Flint will do me fine. I store away the better arrows that I find from chests until I get to the swamps, only reverting to flint once they have ran out. Then I go to obsidian and needles once I can make them.

Metals are important to progression and have many other long term uses. They take longer to gather than other materials because they can't be teleported. They are also much heavier to bring back than other arrowhead materials. And even after gathering you also have to factor the coal cost just to turn them into ingots. Crafting your own metal tipped arrows seems like an economically terrible choice.

Might have been nice if metal arrows had a chance of being reusable.