For non-violence reasons, I didn't want to do combat. In my first playthrough (and at least one since then) I threw away my rusty sword (and at that time I didn't know that the Scythe is about as useful for combat as the Rusty Sword). But I eventually got pretty good at
eating a lot of food to get my way through The Mines. It's hard to get good at Slimes combat when you don't really want to do it in the first place. But it was fun to get the goodies in The Mines including cool boots, weapons, and rings.
I was really happy when I discovered the
Pacifist Valley mod. I don't use this part, but it has a "false" setting you can change to "true" in its "config.json" file to PreventUnlovedMonsterDamage to your farmer.
But by that time I was reasonably competent at combat (and eating!). So I just use the mod to "cuddle" the valiant defenders of The Mines instead of killing them. Same loot, same challenge (unless you change that setting), no killing.
To install a mod on PC, you download and install the mod environment SMAPI. Then you unzip the Pacifist Valley mod to the Stardew Valley\Mods folder under the Steam program files folder