First, good luck to Alystia: the more sin survivors, the less we'll hear people complaining about the only thing sins are good for is dying.
I'm currently running as a sin survivor too, and here are my 2 cents on making a good start on Shing Jea till LVL 20 (note that the real problems are after, unless you want to dwarf box till bored to death). My previous character was an Elementalist. Since I was bored to blast things to death from afar, I wanted something more "close and personal". For that reason, the obvious choice was a daggers A (so no crit barrager, or I could as well have taken a R).
So here is:
SATSUKI'S GUIDE TO ASSASSIN
SURVIVOR (R1) FOR DUMMIES
1) Before even beginning, have some cash and materials at hand (10K seems good). All following advices require you having another character for support
2) Buy the 25 AL starter armor, and the +1 runes consistent with your build (I ran all Shing Jea with a quite standard melee dagger/critical/shadow for heal build). For the beginning, choose a +1 dagger mastery mask (to quickly benefit from high damage daggers). Buy a weapon: Tahkayun's pincers are quite available for sale in the monastery, and will do the trick. Buy A tomes (300-400 each, you don't need elite ones) and use them for your build. Buy a more efficient armor set as soon as possible (in Ran Musu Gardens and Seitung Harbor). Buy daggers (Claw of the Broodmother are good and can be bought for 1.5K) as soon as you can get rank 9 in daggers mastery. From now on, switch to a +1 criticals mask asap.
3) Now you're 5K poorer, and did not take a single quest yet (except may be the initiation to map the area that is rarely available otherwise - 0.9% for the cartographer title). You're level 2 and well equipped. Don't achieve any quest for now ! You can get to LVL 7 or 8 only by butchering Mantids in Sunqua Vale. Just do that... Often .... Take a healer merc with you at first, for safety, then solo when you're confident. The caves to the north (Reng Ku is waiting outside) are a good place to kill. Beware the LVL 5 mantids spawning, however
4) Now taking ALL quests and missions in Shing Jea should get you to LVL 20 (yes, you have to take all secondary professions quests). Since you get no more XP from killing monsters, for safety reasons, take mercs with you (I took the warrior, monk, and ritualist). NEVER try a pick-up group. Most of the time, mercs will be as efficient. Sometimes you'll discover you ran into some trigger-happy aggro-maniacs. And you can even find some people that are more than happy to make you lose your survivor title (bad personal experience
). So unless you have good friends, going survivor is a lonely task.
5) The quests you'll have to be careful with:
- the second necro quest, with LVL 10 nagas. Let the necro teacher take the damage !
- the assassin certificate quests, given by Ng. They are solo quests, and can be dangerous (especially the first one, quickly blind the first opponent and leave him to butcher the other).
- the quests given by the blade of the emperor, wait till you have your Seitung Harbor armor, and go there from Ran Musu, you'll have LVL 10 mercs).
- don't do the lost son quest nor the unwelcome guest quest for now. Alternatively, you can buy the letter required for the lost son quest (4000 XP for 1000 GP)
- when you have completed "to the rescue", you have to get some NPCs to Zen Daijun. Benefit from their help to do all quests on this map (i.e. 5 quests without the lost son). Lots of XPs to get there. You'll also find here the naga hides asked in Kaineng for a cure.
6) General tactics: can be found anywhere on the net. Let your mercs take the aggro. Hit and run. Identify the greatest threat to your party and cope with it. Then retreat, heal, watch, loop. As a mantra, repeat: I AM NOT A TANK !
7) Finally, you can leave Shing Jea ! You're now almost LVL 20 (and thus survivor R1), and you still got 2 quests to finish here. Don't. Go to the continent. You can go to Kaineng Center without a single fight. That's good, cause all mercs are LVL 20, you're certainly 19 and don't have max armor (yet). So you're a priority target for every opponent. Once in Kaineng, buy a set of max armor. Equip with your salvaged runes. Add insignas (I recommend Nightstakers if you intend to dwarf box, survivors for HP otherwise). If you want the (much nicer, imo) imperial armor, you can get it in Bukdek with your mercs: carefully flag them so they fight ALONE your path to the armor crafter. By the way, you'll get some capes giving XP in Kaineng.
8) Then go to Lion's Arch (XP). You should be LVL 20 by now, or take some easy Prophecies missions (should be able to remove blindness, R secondary is good for that - especially since assassin's remedy has just been nerfed today) until you're LVL 20. Then go to Eye of the North (3 first heroes, Ogden, Vekk, Gwen). Offer them the best build you can. Do your last two quests in Shing Jea. Then you can finally take the quest to Nightfall. Do it with Heroes and Mercs. Flag them so they only have to fight. Call their target (the meteor swarm nukers first). Don't fight yourself. Boring, but your title is at hand.
9) GG ! You're a R1 Sin Survivor, have access to all campaigns, have heroes and max equipment. Now you can do it the easy way (go from Eye of the North to Gunnar's Hold and Dwarf box till your A gets a beard) or the hard way, as men do. I myself adopt a mix approach: missions to get heroes (and capture Elite skills, 5K XP yummy), and level these heroes with the 2.5 XP rewards in Dwarven boxing. It allows me to experiment different hero builds. BtW, I avoid MMs: should he die while I am surrounded by its not so faithful ugly creatures, ALT - F4 could be to slow an emergency move ! So no Sabway for me (I am currently experimenting a spread condition build).
10) Just some hints for the hard way: begin in Nightfall, all quests before going to the continent. Get some sunspears points to fuel their nice A skill. Repeat/drop "a land of heroes" till 1000 sunspears. Try insects in HM. Don't aggro large groups unless you know what you're doing. Then return to Prophecies. Missions until ascension: 50K XP bonus if it is your first one (by the way, a pet is wonderful to safely kill your evil double: yes, I like R secondary). You should be halfway to R2 by now !
Good luck to all survivor sins ! We're not glass cannons anymore !
To track my progress, and hopefully when I get the title to serve as a resource for others, I've made a blog too! 
