The first hour of levels is easy so just play and level up some beginning hunters then come back to this guide, getting the ascetic level up will help you but not necessary. When leveling prioritize gathering food and resources or guarding.

Now that you have some level 5 hunters or so its time to get started. Either you have some resources or you can go to widdowsteppe up north and camp. Save your game their incase you are attacked while camping. recruit any 2-4 cheap hunters to make this go faster, then start gathering resources. Do this until you have roughly 1500 food then we start recruiting real hunters.

The ideal hunter has mandatory 3 smell no higher, 45 stamina, and 8 movement though I'd settle for 7. Other stats are nice but really dont matter.

Then we sacrifice our old hunters to these new ones and equip 2 hunter charms and 2 knight charms on them. Avoid firearms on hunters as they make you smelly, Harpoon guns arent bad, the spore launcher is OP, the rattler is useful. Mostly a good light weapon is your aim. if you knock down an enemy then place your hunter next to it there will be an execute option for 3 stamina that the game doesnt really tell you about. Your sixth sense button is on the bottom left above your hunter portrait in combat, this once again isnt explained well.

Mostly this game is a stealth game where you avoid combat or just down an unsuspecting enemy with a light weapon and keep moving. Once your hunter gets to a dangerous level of corruption or gets a bad trait then sacrifice him for another not smelly, stout, marathon runner.