One of my favorite game memories of all time was the first time I played Minecraft during the alpha days and immediately got lost in the world. For me, going into a 1.18 world and finding a giant mountain chain and then finding a cave on the peak of the mountain that falls all the way into a giant underground ocean at the bottom of the world in a huge cavern complete with underground vegetation… it brought me right back to that sense of exploration and wonder that I remember from the very first time I played Minecraft.
Also, I found this datapack (sort of like a mod but doesn’t require patching the game since the game natively supports loading datapack files) called Terralith [1] that extends the 1.18 worldgen with even more cool stuff. Wandering around the new 1.18-style mountains is incredible, and then stumbling across something the resembles Yellowstone National Park added by Terralith is even more incredible. It’s worth a try if you like just wandering around in Minecraft marveling at the scenery.
[1] https://www.planetminecraft.com/data-pack/terralith-overworl...