Spend <150 Au to buy light armour and two weapons that weigh at most 3.0 lbs (can weigh more if your STR/DEX are very high though) and go dual-wield instead, until you've found some new heavy armour, then switch back to weapon+shield or 2-handed.
Dual-wielding requires light armour and gives you +1 attack and a parry bonus. Make sure that you don't get a blue '(' icon in the encumberment bar (comes with a message about straining flexibility+awareness too), it means you won't get anything from dual-wielding because your armour is too heavy in total.
The levels on which you can find heavy armour have been lowered in general, for example Full Plate Mail isnt level 45 anymore but instead 27 now.