Great armour you can get easily early on?

I play with my friend who hosts the world. He likes combat challenges, I do not. But to make matters worse, the lag is so insane that mobs are often frozen in place somewhere else on screen or invisible entirely and hitting me so I can't even see visual cues for blocking/dodging. Sometimes I'm just roaming around and suddenly I'm getting injured and I can't even see what's hitting me, I just have to go by audio cues and location.

So....please help me out here. My friend would be sad to turn on passive enemies or lower the difficulty. So is there any gear that I can easily obtain to make this less painful for me? I've only been playing a couple days and am like level 6 or 7 I think but I don't have a ton of skill points either because he often goes to find those red things to kill that gives points when I'm not there. I mostly just gather resources, craft and do the quests for the craftsmen to unlock more crafts since that's what I enjoy doing but it doesn't seem to give that much skill points.

Thanks a bunch in advance!