The first layer is where 3D printing stops being a software problem and becomes a grudge. I have spent more cumulative hours crouched at eye level with a sheet of paper, dragging it under a nozzle and muttering "slight resistance", than I'd care to total up.
The trouble with manual levelling via the four thumbwheels is that it's never actually level, it's level-ish at four points, and the bed itself is a warped bit of metal that laughs at your four points. You tram the corners perfectly, print something large, and the middle is either gouging the bed or laying down spaghetti an inch above it.
Switching to a probe and a proper mesh changed the relationship entirely. Instead of pretending the bed is flat, you let the printer measure how it isn't and compensate in software as it goes.
G29 ; probe the bed, build the mesh
M420 S1 ; enable mesh levelling for the print
It is not magic. You still set the Z offset by hand, and the probe has its own quirks about temperature and repeatability. But the war is over. I tram it once in a blue moon, run a mesh before anything fussy, and the first layer just turns up looking the way it's supposed to. I miss the paper not at all.