It's not that atypical to start at the bottom. Skyrim for example does the same
Yeah, all of TES was like that. I actually liked scraping together the random crap I could find in the early parts of, say, Oblivion and Morrowind where even useless rubbish like inkpots were still worth a few pennies and made it feel really worthwhile when you could finally buy something decent (especially playing with one of the overhaul mods, so there were few conveniently levelled enemies for you to just take stuff from).
and I think The Reckoning or how the game is called.
Kingdoms of Amalur? It's so long since I've played that I can't really remember, but probably. Sad that there'll only ever be one of it.
