You find silver near golem spawns. If you see a golem, there is a high chance there is silver near by. Hammer flat areas around the area. You wil likely find some, just grab a handful of ore so you can make a butcher table. Then you can open your food options and health pool. Then you can more safely explore. Also consider a heist on a Fuling village for barley you can make some barley wine for exploring the caves and getting the Fenrir armor (easier to get mt tier armor). I personally love playing outside the normal way of going by the biome.

If you want to get *REALLY BALLsy* you can actually use seeker soldiers to mine iron from the Mistlands before even getting to the swamp. They are strong enough to break Mistlands stuff so you can use them to break the jotunn stuff for easy scrap and the dwarven stuff breaks down into copper scrap. There are areas in the Mistlands with little to no mist, so you can get into these areas with careful use of the cragrocks.

Basically, you can do some incredibly risky but rewarding bypassing of the normal game progression with some daring risk. just watch out for seekers. They are too fast and strong for much combat. The soldiers are slow and easily dodgeable so you can safely use them for mining stuff. Just mind the headbutt, it tracks well