Originally posted by N.W.O.:

Not sure how plentiful iron will be, so far I found one crypt and got around 60 ores. made the bow and realized i'm going to need a lot more iron if i want to upgrade everything. Should I invest in the longship first to find more swamps? Or keep using the Karve and craft other stuff?

Iron axe. Perfect weapon and is useful for wood chopping. If you don't have a personal preference, then you can't go wrong with an axe.
And yeah, you can basically skip longship. Karve is way more controllable, and can fit neatly through narrow rivers.