Late but I got you covered. Pick speed gift, religion specialty. Speed is the hardest to raise, the other 3 can be raised using vitality tinctures / scholars tea (found from cart guy in default explore). Religion will let you meditate at the beginning of the game, which is important because God cries when you masturbate/have sex/think impious thoughts.
Get the Beautiful Sword from exploring the lake. It will have the highest base damage of any weapon in the game, provided you stay on the righteous path. You can find Rathazul at the lake and after buying three things from him you can recruit him to your base.
I recommend using your first 3 perk points to unlock Double Attack (preqs are evasion and runner).
Once you're level 3, you can recruit Jojo in the forest, and training with him will upgrade your meditation allowing it to also restore health.
You're pretty much set from this point. It's also highly recommended to get the Inquisitor's Robes, which are missable and a bit counter intuitive to get, I suggest reading the wiki on how to do so. You can get them very early if you run from all combat in the swamp.
But remember, sex is for infidels, that's why they call it infidelity. Cheers.