Duke and Yaotl and Renfield make Three

Combo Ashcan Pete for 4p. Yaotl lets you discard 4 cards/round into your discards, meaning any Resourceful/True Survivor lets you eventually recover whatever you need, and Calling in Favors/Flare let you reliably find Yaotl (mulligan aggressively). Duke gives you productive actions while you set up. The XP-requiring Core is 2x Yaotl, 2x True Survivor, 2x Will to Survive (Charisma). Chance Encounter/Flare help reliability. Take Heart helps you dig/get $. Newspaper is filler to protect your more important assets from the encounter deck, and can be replaced by any number of cheap survivor assets.

Combos: Yaotl + Desperate skills. Discard desperate skills with Ashcan's special when you can't play them, get 4 bonus symbols from Yaotl. (At low xp, deck runs the full desperate suite). Gets better when you've taken a mental trauma or two.

David Renfield tricks (Calling in Favors, Inspiring Presence): The turn David's doom would be a problem, ready David 2 (Ashcan special) + # times you can play Inspiring Presence in a turn (Can be multiple with True Survivor/Quick Thinking involved), then bounce him to hand with Calling in Favors (or otherwise dispose of him). Gets absurd if an ally has a Gold Pocket Watch at the right time. Builds a giant stack of $$$ for:

Extra-action Will to Survive turns: Once you've played Will to Survive, you can reliably succeed-by-2 for Quick Thinking & Resourceful to always trigger. If you play 2x Quick Thinking + Resourceful on an action, you can recur True Survivor with Resourceful, and get two actions (one of which can replay True Survivor to get 2x Quick Thinking + Resourceful back). So, once you have all the pieces, you can convert 3R (to pay for True Survivor)into additional test-taking actions on a Will to Survive turn. (This is why you mill nearly your entire deck with Yaotl).