I bet your belt doesn't look like this
Buckets in inventory will do nothing for me after a month, but probably be useful to you for most of your playtime. In the very early game before I have a silk belt my guess is you wouldn't even have enough leather to fill your inventory with flasks, whereas I will be dunking enough hermits to have cupboards full of them.
In general I think there should be an active push for carrying PVP supplies to either be non-essential, or not cumbersome at all. The number of people who aren't faction fighters that carry enough water/food/boot switches with full AC gear is practically zero. You can't actually play the game normally when you've that stuff. It leaves you with literally zero inventory/belt space for anything else.
I think it's generally unrealistic for a random forager that has some fighting stats to win verse somebody trying to gank them, but everybody technically having the tools they need to at least escape with them at all times seems universally good. Buckets in inventory alone doesn't do that for sure, but it'd be a nice little start.
Another route could be drastically increasing the quantity of water flasks can hold, or buckets in belts.