[Carding]

Archery is very useful for hunting since a lot of monsters that drop good loot also hit very hard in combat making them difficult to kill with swords/fencing etc. Also if you are planning to hunt very tough monsters you may wish to train bardic skills, provocation can be used to make monsters attack each other. Summoning spells are also useful (summon daemon is particularly good) for taking hits on your behalf.

There is a guide about the types of armour that exist if you look under blacksmithing on the website, but it is best not to over invest in armour early on in case you die, personally I would just get by with anything you can buy for cheap at the blacksmithing vendors or whatever drops from stuff you kill until you are more experienced. Learning to avoid being hit is much better than spending loads of cash on expensive armour.