Tbh I have been challenging this game for a week. What happened, in the end, was me being depressed because I couldn't find a way to progress the main game tho. Can anyone lend me a hand for providing a decent walkthrough for this game?
Gathering/self sufficient strat is:
In the sewers grab the spear in the bottom left chest, grab the sword in front of the goblin bottom right. Kill rats for the quest. Pick up some tiny rats in the sewers, don't eat any of your food. Try to stay in there a while collecting meat from giant rats and picking up the little rats until you get low on hunger, then exit the sewers.
Head to the tavern and complete the quest for monies. Now head one space right, one space down of the tavern and enter the town square. Head over to the wizard and sell items as needed until you can buy the wisdom glasses from the wizard (Equip them). Next head right to the armor/weapon seller and sell food until you can buy the sickle (equip this or put it on your quickslot bar, it reduces gathering cost to 1 from 3). You may need to sell the sword or various things if you didn't collect enough food in the sewer before leaving, that's why it's important not to eat too much food.
This sets you up to be able to immediately collect herbs in the nearby forest with a massive wis boost (Head east outside the city until you cross the bridge, then go south to the forest. I think that's the closest/safest forest). The herbs sell for a lot and can also be turned in for a quest/exp. Also a way to stock up on tons of food and all your sales will be worth more thanks to the glasses. Meat restores more food and sells for less than fruit, so eat that first. You probably won't be able to directly fight boars but you can lead an aggressive one to another boar and it'll kill it.
This is pretty much how I start all my runs now after dozens of playthroughs, lol. This works for any builds, even magician where you can't really fight or do quests reliably on your own until 15. The hefty herb/food stock is really helpful early on. In your first run out there, you should have enough gold from selling excess herbs/food to get whatever gear you want when you return to town and you won't be scrounging for food for a while.
If you want to go the afk route, you can also hire the whip guy in the tavern for soup and go watch him beat up zombies with the graveyard quest, but I find it a lot less interesting. Especially if you don't go a pure melee build, you'll waste too much stamina and it's better if you just lead the whip dude around to kill everything. If you try to fight yourself and buy food in town, you'll make no profit due to the food/stamina cost. Even just walking back and forth between the tavern and the graveyard hurts now with the time/food cost to exit buildings. I do use this sometimes as a magician, but I gather my own food.
There are also apparently ways to make the innkeeper kill patrons for money, but I'm not too fond of killing npcs randomly.
