How about starting without any weapons and then finding some from a finished fight at the very beginning of the beach, where you start - with several simplest weapons available from the corpses and just lying on the ground.
Similar to the first battle infront of the city gates - only here everyone would be dead.
Easy to do - devs just need to add some corpses close to where you start.
Just few most basic types of weapons, all lowest quality and partly damaged durability.
Then you have the fight in front of the tutorial dungeon to get some more and the tutorial dungeon itself as an option.
Could be excused through the narrative too. (no the sailors dont have to have any weapons to give you either)
