Stats

This doesn't really matter all that much. I haven't noticed luck having much of a difference in pickpocket chance. But here are my stats at character creation

Str 4
Att 6
Dex 10
Per 1 (2 With starting Gear)
Luck 8
End 6
Int 10


High intelligence for extra skill points. Personality is pointless unless you want more quests or faster xp gain from a few dialogue options. Endurance for hit points. High Dex for 10 action points. Strength doesn't matter all that much but be mindful of what weapon you want to use. Minimum of 4 str for pistols. 5 for SMG's. 6 for rifles etc.



Skills
Level pickpocket to 250. Put the rest wherever you want. You only need 250 pickpocket. During character creation, take the "slap on the wrist perk" if you plan on playing Ironman difficulty. Within 30 minutes you'll have 70-80k rubles.

Perks
Retrograde
Trickster
(These perks are just for the stat gains really)

Ok this is up to you. There is literally NO reason to sell gear to vendors anymore. Steal whatever gear you need then move on. The xp bonus from stealing everything on a person isn't worth your time.

After dumping all your points at level 15, head to the tavern district. Join the revolutionaries and begin to pickpocket from the vendor in the tavern. Steal the 4500 rubles, then rest for a day. Most gear vendors restock every 24 hrs.

Edit: I have noticed that this particular vendor will restock TWICE a day starting at 6 AM and then again at 6 pm. So instead of every 24 hours, rest until 6 am, then rest for 12 hrs after that. You'll double the ruble gain per day.

So steal a bunch of food from the tavern owner, rest 24 hrs, eat food, then repeat the pickpocket attempts every 24 hrs. You will net 4500 rubles from the revolutionary vendor alone plus you can steal whatever guns you need.

This makes the difficulty negligible as you can save scum before every theft and retry it. Raising the difficulty to survival doesnt matter either because there is a perk to have npc's forgive you for stealing from them ( A bit too generous if you ask me) Repeat this process until you have 55k rubles. Then head to the machine district and buy the power armor. This build is the only way to have the power armor in the first hour of the game, unless you make a gambling build. But that takes longer and has more RNG.

Joining the police and trying this doesn't work as well. Trying to pickpocket the police gear vendor makes your character try to enter the armory and that flags you if you get caught. The revolutionary vendor is out in the open.

Just a few ways in my opinion, of making this process less productive/more balanced.

1. NPC's immediately attack anyone they sense is stealing from them. No warning as is in the current version. This will keep even the highest difficulty players away with permadeath rules on.

2. Gear vendor's shouldn't respawn every 24hrs with the exact same amount of currency on their person. This can be exploited daily. It really depends on how much time you are willing to invest. Maybe have the money respawn at a lower and lower rate each day and then after a week they get their cash infusion. Or if the entire amount is stolen, it doesn't respawn at all because the npc suspects theft.

3. Stealth should have a part to play. If my stealth is low, but pickpocket maxed out, I should still fail quite a bit of my pick pocket checks. As it is now, at level 15, you can go hog wild with stealing from gear vendors and amass huge wealth...... at level 15.

It should be added here that 7th Heaven content is drastically more difficult. I've tried pick pocketing the weapons vendor in 7th heaven below Level 25 and I couldn't do it. He would catch me 100% of the time. So it is a level based mechanic. To make this balanced, simply increasing the level of the Revolution gear vendor so that he catches a level 15 player every time would suffice.