Well, I like a more lively feel so I use mods that give a few more air, land and sea animals and a mod for hiring mercenaries and creating necromantic minions. The backstory of the game doesn't really interest me, personally, so I treat the worlds as if they were pure exploration and survival. I don't even like all the islands scattered over the map, so I use Better Continents to generate larger land masses. Well, it's a largely a single-player game (I don't play "multiplayer") so we can all play in whatever manner we like. 🙂