Hey, thank you for writing in. Character creation involves picking five traits listed on pages 22-26, and generating the starting funds by revealing cards (30). Page 26 has a few "packages" listed for players who don't want to spend time looking for combos among the traits. There are no starting Gold Rush points, those are earned in play for later advancement.
And that's it! Most of how a character operates is through item use and what cards you remove from your deck for encumbrance. For example, if you want your character to be stealthy but not very charismatic, keep the Spades in your deck and use up most of your Heart cards in your encumbrance pile.