Couldn't see anything even with the wisplight. Certainly made "what is that noise" interesting with my first gjall encounter. Having cleared most of a mistlands island and finding some black marble and not much else I turned to the world generator to find somewhere else to try that actually had mines. I also started modding, first by increasing the wisp radius and eventually just removing mist altogether - it's cheese, but the mist is just not fun for me whatsoever.

In my experience there's the odd valley or flat spot but by no means the majority of the mistlands. Cliffs and water rein supreme. And I've got one large patch mapped as "mountain" that that is a large steep mistlands crater with the tallest cliff ever in the middle - almost impassable because it's so large you need massive stamina to get through it. The few valleys I have found have almost nothing of value in them. This is with a post update generated world. Even with the cape cliffs kettle you, it's difficult to just pick a direction and go explore - even without mist.

Currently I'm building with black marble, so I'm building in the the black forest, hauling iron from swamps, digging up copper for the new dvergr pieces, and every now and then I might make a run into the mistlands for some yggdrasil wood and to tap the extractors - just to add to my stash, I'm not using sap currently. Have been meaning to try out the crossbow in the mists though, it was disappointing against lox but still fun, keen to see what it does to seekers/gjall.

IMO something seriously needs to change with the mist, or I can't ever take vanilla seriously again. Which is a shame, I wanted to do a vanilla run, but it's just a bad experience currently.