Gather resources to craft yourself a mauser and 100 ammo for it. Mauser has accurate perk and low ST requirement, so nice to use at low level.
Do the
quests and
miniquests.
You might not be able to do all due to CH requirements.
Do some shit shoveling and/or box carrying to get caps and some xp at low level.
Get yourself to the Boneyard.
Start the
Man's job quest. Easy xp and caps.
Go to SF first, give junk to Emma there (300 xp if you just say thank you). Do the
ant killing quest for 200 caps, stims and xp.
A good route to start all this is from NCR (do quests but not rail line gang and Westin's quest and shit shoveling), to Junktown (quests and shit shoveling, ant quest can be hard on low level) to Hub (quests, box carrying and shit shoveling), to Adytum (get Scavenger's location for Hub's sad wife quest), to the Library, to the Boneyard station.
Take the train to SF first, do both quests there. Don't worry about dying at the ant lair. If you don't take hours you can get back to it and get your stuff. Off them starting in a corner. You can also do some box carrying in SF.
Take the train from SF to Boneyard and than to NCR (you can carry boxes at NCR station) than to VC. If you have 3 or more CH go into VC and get the investigate for Dr. Andrew quest. Go back to NCR station. Talk to the guy in leather armor, kill the subject. If you're fast you can grab his armor. Go to the library for your reward. While at that, go to Hub and report back to the sad wife.
Finally go to NCR and do Westin's quest. Once you send the kids away, you can kill the brahmin 1 for 1. They won't attack. That's 17 hides and 17*80xp.
By now you should have easily reached at least level 4 and perhaps level 5.
Square 18:13 has mutated molerats (300 xp), but also lots of PKs. Most PKs don't use TB but RT, so you might be lucky there. With 1 handed, mauser would be the choice of weapon for you to do this.
There are some more quests which give easy xp. Some are worth it because of the xp or other rewards (like SF subway quest), others aren't because of time or effort needed compared to reward (Hub's wasteland band quest).
Put your skill points in SG first to get to a useful level quickly.
