Hey!
I'm in the same boat just now, I'm more into the exploration/building side of the game too, so I'm choking to start building with Stone, as far as I know you can find Iron in the Swamp, in dungeons or chests, but you need to defeat the elder boss in order to get the key to access this? That's to my understanding anyway, so I just keep building little bases along the map til I get to where the elder is located for me, which just so happens to be way out in the middle of nowhere haha.
If there's any other way around this - im interested :) haha

No idea about the stamina issue though :/ x