Lots of animals for me. I turned animal spawnrate up a bit, and bandits down to 40%. Yet to see a bandit, and I'm fine with that!
I too seemed to start in Spring and will have to set sail eventually to find the arctic or arid regions. I really wish he'd reconsider and make larger continents with multiple biomes as well as smaller islands. I've got my days set to 30 minutes so as to get to the new seasons sooner. But a day that passes that fast is sort of a pain and I'll probably change it to longer.
And/or make all ores available everywhere but make gold, aluminum, tungsten etc. rare and at certain levels.