I just went ahead and spent a bunch of characters learning where stuff was in the wilderness, like important holes that are important because you will certainly see them later. In fact, one of those holes now has code to tell you, Hey, you're about to fall into this hole, because at one point a bunch of people, including several long-liveds, fell into it without realistically meaning to. Those who survived did so by sheer luck. I remember playing that day and listening to my mage friends reconnaissance it.
Yes, but being clanned alone, even if your clan takes you out to the wilderness, is a decent barrier to death, simply because someone who wishes to kill you risks the clan's ire by attempting to do so. Then becoming a leader, living a long time working there, or becoming highly ranked will afford more protection, especially if a douchebag joins your clan and tries to take you down. In my experience most of the traitors don't stay long in the clan before revealing themselves as disloyal. A few do though.
Being an undesirable, a term actually used in the world, makes it more likely, I've seen it too, for you to be messed with and/or killed. Mindworms will be more likely to mess with your head, people will skellebaine (hallucination poison) you more often, or other poisons, they'll take from your apartment more often, they'll try to steal from you more often. A light form of undesirableness is being a foreigner in a region other than your hometown, so be careful. This is in the docs, but it is especially unwise to be caught committing a crime somewhere other than your hometown. This world is very hard on crime; think the old Arab way of cutting off thieves' hands kind of hard.
Also, there have been a few exceptions, but most open clans will only take humans. The always-exceptions are Kurac and Byn, who will take anything but witches. House Oash takes witches. Do not expect to rise very high as an elf, breed or half-giant. Dwarves are a little better. As elves do not ride, they would be taking up precious space becoming a Byn sargaent, and therefore do not become them.
The safest-safest, in my opinion, is a crafter for Kurac. There's simply fewer people walking into the outpost and Kurac completely controls the place. Crafters do not have to protect anyone like guards do, and are not as important as the merchant branch (which deals with management, player orders and mastercrafts.) Aides would make more as they are in the employ of nobles, and arguably are safer, but noble Houses tend to accidentally drop their poison into each others' tea, and a good, lower-risk way to get at a noble without killing them is, you guessed it, killing their aide.
Whew, I was on a roll there. Still, risking death is a lot of fun. A big part of my play these days is doing X to get Y, and X is fairly dangerous--- but it makes my sessions a lot of fun.
