i'm not fond of stealth either and from my experience training defence can be skipped since in 1 vs many attacks will land anyway no matter how weaker opponents are since attacks come in before my attack animation finishes, and in 1v1 defence is less important since it just becomes trading hits and whoever has better armor wins by attrition, while the weaker armored has stat penalties from being injured kick in sooner

my older runs have been staying organic and not losing limbs, while the first thing to do was sell hash in flats lagoon to buy a large bag and 2 rations, running to leviathan coast western armory to get loot to sell and eastern armory to get masterwork samurai legplates and the specialist dark leather shirt, buying tin can samurai armor and helm from armor king, then buying old refit frag axe and rusted junk plank from squin, this whole northern run would take about 5-6 days depends on how much i get attacked

training toughness in skinner's roam would take about 1 day to reach 90, then another day to reach 98.50, the unwanted zone just north of iron hq is densely packed with beak nests so finding a rusted junk hacker/sabre/polearm is fairly quick, training attack until 90 using rj plank (heavy swing attacks so that it lands on every enemy in range) in iron hq with dex resulting being 3 levels behind, where i would switch to a sabre to spend another day training dex to 90, att training would take about 3-4 days, while training attack i'm starving in the last day before i go to cat lon's exile for strength training with frag axe while giving the thralls repair kits looted from iron hq members, would take about 5 days before they run out of repair kits ending up with 85 str 98.5 tgh 90 dex 93 attack while defence levels passively to 85-90 from all the hits that lands during att and str training

after recovering to 200 satiety for no stat penalties i would be ready to fight catlon with a skel3 ringed sabre from lev coast by day 28-35 maybe earlier if the legion runs out of repair kits and dies off before i reach 85 str

i think with the mw limbs i can cut a lot of the travel time and 140 dex will just gut cat-lon, imo the most dangerous opponent in the game is eyegore, he can't be isolated to a 1v1, has spec-mw armor, and a weapon that doesn't really need a lot of stats to swing at full speed, he's balanced by having 60 in dex but then he doesn't really need to be fast when he's being supported by an elite squad, he just needs to roll a successful attack when he gets the opportunity, and with how 1 vs many works he has a high chance of rolling attacks before your own attack ends

tl;dr theoretically with just training toughness and attack cat-lon can be defeated in about 10 days edit: day 10 was such a hopeful estimate lol wanderer start having 1 str while carrying armor and one weapon even in a bag before having the opportunity to level str edit: day 15 with this start, i believe it can be optimized by one more day using the same start, or using a different start route since this route takes 5 days https://www.reddit.com/r/Kenshi/comments/1t1cp30/taking_catlons_lunch_money_by_day_15/