Cloth

Cloth has two real sources: skinning animals with a knife, and farming hemp plants. Early wipe it's almost always faster to skin whatever you're already killing for meat than to go looking for hemp specifically.

Skinning is the fast early source

Bears and Polar Bears give around 50 cloth per skin, Wolves around 35, Boar only about 10 — so if you're choosing what to hunt, bigger animals pay off a lot more per kill. A Skinning Knife or Butcher Knife speeds up the actual skinning animation over a rock or hatchet, which matters when you're clearing a pack of wolves.

Hemp is the reliable, repeatable source

Hemp plants respawn where you find them, so a base built near a hemp patch gives you a cloth source you don't have to hunt for every time. Planting your own hemp seeds in planters is slower to set up but removes the RNG of finding wild animals or plants entirely once it's running.

What it's actually for

Cloth goes into a huge spread of early recipes — bandages, most starter clothing, the sleeping bag, and it's a hidden ingredient in Low Grade Fuel. Thirty cloth for a sleeping bag alone is a meaningful early cost, so don't assume you have enough just because you've been skinning a few boar.