And if you're hiding out for hundreds of days, you're not receiving much intended damage and not leveling.
As stated, I'm not hiding out.
For example: current run, I'm in Squin.
I have 2 skeletons that stay in Squin doing all production/fabrication.
I travel around with 6 shek fighters. They are never in Squin.
I go from the waystation south of Squin, to Admag, to the Hive Villages, to Hub, to the Waystation over in Skinners, Smugglers Bar, Flats etc. to buy supplies, food, etc.
I'm traveling pretty good really.
All these places, have beds. If anyone is hurt at all, I put them to bed. I carry first aid kits/splints on every npc, and they all have those jobs on auto. I have sleeping bags on each too.
You gain levels MUCH faster against close to equal or higher level foes. If you're getting beat up, you're gaining skills faster, especially toughness. Simply taking damage levels toughness incredibly slowly. Getting knocked out, getting back up instead of playing dead, limbs getting chopped off, etc. level toughness incredibly fast.
I don't think it was understood;
Toughness trains on intended damage, not actual received.
Meaning; you can still do all that just fine, but you don't actually have to get the shit kicked out of you. It's based on the intended damage, not the damage you actually receive.
So like, if a guy was to deal 100 damage, you gain toughness on that fact.
Not that if your heavy armor mitigated it to 2 damage. You still gain toughness based on his 100 damage. Not the actual taken mitigated amount.
So you can use that knowledge, to like, throw a level 1 guy at a nest of beak things, because top tier heavy armor will let you. Send in another guy or so to help out, and boom you have massive toughness insanely fast.
The problem is actually;
Once you do hit around 40+ toughness, there are almost no enemies that also get that high.
There's some shek factions in Stenn, animals like Beak things and the south-eastern areas.
Everywhere else, has npc's like cannibals with stats like 10-15.
So because of the differences, toughness grinding comes to a crawl around 40+, and near a dead stop at 60 or over.
Luring bandits to your base occasionally when traveling and fighting stronger enemies would level you much faster.
Again, I am doing this. I am. Non-stop.
Selling chest protectors from dust bandits and the like is how to raise initial capitol.
All I'm saying is that's the reason it's taken you so long to level, hundreds of days.
I think it's more, it just takes this long to get going, not specifically level.
Like, when your stats are sub 20, no matter what gear your in, what you wear etc. you can't really do jack all. You just get your ass beat. So right there, its days of recovery, repeated attempts etc. like even being reckless, the npc's are just too weak to do anything for a long time. Even if you let them get the tar totally kicked out of them, missing limbs etc. they are passed out in beds for dozens and dozens of days worth of time.