The newbie guides really just give you an optional plan that works. You don't have to follow the guide. You can make any kind of character you want and be fine. Any shortcomings your character starts with can be fixed via training.Doing anything other than what is in the guide is basically pointless. You will either lose or lock yourself out of content.
Failing to properly employ these strategies leads to a slow death via bankruptcy. Non-standard strategies do not work. There are important skills for late game that you simply cannot get if you do not follow these procedures pretty much to the letter.
Even when you do follow these strategies, holy crap -- what a grind-fest. Why should I have to make a fully non-combat character and then rely on combat to make it through the early game? Why is non-combat not viable for early game? Why is a combat oriented character not viable for late game?
Why put us in a situations where we are obliged to make decisions that make no sense except from a game mechanics perspective? Why make the early game a complete struggle where you're constantly on the verge of bankruptcy, grinding, grinding, grinding in the hope that one far-off golden day you will be allowed to finally play in the fucking sand?
If I have to make a specific character, invest in very specific skills, and do very specific things at very specific times in order to be able to play, why even make a sandbox game? It's mind boggling.
I, like many others, find the "correct" way to play the game completely torturous. And if you're making a sandbox game with a "correct" way to play it, you're doing it wrong.
I would say the closest thing to an exception to this rule would be intelligence. Raising intelligence is hard so unless you are set on playing a low int character for role play reasons the Brainy and Gambler perks are pretty much a given. You don't have to start as a Scientist though. I actually prefer a soldier start, but I do take Brainy and Gambler as well.
Combat is the fastest way to money and influence but you don't have to do any fighting at all if you don't want to. You could decide to make money via crafting or training up your slaves for jobs or sale.
Bankruptcy is mostly only a concern if you decide to hire all the expensive mercs and then not do enough fighting to pay their salaries. If you're not going to fight then you don't need mercs. If you're going to hire mercs then maybe you should do what mercs are meant to do, fight.
If you go around town making the various passive investments that are available you can get to where you passively make enough money from that to pay for the salaries of every merc in the game at the same time without ever doing anything to make money from that point on and in fact still be making a profit. That takes somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 days depending on your luck on drops and how much you're spending on salaries before you make those investments.
The same kind of idea holds for non combat stuff as well though. If you're going to focus on training the girls up to make money then you're going to be a lot more effective at it if you train up the relevant stats for that on your main (charm/manipulation/bondage/flagellation/etc).
If you want to focus on crafting then you're going to have to spend a lot of time making daggers/etc to grind up your artisan/blacksmithing skills high enough to make the high value items.
This is what my economy looks like on day 90 and I haven't even made all of the investments yet:
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