Iron mace is your best early option once you've got a little iron. Frostner is king of the swamp once you can get it. Atgir weapons are always useful for stagger and keeping distance.

As far as armor goes i never make the bronze armor or whatever the tier is between troll and iron and honestly its rare for me to make the iron armor as i usually jump from troll to wolf armor. Kill some trolls, upgrade your troll armor and it should serve you well.

Besides that make a banded shield as soon as your able and you should have a bronze buckler when you're first entering the swamp. Make sure you've practiced your block timing to stagger mobs as it will let you just roll over tough mobs.

Remember you can get early silver without even finishing the swamp by making frost resist mead and isolating silver deposits with the stagbreaker radius damage or just by spotting corners of them sticking out of the ground.