A one star in iron should be about like a 0 star in leather. Fire arrows are your friend, but if you have iron, you may have found a few toxic ones as well.

Abominations are just annoying. As soon as you kill one, another spawns. Great if you want their loot, but I had one camping bonemass and it took several in game days to get rid of it (and its respawns). I killed it twice and finally got it to wander off far enough to bury itself and stay put. Drag them through a fire if you can. If you can't, they are blind and after you get a good lead on them you can hide and they will go away. Here again, if its near a crypt, find another crypt or rush the crypt to go inside. Once inside, immediately hide until the aggro clears, as if outside. That should not work, but it does :)

Stone can take a lot of hits but it is still better to loft a a platform or dig a trench to keep things away from your home.

Body piles... make a 'bee' like buzzing noise from a good ways off and are easily avoided. If its too close to a crypt, find another crypt. Sometimes randomly generated areas are pure deathtraps, and they key is to recognize this and rather than be brave, use some discretion.

The swamp is probably the hardest area in terms of what you have going into it vs the difficulty.