Minecraft 1.12.2 Modpack focused on exploration
This modpack will focus on driving exploration by creating large, (hopefully) easy to find deposits that spawn rarely, creating custom structures that spawn during world generation, custom dungeons with unique loot that might only be found in those specific dungeons (identifying the type of dungeon should be fairly simple; at the very least, they'll be made of a unique material), custom villages that are (hopefully) completely different than vanilla, and so on.
Progression will be focused on encouraging exploration. Raiding dungeons might be the only bootstrap to getting past early progression -- there won't be any diamonds or even iron ingots in a blacksmith villager's hut. Instead, you'll find that most of the villager's possessions are as primitive as yours. No, the most advanced technologies will be found on the cybernetic zombies and housed in dungeons inhabited by skeletons, wither witches, endermen, fallen knights, creepers, elementals, and worse.
There will be several tools available for finding the ores and biomes that those ores, structures, villages, and dungeons spawn most frequently in, such as soil sample kits for ore and a biome compass for the biomes.
Ore generation is the current focus of development. We aim to have such unique ore generation that mining and exploring becomes a unique experience. For example, ores in the nether are organized such that they appear in floating geodes that contain ores near the middle; in some cases, figuring out what the geodes contain is a matter of breaking them open, and not all of them will be friendly.