First focus on mining. First get a backpack, then buy a small house and automate the mining. This increases you strength and atleticism. Alowing you to outtrun those you cant beat.

Steal equipment from the people the guards beat up.

You may or may not want to get a helper. I honestly recommend against it because having to many of em makes it very easy later on and there are some with unique dialoges better get those.

When you get heplers, its better if they dont change prefered weapons too often.

Run around beating bandit groups to level up.

Hoard blueprints, books, and ai cores, you need those for research.

Weed smugling from the swamp to the empire is good money.

Getting xbows and kiting things is very efective.

There is a place near were you spawn where there are friendly hivers, there are lots of things you can hunt there and then sell to the hivers.

When you build your base keep it well lit, it will improve the quality of what you make.

Ita good to train your armourers by processing beast skins into leather

In the far northwest there are huge creatures that give you a pearl when you kill them get all your dudes with bakckpaks and kite them. That is good training. Running around with the backpacks full of pearls trains strength and shootingthem trains dexterity. You may need a base with a steady arrow production.

Use the regular arrows. Those are cheaper and when used with the stronger xbow quite effective. There is no need for the heavy bolts.

The guys wering human skin have a machine that removes limbs. This alows you to change your limbs for the cheapest set wich improves your strength training rate. Once you have high strength switch to the best ones.

Therd is a guy who lives in the southwest called the removedster. Kidnaping him and using him as a training dummy is very efective.