Another thing is, if you go south from bats, there is a log on the left side of screen that you can click on for 300 gold.
In the walkthrough that I've been reformatting and tweaking, I suggest something called 'Day 4.5', where you essentially just focus 100% on Vicki's story after meeting her, spying on her in the morning and working for her in the afternoon, and maybe get in some sexy fun time in the barn in the Evening before advancing the 'need to get into town' story with Lara. She'll pay you $20 per day, plus there's a $100 bonus if you see the 'Vicky + Gregor' storyline through to it's conclusion. You could repeat this again and again, but at this point you should have somewhere around $400 in your coffers, which is more than enough for your initial needs.
The nice thing about gold mining with Vicki for say 15-20 days is that after that, you can then just mostly focus on advancing the story. Although I still recommend going hunting at least once a day and then selling off excess wings and such to build up your pocketbook for the next round of expenses.
And yes, as
TomUK mentioned, yeah grab the bag o' gold in the log!
There's a small window after you are invited into town where you can do some bat hunting before you have to return the knife, to pad the pocketbook as it were, but with around 600+ gold in your coffers already (with the bag o' gold and having worked for Vicki for 15+ days and then receiving your share of selling the colt), you should be in good shape for the next 10 days or so, and can then buy the short sword as soon as it becomes available, hence the knife becomes less important.
Note that you can still go bat hunting without the knife, you'll just do less damage in combat. I usually bow out of combat for the day when the HPs drop below say 50-75, but also note that for 10 gold you can buy a meal in the Tavern and restore your hit points (this will advance time to the next period), so you can get in two or more rounds of hunting in the same day if you are so inclined, without having to resort to much more expensive potions.
Under NO circumstances should you go to the east of the Meadow until you've advanced the story to the point where that area is 'more safe', otherwise you'll get ambushed at the entrance, and autosave won't help you... after that point (see my
reformatted walkthrough) hunting DickDragons is definitely a decent option. Hopefully you've reached Level 4 with the bats by that time, and note that when you level up, your hit points are restored, which can stretch out the amount of time you can spend hunting bats before your HP drop to unsafe levels.
I recommend having at least 150 HP and having the Short Sword equipped before taking on a DickDragon, and note that you can leave and re-enter an area to respawn all of the bats or DickDragons. Also note that after your HP drops below say 150 when hunging DickDragons, you can still whack a few bats on your way home through the Meadow, as they do a lot less damage than the DickDragons do.
Vruk's level will max out at 5 in the current build, but of course you should still go hunting as time allows and then sell off excess wings and such to build up your gold reserves.
Evening time can be a great time to visit the Tavern for a meal (if you have nothing else to do), and afterwords going hunting at Midnight (before going to bed) is perfectly fine. Your HP will be restored the next morning in most cases (unless an event prevents that, say drinking...)
But as I noted, if you already did the Vicki colt Day 4.5 thing for say 15-20 days, your finances should already be in pretty good shape, after you grab the bag o' gold from the log in the SW corner of the area to the south of the Meadow (where you find the bats). This means a bit more grinding at the beginning, but once you finally get into town, you'll already have enough gold to just focus on advancing the story, and then hunting as time allows to save up money for the next round of purchases (outfits for the girls after day 21).
That's my suggestion anyways!