Tents can be reset simply by taking all the items out, tearing it down, and putting it back up. Its a pain in the cunt if you have a 10 tent set up, but worth if you dont want to run back and forth up north to get looted up.
First thing to do is to familiarize yourself with the overall map and landscape (https://www.izurvive.com/) has a pretty good map.
Next figure out what type of player do you want to be, A nice " i want to communicate with everyone and try to make friends) type or a "im going to murder you and steal all your stuff" type.
The only real things i can advise you to do is to never stop moving even if your talking to someone and never fully trust someones intentions.