The old tips and tricks thread has retired, it was fairly outdated at this point too.

So here's a advanced brand spanking new one.

Tip numero uno: When you start a new game, go to the market and buy ropes, weapons and armor for you and your starter slave. Next go back to the mansion, equip the equipment, and if you haven't already, transfer the ropes to the travel bag.

This way you have a fighting chance to survive your first encounter and can catch some new slaves!

#2. Agility is a very good first investment in stats. It raises awareness, which in turn stops you getting ambushed while out in the world.

One thing I didn't realize first few times through. Your starting slave has the trait "grateful", as do some other unique slaves you can acquire.  It removes all need for luxury which means you can promote them up to noble, and they'll still happily hang out in your communal room.  Thus, I think it's worth holding on to that starting slave and putting in some effort to train them up.

I'd recommend staying in town completing guild contracts until you are prepared to go adventuring. The contracts give money, reputation, mansion improvements points, and experience for your mage. Just buy obedient slaves from the guild that are close to the contract requirement and then improve them with potions, use TP to boost mental stats, assign spare physical stats (perhaps after levelling up), or in rare cases change grades at the guild. If the initial guild contracts are just too weird to complete then just buy some slaves into your mansion for a bit of economy and wait for new guild contracts to appear.

Once your mage is level 2 he gets stat increases and can learn some better skills from his character screen that will help in combat. Put together a combat team with 3 capable looking slaves hopefully with some cheap weapons and armor. The equipment does make a difference. Take with you some bandages, some rope, and 3 supplies, making sure they are in your bag and not your mansion chest. When you start fighting use the ? option to equip your mage's new skills. Don't take on too many enemies to start with. Use bandages between fights by choosing the control option. When you get to the end of the area you can rest using the supplies and/or return safely to town.

Adding to Kazama's point, agility is important from start to end game mainly because 'W - Public Entertainer' job is one of the best money maker in the game and agility mainly determine how a servant make in that job. My fully maxed out Beastkin - Fox makes almost as much money doing 'W - Public Entertainer' as 'W - Escort' with Geisha specialization and her racial bonus (around 20-30 coins less if I remembered correctly). And unlike food which becomes a non-issue almost from start (there seems to be a glitch in the game when you randomly loose around 100 food when you have a lots of characters, haven't figure out what exactly trigger it yet so always make sure you have around 200 food as a safety net), and mana which you'll get so much you don't know what to do with it by the first week, gold will never not help in this game.

My suggestion is make your starter servant a high agility race (I usually go with Beastkin - Fox since I make my starter servant Rena Tendouji cosplay character, but cat and wolf will probably be better since they have better racial bonus, at least from description although you get two wolf and one cat unique characters later on). Dump the start bonus into agility (choose agility bonus trait if you want a boost from start and think you can manage the stress penalty, although I never find I need it) and elevate them into common grade with your start gold and put them into 'W - Public Entertainer'. Depends on how much wit they have (its effect is very minor anyway), you should make back the 200 gold for elevation in 2-3 days. I usually get Emily from the first day, let her do hunting job for food and supply while my starter make gold.

I usually go adventuring when my 3 man party (include my player character, my starter and Emily) all have chain mail, and my starter/Emily have long sword (although you can go earlier if you don't care to curb stomp all enemies, assuming you start in Wimborn) and myself with the rusty dagger. Travelling bag is extremely useful at the start game for that carry weight boost for possible loot but they don't help to keep your characters alive so they are secondary. Always bring 3 supplies with you so you can rest/eat at the last location to recover stress and energy so you don't take your servant body guard out of job rotation to rest, and when you have the carry weight you can think about rope/lockpick.