Silverym, it isn't as bad as it sounds.
It is currently very hard to start out, but if you think a little bit about it, you can devise strategies to overcome the disadvantages.
Vital Energy, Action Points, Value Points and Exploring Points, are required to purchase new creatures. All of those values regen every 15 minutes.
You can purchase as many creatures as you like (although the more you have, the longer it takes to load up the creature page )
You can set aside a few creatures 6-12 that you wish to level up, the rest, you can basically set aside for fodder. Put the fodder creatures in Defense Rituals, 1 per ritual and make sure to set the Vit uses in the Ritual to 0.
Make sure that the Rituals that you have for your level up creatures don't have the use as defence ritual checked.
Now, you are safe to roam about, if you get attacked, one of your Defense Rituals will be triggered and you won't lose any Vit. You won't have to spend a lot of Vit on your Fodder creatures, just enough to keep them above 0 Vit so that they can be part of a ritual and defend you.
On the downside, with recent changes, if you lose to someone that has less wins than you, you will lose a random (1-15??) amount of honor, and with just one creature in there, you are going to lose (although it is possible to outheal your opponent and win)
The only way you can currently gain experience for your creatures, is to battle. You can battle the Shop Guardians, but they are very difficult and so you are left attacking other players. It's the way of the game.
Honor gain works something like this: (opponents Wins - opponents losses) - (Your Wins - Your Losses), so the more losses you have the less honor you give to opponents. Not that you should run out and get lots of losses, but it does help, but you can lose honor if you get a loss.
I'm not sure this is the best way or not, but it can help you get started. Later on tactics have to change to protected your honor, but it's a way to start out
-p