Basically just run away from everything. The reward for winning a fight is that you don't die or get raped, so save yourself some time and stamina.
Did some testing and... well the most rewarding gameplay loop I can find is to kill rabbits on the plains for their meat (try sneaking up behind them to get a backstab or two and that'll help take them down before they start their bullshit), gather plants and herbs in the rainforest, make good soup with the animal meat and plants, fill up the rest of your inventory on herbs, return to town, use a couple herbs to buy a key to the inn, spam bathing and chug soup till you're out ( the XP gain is almost worthwhile, where everything else falls under the 'why even bother' column') sleep at the inn, go sell off all your herbs at the exchange (two tiles east of the inn), use the TP to buy coins and drop most of those coins into storage. Rinse and repeat. Almost no risk and has the highest rate of money and XP gain of pretty much any loop I can find, though I'm avoiding prostitution and I've got a hunch that the dev's trying to steer you into that.
A note on bathing, it goes alot faster if lona is already naked. But if you do this without the exhibitionist trait her mood will tank.
Oh and you can store items at the exchange.
Oh and some traits seem to lock you out of others without telling you, because fuck you for not wanting to do a bunch of playthroughs of a grindy-ass game.
Anyone find any clothing that would be useful for upping SCU, ATK, or STAM ? As far as I can guess clothing will be what is responsible for the largest part of your stats.
Also, there's a quest far to the east that you start by helping a couple of guys in a camp fend off deep ones. It sends you NE to a cave with wall buttons and some deep ones lurking around, anyone know the button combination? The quest isn't translated so I don't.