omogoto]

I am having a really tough time here, the game seems to be completely lacking in detail, information, and does not seem to bee very intuitive at all. All I do is run around trying to figure out whats going on, what should I be doing, and how do I get something done.
Am I missing something simple?. or am I possibly getting to old for this stuff? It seems very user unfriendly.

[Wowwww]

nah man your not getting too old its a little confusing if you didnt watch any videos. but once you talk to ako you go to the burnt village just down the path. you will meet a guy standing next to a bell tower, talk to him and he will help you understand what to do. once you get the bell from him you decide where you want to build. since your brand new I would just place the bell tower near the guy you get it from. but totally up to you. then you can destroy the burned building to get more stuff to build buildings such as houses and warehouses. you will make tools such as hammers to build with axes to get sticks and wood with and picks to get iron or stone or such items. adze will be used on logs you chop down to make planks or something like that.

hope this helps mate.

[Winter's Embers]

Are the tutorials turned on or off? Check in the Settings.

[Omogoto]

Yes well I may have missed a crucial quest somehow in the beginning? I ended up on the quest after you repair the first bridge, and ended up in the mining camp having to produce some axes and shovels, but see no way to craft them in the camp?, or am I supposed to go back to my town?, build a forge and craft them there? I also heard you have to be like lvl. 11 and right now I am only 6 or 7? Its not a big deal really, just an example of what I'm saying, if I'm not the correct lvl. yet that's fine, but if anything else, why would I be offered and be able to accept a quest above my current level?
I will check the settings, good comment, thank you, I am considering starting over, because I also have a bad habit of not fully reading all the game text, perhaps I also missed something there, I was surprised how much reading there is and no sound? like talking.
Lastly I have 3 villagers in two houses, one is assigned to the well, one is assigned to the forager hut, and one is assigned to the woodshed, they seem busy all the time, but I have a hard time seeing what they are producing, and they are ALL unhappy but I am having a difficult time understanding what they are unhappy about?
Does anyone have a good beginner vid I could watch?, that gives some good basic info?
Thanks to both of you for taking the time

[Winter's Embers]

I'm not much for making videos but I can give you a quick tutorial:
In the beginning, your people have simple needs. When you look at the Dynasty page after you get your first villager (usually Ako), you'll see a Need appear there: Meals. It will be accompanied by a value in red to begin with. This is the amount of points you need to provide. In parentheses, you'll see another value. This is how many Meals points you have in your food storage. You need this number to be above the red number in order to meet the Meals Needs. You can assign your villagers to tasks but you need to be methodical about it. Your first two villagers should be assigned to food. One person should be gathering food, either in the forager or the fishing hut. The other needs to be in a kitchen at a workplace cooking the food. Cooking your food increases the amount of Meal Points provided substantially so if you're providing your own food in the beginning, you should cook things like Gobo, Eggs, and Meat (you can't fish manually yet) before storing them.
As you get more people, more Needs will appear. Next is heating, which you can provide with NPC labor at your woodcutter. You can have three tasks cutting logs and a fourth turning logs into firewood.
As each Need appears, you will have to provide new items but you also have to provide MORE items as all Needs increase with each new villager.
One big thing to remember is that your needs slider (orange and green) shouldn't be changed unless you need to boost your happiness. I wrote a simple guide here and on Discord to help with that. On Discord, you can also find an Excel spreadsheet with the needs per population, when they appear, and the highest providing items for each Need. I can't post it here because Steam has this problem with posting documents. Here's a link to the Discord if you want it: https://discord.com/channels/565138322679398440/1233073900959830026

The best advice is to take things slowly. Do the early quests for Ako and Toshichi (including the Helping the Neighbors questline) and then stop and worry more on learning the various buildings you've unlocked and meeting the needs of the people. Villagers work well if you assign them properly but, remember, all production and consumption occurs on the production tick (1800 game time) each day. It's marked on your compass timeline as a thick line. You'll then see the fruits of their labor.
For the Iwasaki smithing quest, there's a vendor in that village that sells the blueprint for the smithy. However, the quest requires STEEL tools, which you can't get until DL 12 when you unlock the Tatara Furnace. However, there's no time limit on quests so you can leave it until later.

[Omogoto]

Awesome Winter, very helpful, thank you.
(on the video comment, I meant have you watched or know of any good ones?, but thanks)

[Winter's Embers]

Not much for videos but I'm a pre-release tester so I've been playing about a thousand hours. Not much I don't already know... except what's coming next. I mostly avoid videos since you can never trust the veracity of information and they are never fact-checked.