use tailoring to reinforce your clothes, and to repair damaged clothes. clothing will take hits that would otherwise mess you up, and they have some soak value which lets them absorb damage entirely in certain circumstances. you can make a needle with fab one and survival one out of either bones, splinters, or wood skewers(apply a knife to a stick), and your starting shelter has 16 sheets which total up to 320 rags, which in turn can be disassembled for thread to use in the needle. practice sewing on your intact clothes(move on to another item if something gets damaged), and don’t try to repair anything until tailoring gets to level 2 or 3, certainly if anything hard to replace gets down to tattered just set it aside until you can get 6-7 in tailoring.
eventually with enough bones, leather, chitin or fur and enough skill you can start making real armor, but expendable clothing like the various warmers, socks,stockings, and so on are also good at taking hits.
Lure them into bushes and windows until you can take them on without them.
and set those bushes on fire if things get too dicey. animals may step out of it now, but it can usually knock them out of hostile and back into tracking, likewise you can keep the bush between you and the enemy while you throw stuff at him.
