The issue is that you are not approaching your goals as pragmatically as possible.
Discard the idea that the classes are really in any way a sort of progression of one another.
Thief>Ranger>Corsair makes very little sense. Many jobs can use marksmanship and archery that aren't these three. Thief in particular, is not a damage dealing class. Their primary focus is to manage the tank's emnity. Ranger is focus on martial ranged damage and Corsair is focused on buffing the party, debuffing the mob and doing aggressively medium damage.
For your first job, you should unanimously be leveling Monk. Monk is a DD, it will secure you a fast level 18-20 through Valkurm dunes, and it provides the best sub job at low levels. Thief/Monk will take you into the early 30s in terms of utility.
On top of that, the two have a significant amount of gear overlap, meaning you can compound your early money making efforts by having what amounts to double the amount of equipment for half the price.
Why?:
1.) Monk has the largest base HP pool in the game. For your first job, this is important because without a sub most jobs besides Warrior are lacking in the HP department. The issue with being a warrior without a sub, is that the damage is mediocre. You won't enjoy being a subless warrior especially if you aren't able to dedicate the time to getting a bunch of high quality gear.
2.) All the best weapon skills in the game, are built around multi-hit formulas (or they are Ranger exclusive) Combo, Monk's first weapon skill is a threefold attack. It's the only one pre-40 that has more than two hits, this makes it extremely powerful in a relative context.
3.) Martial arts is a flat delay reduction which is a direct increase in attack speed. Before spells and equipment that add haste, this improves your damage over time.
4.)Monk can get away with just accuracy gear. Hand to Hand weapons are mostly very cheap, and some of the best ones only require you to keep signet active.
5.) For those early levels (1-10) Monk doesn't have to rest hardly ever. This is because their native HP pool is so big, and their damage output is so high they take relatively no damage while eliminating targets quickly which is damage mitigation. This is likely your problem, because you are probably playing thief and probably one handing a dagger. Daggers are a terrible weapon until level ~33. Avoid like the plague till then. The exception is if you have Ninja as a sub job, you can dual wield to a somewhat greater effect, though its still not ideal until viper bite. The trick to getting to level 12 solo, is to constantly target soft, easy prey mobs. Exp per kill doesn't matter. If can be as low as 15-20 exp per kill, if you never have to rest because you are picking squishy weak targets, you greatly reduce your need to take a knee, and you are going to far more frequently avoid a situation where aggro is going to get you killed. The biggest pitfall new players make is going after high exp beefy mobs.
People will tell you to farm specific mobs for their drops. Don't bother. The best way to approach this game, is by dedicating your time in phases. Spend a week exping, then spend a couple weeks dedicated to just making money. Once your gear is all caught up, resume exping. You will have much more fun having good gear and taking your time, than constantly feeling like you aren't up to snuff because you decided to rush to the level cap. This is a time locked server, you cannot possibly fall farther behind than you already are, because there is no more progression to be had. Relax and smell the flowers, because if you can't do that you don't really have a reason to be here.
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