Originally posted by Weaver:

Troll armor. Skip bronze armor its a massive resource sink that only provides slightly better (6 points, 15%) protection than troll armor while slapping you with a 10% movement penalty. The fact you need 2 copper and 1 tin per bronze makes it the most useless grind in the game, save the bronze for tools and weapons.
Also Skeletons are weak to blunt damage so break out a club/mace and a shield.

A million times this. In the time it takes to get an upgraded bronze outfit you could be starting on your iron set, with only slightly less durable troll gear.
You won't even have to find the materials, they will find you.
Relative to any other metal, bronze also takes three times as much coal too, which also means three times as much tree-cutting/furnace-sitting/food burning. And once you are in the swamps you will find a way to get coal faster without all that nonsense.