Don't bother hoarding anything, especially early on since it won't be of any use to you in the late game. So use those armor spheres and always see if there's better armor or weapons to upgrade. Don't neglect your palico either since he'll often save your ass more than once.
Pay attention to a monster's weakness. If you look at your hunter notes you'll notice some specific info about all the monsters you've interacted with. Assuming you've 'researched' them well enough (i.e collected their footprint/mucus samples then talking to the scholar in the astera tradeyard), then you'll see which elements its weak to. Anjanath for instance is vulnerable to water damage, so you'll do bits if you craft a water weapon (you can craft one from the parts of that jyuratodus swamp monster you would have faced in the wildspire wastes).
