If I'm exploring I honestly prefer to take the karve. Sure it can't hold as much but it's the king of inland river navigation or finding good potential docking locations that actually would be suitable for the longship. Hate pulling up to one of the large shore rocks jutting out during a storm to repair my longship, renew rested, or whatever else i needed a pit stop for only for my longship to get slapped into rocks i didn't even realize existed because i couldnt see them at night. I like to go ahead and prepare some simple docks at least for the longship to use, but use the longship mostly for large transport trips like ore runs and the karve for actually exploring the map.

As a result I usually just bring a portal kit (possibly several if biome hunting, but ill also have biome specific portals already set up back at home to connect them to, and aim for meadows near the biome im hunting if that is a possibility for portal placement) and a stack of wood. the one that seems odd to some of my friends is i break out my old flint tools for explorations as well. Yeah, they aren't as great, but i can repair them at a regular workbench so i dont need to drop a portal to go use my forge for repairs if i do find a spot worth making an outpost at. Just save the higher tier tools for when they are actually needed, like if i want some fine wood to improve my comfort rating at this outpost to. If I know im going for something like finding my plains outpost location (usually later than swamps for this one) I also bring the mats for things like the stonecutter table to, because id prefer to build in stone that late in the game if im building a major outpost (like my plains farm).

If i am biome hunting, it's usually around swamp in progression, so i'm also likely to bring things I MIGHT need but probably wont in case i get too close to an area that I shouldn't be in yet (like serpent shield for deathsquitos straying from plains coastlines, or a few healing meads for general "oh crap" moments). Usually grab a stack of whatever pierce based arrows i have currently stockpiled from dungeon chests, and 2 stacks of my fire arrows just in case as well for that one. Mind you, it's still all stuff that would be relatively replaceable if something does go wrong on the adventure, but also all investments in not dying in the first place (the serpent shield is probably the hardest to replace at that stage of exploring, but i make a point of hunting serpents starting pretty much the moment i hit swamps and gain the ability to cook them, whether or not i can get the scales each time, seems leviathans are more common than when i last played anyway so making the harpoon also wasnt the biggest issue to help out there). Food is also always a given, but on the note of the serpent hunting, this is also one of the situations i tend to save it for, so i can do the nice high serpent health and 2 stamina foods for actually getting more of them as well if i encounter them on my adventure.