Optimize Your Skill Books
As you get new skill books, they will initially add to the “Automatic” settings. Pressing R1 will get you to the options, and you can select the Skill Book Editor. There are three further “Manual” skill settings, each of which will take up to 5 skills. Just add them here, and you can then improve them in sparring same as before.
Walking around, fighting, and just the passage of time through the day will reduce your endurance meter, represented by green circles on the bottom left of the screen. You can replenish these by eating. There is a vegetable stand in the Village Square. The best HP recovery for yuan spent is black garlic, followed by cabbage.
It’s mostly up to you if you want to waste time and money on capsule machines. There is one sub-quest, “Capsule of Love,” which requires a White Lure from the machine in the Village Square and a Diamond-P from the machine in Panda Market. Other than that, if you find the capsule machines infuriating, you can safely ignore them provided you’re not trying for the Platinum, which requires you get all capsule series.
The above should ensure your first few days are an efficient use of your time and money.