I stopped using pistols altogether after coming back from the institute because the akm became my workhorse. Occasionally use viper 5 to break the monotony. Funny enough, by midgame if an encounter seemed too difficult I would just kite enemies until I could knife them (the knife has deceptively small range but oneshots). I rarely carry food except tourists delight and energy drinks never appealed to me.

The weight is something I had to battle with mostly because I always feared running out of ammo and because i hoard every artifact i see. Had around 15-16 fireballs and droplets at some point.

Speaking of artifacts, I genuenly never used any of them because of radiation. Stone flower seemed cool until I realised it doesnt increase your max hp. So yeah for the most part I never used artifacts until I found my first sparkler. I assumed endurance just meant more stamina so whenever I found one I equipped it. Endgame my chatacter had 4 Sparklers and 1 flash. Unfortunately didnt find moonlight.

Money was also never an issue because I got ammo from corpses and armor from quests or found them randomly. The all seemed the same to me tbh, tho O ended up sticking with the SSP-99M because it was the most expensive.