Do you actually want this game to be a challenge?
My main characters are level 4 and I have brought the Rush skillbook for my warrior and I have brought 3 mage spells, Ice Spike?, Ice Wall and Rain. I have also brought a new staff and if the merchant didn't keep saying my offer was insulting to him then I would have brought a set of armour too.
Problems- You start out with no money at all. None. This is especially a problem in a game where you need to purchase your skill books.
I don't think that's an issue, you can make plenty of money by searching crates, plus raiding the table in the place where the imp magics you - Crates and other containers are empty most of the time. When they’re not empty, they usually only have crafting components. That is great for crafting, but crafting is too complicated to be an ideal substitute for buying stuff. There are too many things possible to know what you can make. I can’t memorize the entire list. Crafting components sell for very little as well, so I can’t make money that way. I don’t WANT to have to spend a huge amount of time crafting things to make money.
Just FYI there are plenty of books that I have found lying around that tell you lots of things you can craft, I made a pizza yesterday 
- Too often, enemies drop nothing. I’m not asking for fountains of magic items popping from every zombie and skeleton, but they don’t drop a lot of things to use or even sell. They do drop weapons and gear, but not enough that you can rely on that as income.
Considering you want to start with loads of money I would suggest that you are expecting lots of drops - There aren’t many places you can buy new gear. There’s Esmerelda’s shop, but she doesn’t like you, and she can go to jail. An arrow seller sells arrows and bits of them, and there’s Anna in the King Crab Inn, but she leaves after a while as well. You can’t make up the difference with random Citizen NPC’s that have one or two random things in their inventory. There are THREE food sellers in the market, two of which don’t even sell food - just random trinkets, like the oh-so-helpful “wooden spoon” and “broken bottle”. There’s no dedicated armour or weapon seller who is guaranteed to be in their store.
You haven't checked all of the vendors then, you should look at the guy in the market on the potions stall, he has loads of stuff - Vendors only sell one skillbook each. I bought the Resurrect Skillbook for Jahan, which means that no one else can learn it ever again. That’s a TERRIBLE idea for a game that claims to let you build your character however you want.
Maybe that one vendor does, but others may well sell that book too
I don't think you need to start with any gold, maybe it would be a good idea to have some gold as quest rewards to give you a boost that way.
I also don't think that vendors should sell unlimited quantities of items, it's not realistic in any way and I'm sure once the game is released there will be other vendors and areas where you can get duplicates of skills. You should have to make tough decisions about how to build your party, just because a game says it lets you build your character however you want, doesn't mean that you should be able to get every skill straight away for every character.
I do think the enemy drop rate does need to be increased a bit though.
