I played the old hero corruption 1 and got quite far (almost beat the castle) but i feel like this one is infinitely harder to progress in.

i've been playing for 2 hours now and i feel like im not really progressing to further maps and such. Right now my strategy is to kill 2 NPCs and then get a potion, if its blue drink it otherwise i throw it away. When i fight i always do 1 normal hit, then wait to restore stamina, then repeat (which AFAIK is the most efficient). I spend my money on the church to try and keep my addictions & corruption down. But despite these things i seem to be too weak to go to the other maps. I mean i can afford to buy the maps but i usually die quickly when i go there because they are too strong.

The fame points dont really seem to be super helpful either. As i said i played for 2 hours and i only got enough points to enable me to have 1 more damage per hit. It feels like i'll have to keep doing these same basic runs for like 10 hours to progress enough through the fame system to be stronger.

Am i missing some sort of strategy or thing you can do? like i remember in HC1 you could level a thing that gave you 20 stamina every time you waited and so you could heavy attack every hit, which really helped me progress alot. But sadly that doesn't work in this

1. only bother to use heavy hits.

2. always check the queen for non-violence pact or 1k damage quests, avoid higher level sections or avoid doing fights during non-violence pact.

3. for easy gold, focus getting stats that help with side job, and lust to avoid corruption during them.

4. Avoid Arena until late game, so you get as much fame as you want.

5. After side-jobs always spend the money, either into potions, jewels for upgrades, or church for lowered amount of lust-debuffs.

6. stop jorkin during quick time events.

7. save up favor with the queen to get good bonuses from her queen's ***** stuff because easy loot or such.