I start a new game, wander around for few seconds and a popup asks if i want help figuring out the game
i hold K as instructed for help to figure out the game
It opens a new popup with the following text:
"At any time, press [H] to access the Handbook. It provides guides, tutorials and recipes and other details of all items in the game.
New to the genre? We recommend launching the first steps tutorial"
With underlined text being clickable links that take you directly to what theyre talking about. And handbook even has (in singleplayer) a convenient pause game button if you want to take your time reading something without wasting hunger or daylight
At least in the current version of VS it is made extremely obvious for first-time players that the handbook exists IF they dont explicitly dismiss the tutorial pop up, which you have to hold a button to dismiss so cant do it accidentally either.