Answers online range from “they don’t do much damage against netherite armor” to “use a shield” or “fight them with bow and arrow”. But you don’t start with any of those things and it can take a long time until you obtain them.
I mean right at the beginning, where you haven’t found any iron yet and therefore can’t craft a shield or armor. There legitimately doesn’t seem to be any reliable way to kill them without losing half your health. And they are EVERYWHERE. The only thing I can do is run away and dig a hole or pillar into the sky and wait until dawn, and if it’s raining even that doesn’t work.
I have no problems fighting zombies or spiders or creepers. But skeletons are like 1000x harder. What gives?
Prioritize a bed.
hahaaa you actually thought you could… well for your notice it doesn’t work like that, you can just hide like the rest but im about 3 steps from the nearest skeleton
In my experience, iron is very easy to find early on in the game. Basically any cave I walk into has iron nearby, and if there is a skeleton you can block yourself in to hide while you collect the iron. If you don’t want to risk fighting skeletons in a cave without a shield, you can make your own stripmine, it shouldn’t take too long to find some iron