- Practice blocking. Make yourself a Weevil Shield and just get used to stopping your attacks when you see a wind up from a bug and holding your shield up. You take way, way less damage, and it'll also start getting you used to parrying eventually as you'll occasionally hit one that'll teach you the timings slowly.
- Get in the habit of exhausting your stamina completely when running around. Not sure if you've run into any yet but there's a Mutation for doing specific actions, and the stamina related one is probably the longest term and most tedious to do, the requirements to even get it being exhaust your stamina bar 100 times.
- The Hedge is the best place to go after the Oak Lab, but the important thing is breaking spider egg sacs when you're up in the branches. They contain a random bug part (along with some spider babies and web), and those random bug parts include both bombardier AND stink bug parts. Highly recommend collecting enough stink bug parts for the tier 2 Hammer, getting that is a big upgrade for a couple of important reasons.
- While in the Hedge also know you can use arrows to knock down berries while you're on the ground so you can collect them easy. Make sure to grab some stacks of them as you'll need a lot of it for tier 2 stuff.
- Hang out by the Red Ant Hill with your ant armor during the day, or try luring a lady bug over actively. Red ants are your friends!