I spent some time playing Ark a few years ago, so it made me somewhat immune to the boring stuff. I think trying kenshi with a few mods (for me, the training mod and sparring mods are HUGE time savers) might help a bit as well. The hauling stones is dull, but in the starting area its very easy to set that on auto while you run about with another character, or set it to run while you do something else. I have characters get to 40-50 strength very fast doing that.
Toughness is the tough one, forgive the pun. Even with 50 str and dex and defense and melee attack around 50 you will go down a bit easy in fights with crowds. Toughness takes a bit longer to train too, once you get around 40 though, the character with it starts to look a whole lot more like a hero.
I dont mind the zero start for a character, but I do see where it may not appeal to people.