I haven't been able to craft very many items yet.
There is a reason for this: it is incredibly difficult to figure out which enemies drop which materials.
Basically, the only option is to go around fighting every enemy that looks like a likely candidate, which makes upgrading equipment an unnecessarily tedious process.
After looking at them, I'll probably be doing some fine tuning for certain drop rates in the new area.
But for now you could either get more copper to craft copper armour pieces which have pretty high base damage defence or you can fight "Stitched" for "Tough Hide" that can be used to craft other armour sets with their own benefits.
But your main focus should probably be better weapons as they require less materials and scales better against enemies.
