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[Joben]

Easiest and simplest way: start in a town with a food shop and a well. Sell your weapon and buy food. Sleep indoors near the well for twelve hours at a time, eating and drinking when you wake up. Do this for four days, then start adventuring.

What does that accomplish?

Not much, but it is unarguably the best answer to a rigid interpretation of the OP's question.

I was going to suggest that myself, but Draz beat me to it.

[vadia]

****EDIT****
PLEASE AVOID SMART ASS AWNSERS! I want to know how to live ACTUALLY DOING STUFF, like murdering bandits, vampires, and the like and living to spread my deeds to the world

To be fair, this is the internet.  Asking questions = intelligent donkeys will answer.

I do assume you have enough human shields followers.
Always max out.

[highmax28]

****EDIT****
PLEASE AVOID SMART ASS AWNSERS! I want to know how to live ACTUALLY DOING STUFF, like murdering bandits, vampires, and the like and living to spread my deeds to the world

To be fair, this is the internet.  Asking questions = intelligent donkeys will answer.

I do assume you have enough human shields followers.
Always max out.

I had max followers and they abandoned me for some reason

[Ubiq]

I had max followers and they abandoned me for some reason

They probably dashed off after the local wildlife and were promptly executed by yaks with their hooves of steel.

I find a small group of followers is much easier to keep track of and much less likely to attract hordes of bandits.

[My Name is Immaterial]

1. Sneak
2. Wrestle
2A. Choke
2b. Strangle
3. Cut throat

[Joben]

Ok grumpypants OP

Here are my tips.

Get followers if you're going to be fighting other sentient beings. Fortresses generallly have lots of soldiers. Even most hamlets have 1 or 2 if you look hard enough.

Training:
Lots of companions can make it hard to get exp though. So to train i suggest hunting animals while alone. If it's a non-aggressive animal and you sneak up on it you can grapple it so it won't get away, then watch the exp roll in as it struggles and kicks you. Or if you can get a sentient enemy alone disarm him and make the fight last a while so your guy can practice dodging and such.

Sneak EVERYWHERE. You will quickly get very good at it. (Legendary Sneak basically breaks the game)

Swim. Drowning sucks, and swimming builds useful stats. If you want to powerlevel a bit, find a pool, and sneak while swimming laps.

Finding/Picking Equipment:

If looting one of your former fortresses for steel or adamantine gear is not an option...

Steal from a Human fortress or keep. This is a minor exploit. the items are not considered owned and are free for the taking.

If there is no good stuff in the tower you can go into the dungeon. often scattered items there but also enemies. So risky.

Best armor items to get are probably an iron mail shirt, breastplate and helm, and any cloaks you can find.

Metal gauntlets, boots and greaves pick up later when your character has the armor skill to move fast in that much weight.
Buy or loot leather boots and gauntlets if you can find them to wear until then. (Unless you get lucky and find an unusually light weight piece of armor, which happens sometimes. 1 kg iron boots/gauntlets are a real treasure in adventure mode. Most weigh 15)

Extra clothing layers increase survivability a little and don't weigh much.

Silver is best for blunt weapons. Iron/Bronze for sharp ones.

Loadout:

My standard combat load is Primary Weapon in one hand, Shield and knife/dagger in the other.
quiver of arrows/bolts for throwing. This gives a lot of flexiblity and reduncancy.

I favor swords as my primary, but YMMV. Most weapons have an application in which they shine.
(My preferance runs roughly: sword, hammer, spear, morningstar, all-others)


Combat:

Get stealth kills if you can.
(sneak, strangle, throat slit works well. So do arrows hurled from the shadows, then ganking the people who faint from chipped bones)

When spotted, let enemies come to you, throw bolts as they close.

In melee, systematically disable the easiest to hit body parts one after the other. While waiting for a chance to strike the weapon hand and head.

If the odds become more than 2-1 in melee range early on RUN. Get behind something solid, sneak. Go back to start of this section.

Take every combat seriously, always assume the enemy is stronger than you and fight accordingly.

[vadia]

Always aim -- when you have knocked them out, give a bunch of non-lethal blows. 
I prefer something that chops body parts off.

[Broken]

Get a crutch as fast as you can, then train until you are Legendary. You see, a wounded leg is one of the greatest dangers you face; In the
ground you are slow, wich allows melee enemies to surround and atack you much faster that you can defend.

If you are feeling exploity, you can Throw the crutch when you have finished the training. Due to a bug, crutches only lost fuction if you
drop them, but not if you trhow them, thus asurring that you will never fall to the ground evein if you lost all your limbs.

Get as  many shields as you can, and train their use (i use bogeymen to this). After some nights of bogey training you will be basically invulnerable to any blockable atack.

[Loud Whispers]

Selling your stuff to get food/sleeping and so on doesn't guarantee your survival. For all you know everyone in the town is a were-creature or some world eating bug is about to devour the precise tile you're sleeping on.

This is how you guarantee surviving the first three days.
1. Start adventure.
2. Retire.
3. Restart adventure.

You've now survived the first three days, with a year's worth free.

[Drazinononda]

Selling your stuff to get food/sleeping and so on doesn't guarantee your survival. For all you know everyone in the town is a were-creature or some world eating bug is about to devour the precise tile you're sleeping on.

This is how you guarantee surviving the first three days.
1. Start adventure.
2. Retire.
3. Restart adventure.

You've now survived the first three days, with a year's worth free.

You, sir, are a more intelligent donkey than I.

[Gaybarowner]

My advice find a reaaaaally weak animal start choaking it continue your fighting and wrestling should be about great when it dies repeat

[Deus Asmoth]

If your first mission is a vampire slaying, avoid motor nerve damage, make sure it bleeds a lot before you kill it. Then if there's a pool of its blood, dump the water in your waterskin and fill it with the blood. Then drink the blood until you become a vampire, which gives some nice stat boosts. I'm not sure if it actually is necessary to drink blood as a vampire, I've never gone beyond the Thirsty! mark.

If you're not opposed to grinding and happen to come across a Giant Sponge, hack away at it. Just be aware that sometimes it can charge you and break your brain if you don't get out of the way.

Be aware of your combat preferences. Against bogeymen, set it to always charge to give the best chance of not dying. Against everything else, I generally leave it at strike only, since it's a bit risky charging things that aren't smaller than you.

If you spend a while training your crutch walking, you could do it while sneaking underwater to level three skills at once.

[Sukiari]

If you want to live forever, just dump all your skill points into dodge.

[pisskop]

If you want to live forever, just dump all your skill points into dodge.

*sigh*  And make a one-handed shield wall.

[Scow2]

All this talk about how scary boogeymen are and I remember when I managed to kill almost all of a group that came after me. I must've been damn lucky or I just knew the right spots to hit

Tip 4: Buy food. In my personal experience food is hard to come by in adventure mode. Provided the first quest is close enough by your initial fullness should hold you over long enough to get some kinda money to grab a bite or two... Else your gonna have to hunt something and those somethings usually travel in packs and will mess you up when you attack one of them. Elves don't have this problem due to the friends of nature tag though.

On equipping yourself: Since nobody minds you taking anything from anywhere but shops, you can generally get food in any village with a building with bags in it: While most bags will be full of Cloth, others are full of 30-90! berries! And castles are great for loot - the stuff's the right size for humans (Unless you're lucky enough to have a dwarven civilization that has acquired human fortresses, when there's a chance of getting Dwarven Steel armor!), and is usually AT LEAST +Fine+

Between those two, I've never had to buy ANYTHING.

Tip 5: Torture as a learning experience. Find a pesky bandit clan or roving gob warband. Kill off all but one, the last one wrestle down and strangle till s/he passes out. Then proceed to use your weapon to remove extremities one piece at a time. I personally start with fingers and hands so they cant fight back any more. Once they are nothing but a torso and head you can either finish them off or leave them. I usually go with the latter after giving them a nickname. That way when karma catches up to this poor adventurer in the form of a forgotten beast made of vomit I can go back and see if they went on to lead a productive life. (One gob "stubby McGee" went on to face a dragon in defense of his tower. "Though crippled in the battle the dragon managed to  strike down "stubby McGee" or however legends modes says that)

You do not gain experience in combat skills when attacking an unconscious opponent. You can only train wrestling if the enemy's helpless.

If your first mission is a vampire slaying, avoid motor nerve damage, make sure it bleeds a lot before you kill it. Then if there's a pool of its blood, dump the water in your waterskin and fill it with the blood. Then drink the blood until you become a vampire, which gives some nice stat boosts. I'm not sure if it actually is necessary to drink blood as a vampire, I've never gone beyond the Thirsty! mark.

WORST ADVICE EVER! The Vampire Stat Boos is a trap! Once you become undead, your stats lock at their (now boosted) level, making future stat improvements impossible.

If you want to live forever, just dump all your skill points into dodge.

*sigh*  And make a one-handed shield wall.

This too!

Question - is there a penalty to using shields in both hands so a lucky strike won't completely negate your shield-defense?