get some black metal from a plains biome neighbouring mistlands.
Take some sirtling cores with you to refine iron from mist, or gather them from dungeons and ruins.

Once you reach mistlands, you can do everything without needing to portal out or use a boat. It really just depends on how organised you are.

And yeah have to agree on optimization, performance (whether in mistlands or out) took a large dive with the update, there's regular freezing/FPS drop even when there's not much going on.