Thank you everybody for your answers.
I will most likely bow-cheese the boss. I have hunter's bow and plenty of arrows, I'd rather not risk close quarters with it considering how punishing it'd be to lose my character so far away (even with portals, the rain in the swamp + boss still alive would probably make it too hard to retrieve the corpse).

I think I'll play it safe and build iron armour, the problem is I depleted all sources of iron in my proximity (two islands beyond my continent) and I only have 50 so won't be able to upgrade it quite a while (and if I still die I will most likely be unable to farm more iron as I'd have to sail further possibly running into continents with plains which means death by squittos). I wanted to do like @killertowfoo and go straight to wolf set but I'm not confident with my ability with the controller first timing a boss.