Cashmoney isn't too hard to hard to grind up. I want this, delivery, and poisoned quests are easy. Packrat and have on you at least one each of every item that doesn't weigh too much, in case you find a quest that wants it.
ID unknown potions, wands and scrolls, so you know what they are. This'll help in case a quest wants them, or for when you are about to erupt into a chestburster and don't want to accidentally chug a buncha cure corruptions and mutation potions looking for that dye. Also they sell for a slightly-more-than-trivial amount, unlike weapons and armor and stuff.
You can get NPCs drunk with the various boozes and milk them for uh... for gold. This'll also train your charisma, which lets you get more pets - I think 1 for <14, and then 2 at 15, and one more every +5? IIRC, pets chilling at home or working your ranches or shops count towards this limit, so it's kinda important later on.
Wander from city to city doing oddjobs and during the process you'll eventually make enough money to buy stuff and pay for IDing. Be real careful about those cursed items. ...I really like the "wandering mailman traveler" sorta thing this turns the game into, though I guess I might just be weird like that. Either way it's a safe way to grind up cash, and during the horrifically long time you'll spend doing this you'll inevitably acquire some Treasure Maps. Those sometimes have artifact equipment, and occasionally they'll even be good! That'll help make you actually stand a chance in a fight maybe.
Get the little girl. She will crush your enemies, drive them before you, and force the lamentations from their women.
If you didn't get one when you started the game, you can get another human ally from the Slave Trader in Derphy.
And uh, I would totally suggest savescrub behavior for when you die. Beyond the possibility of dropping your sweet artifacts when you die in someplace unrecoverable like the Puppy Cave, IIRC you can also drop irreplaceable items like the cooler or gene machine, and IIRC the autosave will save as soon as you respawn, and I don't think you can check when dropped and what didn't when you die.
Also, you can scavenge delicious fruit from Vernis, Palmia and Yowyn, thus saving money. If you have the cooking skill, you can try to cook 'em at the inn in Vernis and the kitchen in Palmia for better stat boosts - though making nasty stuff reduces those. Api nuts and one of the plants I think don't rot, and weigh nothing, so carry those around as emergency food.
Performing, AFAIK, checks your performance against every NPCs level. High level guys - guards, named characters and shopguys - usually hate what you play until you grind up to like 30 or something. They also throw rocks rrrreally hard. If you manage to just find an audience of faceless townspeople, though, they might appreciate your playing.
Personally, my favorite classes are Farmer and Pianist. My first character was a Pianist with a cat, and martial arts, because punching stuff is cool. He teleportitis'd into the slime room in the Vernis basement and dropped his piano there (I was carrying it around because I am boss), and eventually ran out of money (I think I got down to like 14 gold - I didn't know the delivery quests were easy money at the time) AND picked the fruit trees bare in Vernis. Out of resources, I eventually ended up throwing myself at the robber's den until the RNG decided to let me kill that red burglar guy. Slowly I recovered from my absolute poverty, doing deliveries until I could feed myself, get me some allies, and revive my cat (who would continue to die horribly every time, never kill anything, and hate me absolutely).
My next character was a mostly incompetent skillmonkey Farmer. She had all the neat utility skills and would handle the jobs and stuff, while her little girl would handle murdering everything. ...Scythes are pretty useless. Claymores, though, aren't! Especially artifact 3d12+12 ones.