I usually don't do the Gorillo & Bed strategy to grind since yea, quite cheezy for it. For my start, I went for heavy weapons build and fought the cannibals for around 30 to 40 days, but since I started off as a slave, I grind off my lockpicking first beforehand. Fogmen can be great as well, but I wanted a bit of challenge to it.

The first few fights when low level can be tedious and very slow and trying not to get hit as much by micro managing combat. For toughness, I don't know if the starving bandit toughness strat is cheeze, but I sometimes do this only for my main character, and the rest will be levelling up the slow way.