I've only been playing my new game a few minutes at a time but boy is it looking promising. I went super hard on exploration because I ran really bad with chester. By like day 10 I think I've probably mapped out 75%+ of the world (dunno for sure because theres one area I haven't scoped out yet (where I found chester). Along the way during a seeming fool's errand that lead me though the Killer Bee hive gauntlet, I found a Walking Cane boon (!!). I found a great rabbit spot that's literally in the dead center of the map with two nearby wormholes that lead to extremities of the map, a huge savanna with like 40+ beefalo nearby, chester, the walking cane, by day 11. Booya. Gonna cruise into first winter with a huge head start on jerky, like 4 stacks of grass and twigs each, and two planted spider nests for silk.

I'll probably spend the winter piling up stone, wood, poop, and spider eggs so I can go hard on farms and honey come the spring. I'll try to have my panic room up by then also.