I touched on that a little in the piece, and I'd say--not particularly? It's probably the weakest part of the game. It definitely has a random lottery aspect to it due to the procedural planet system, and they do still usually start you out on a dangerous world to teach you the hazard protection concept, but at least they point out the sodium plants right away that replenish that meter.

The game also does now have an elaborate set of user difficulty options where you can basically turn off any of its systems, but I don't think it should be up to the player to create a good opening experience. Also, a new player wouldn't even know what settings to change.

I personally preferred the onboarding of the launch day game, with its more linear resource progression ramp, and bigger focus on introducing what little story there is.

It's definitely something they should focus on in a patch. This Worlds update has a couple more pieces launching throughout the summer, and it already made big changes, so I'm optimistic.