over 1800 hours played here and I have never found a reason to make the Bronze Armor set.

Once you can make bronze, it only takes 3 bronze bars to upgrade your bench to lvl 4 (giving you access to upgrade Troll Armor to lvl 3).

Level 3 Troll Armor gives 10 Armor rating, +15 to sneak (with cape) its lighter (set weights 11.4 pounds) and has NO movement penalty.

To match level 3 troll armor, you'd need to upgrade bronze to lvl 2, you'd incur a 15% movement penalty, and the set weights 23 pounds.

4 iron bars and 4 obsidian allow you to upgrade your workbench again, allowing for max lvl 4 troll armor. This gives you 12 armor per piece, matching level 3 bronze, WITHOUT the weight and speed penalty.

I concentrate on maximizing my troll armor, my bronze mace, Axe, and buckler and skip bronze armor altogether. This with poison resist potion will be plenty to get you farming iron for your iron set.

With lvl 4 Troll amor, lvl 3 bronze mace/axe/buckler/lvl 4 finewood bow you'll do well in the swamp.

To put things in perspective further... Level 4 Troll armor (with cape) has a combined armor rating of 40. Your tier 1 IRON set will have a combined armor rating of 46. I don't even bother making my iron set until I know I have enough iron bars to upgrade it to lvl 3.

Until you upgrade Iron you'll hardly notice the difference (but you'll notice the weight and runspeed penalty for sure)

You can keep your lvl 4 Troll set indefinitely as it is really good for light duty farming.