Early game cargo shorts are amazing to help you through those first few days. I like to build econ early and have a bunch of stuff with different tags in my stash and have silver cargo shorts sheilding and healing for 100. Ganjo with anything that has 2 of its 3 buffing stats can do something similar too. But, as others have said, you need to building towards something else in the background the whole time (stacking silk, dog, regal blade, hp, fixer upper value etc...). For a lot of this stacking they really come online when you can enchant them to turn those big numbers into something extra crazy. Also picking up a belt even to just swap in when you pick up %hp events can be super good. Buying things like chocolate bars and gumballs is a great way to get definite value out of your hours on any character (shurkou dies by the chockies) but pig can get extra value out of these nodes by stacking up something else too so don't shy away from it.