The best reason to not have armor is being an elf with no good equips. You get a crappy weapon too

Fastest way to kill someone is ambushing them from behind with a divine battle axe. Though you usually can't get divine materials without hacks and I don't think a divine battle axe would spawn anyway.
Soooooooo I'd just equip a silver battle axe and dodge-spam plus use the ',' key to notice incoming attacks at the earliest possible moment so that you can keep kiting a large group of enemies.
If they notice you, lop-off a foot and go for the neck with a hack or a slash. If they're armoured... Lop off the other foot and they will bleed-out. You gotta completely dismember each foot with bogeys or they won't bleed. Also you can toggle charge attacks against small enemies (bogeys). The battle axe is my favourite weapon because it lets me chop trees.
Also try wrestling weak forest creatures to train your dodge, shield, and attributes before recruiting companions.
Careful though. It will raise their stats as much as it raises yours, so you can get grimelings going on killing sprees.
Throwing rocks at the ground is also good for attributes. Actually apparently legendary throwers can throw coins for extremely high damage. But it obviously weaker at melee range since you can't dodge or shield at the same time, and you can't target a specific body part.
tl;dr - good no armor tactics include raising shield and dodge to legendary before recruiting companions, and raising throwing to legendary.
Can divine materials be melted? There was an elf selling a harp with divine strings. Maybe I could melt it... Would this indicate that a vault is near the forest retreat of the elven traders..? It's only year 25 so in theory the divine harp can't have traveled far.
Also, cloaks. Lots and lots and lots of cloaks. And hoods!