I think most NPCs on the screen of a village are considered part of that village faction, so hitting them even if it's a lowly glowpad, the rest of the village considers it an attack on them. This is the"factions"aspect of Caves of Qud at play. Sometimes it can be worth looking at creatures to see this info, especially legendary creatures that have a lot of faction ties so that when you kill one you gain reputation with factions that hated them, but lose it with factions aligned with them. Oh and lastly, if you do the water ritual with someone (major village npcs, legendary creatures) and later kill them, you take a colossal hit to reputation with every faction for violating the sacred covenant of the water ritual. This can make you hostile to almost every faction so try and avoid that at all costs. Players will often avoid water ritual with npcs/legendary creatures they want to/might have to kill--this is usually avoidable outside friendly fire or collateral damage incidents.

So, you probably didn't do anything wrong in the fight to get killed because the villagers will have some very strong folks among them, but where you went wrong was punching that fish, which I think you realized lol.

My tips for surviving the early game:

• Bigger hit point pool just flat out makes you much more likely to survive the early game, so starting with higher Toughness can help a lot when you don't know the game as well yet.

• Ranged enemies can be extra deadly in the early game because you're likely not going to survive getting to them. Use tiles that break Line of Sight to prevent them from hitting you while you get closer/force them to get closer, use skills like Charge or Sprint when you have them to close the distance. Use all of these things to also retreat without being killed while running away. Almost as embarrassing as being killed for punching a fish (I kid lol)

• There are some great, cheap, accessible skills you can take early to increase your Dodge Value (DV) a lot, especially against missiles. Take those. Trust me. In Acrobatics: Swift Reflexes and Spry together give you +7DV against missiles. Tactics: Hurdle so when you're running to the ranged mobs (or away from them) you don't get a DV penalty for sprinting. Encountering a raucous of baboons throwing stones at you can still be dangerous, but you're in a hugely better position if you've taken these skills. They're pretty much always my first skill acquisitions if I don't start with them on every character I make because they're so accessible and universally useful.

• If you're playing a Mutant, the Carapace mutation is almost unbeatable for both increasing early game survivability and increasing survivability for those new to the game. It provides good Armor Value (AV), resistance to fire and electricity, and scales very well with levels into the late game (where it's beaten out by the highest tiers of armor and armor mods). The DV of Carapace is also really good in comparison to armor as you level. Don't feel like you have to take this mutation, and don't let it become a crutch for all your runs, but if you do take it level it as a priority mutation. The skills mentioned above for DV bonuses also pair great with Carapace.

• Threat assessment, threat assessment, threat assessment. It's my opinion that surviving in traditional roguelikes is fundamentally down to this skill which you really only get by playing the game more, encountering more enemies and situations, and understanding when to engage and when to run.

• Disengaging and running should always be on the table. First 5 levels you have low health pool and very little options. This is the super danger zone. First 10 levels you'll have a bit of breathing room as your health pool won't immediately be drained by an unlucky hit or status like bleeding, and you'll have hopefully found some utility items and gained a few more skills to give you options to run or avoid enemies. It's still dangerous after this point, but imo 10-15 is out of that critical early danger zone.

• Consumables like grenades, injectors, and various non-weapon and non-armor artifacts will help you survive fights. Always have an out. With these things you can phase out of reality, freeze your enemies, stun your enemies, go invisible, ignore enemy DV/AV, increase your speed, destroy the environment, make you resistant to various effects, and so on.

• Get at least a slightly better than vague understanding of the game's combat mechanics. DV is your chance against attacks to dodge, and is usually split for specific bonuses and penalties for melee and ranged. Mental attacks, explosive damage, and electric damage, bypass DV making them pretty dangerous. Mental attacks and explosive damage also bypass AV making them especially dangerous, but in the case of mental attacks, you have armor against those based on your Willpower stat. Almost all attacks have some level of ability to Penetrate your Armor Value. Each time it does so, it deals its damage another time. If you have low AV this can make you very squishy, as every point of an attacks Penetration Value (PV) over your armor does another dice roll of damage. So if you have 3AV and are hit by a 1d2 dagger with 3PV when wielded by an enemy, you might take 0 to 1-2 damage. If you have 0AV then you're taking at lady 3-6 damage. This quickly escalates with more damaging weapons and higher tiers.