The exploring is like Don’t Starve. The world is a random seed covered by fog of war at the start, and it a big world. You do have enemy camps that tend to have tough mini bosses that protect loot chests (especially further out). Weapons, armor, runes, etc. can all be found or looted in the wilderness. However, the focus is on crafting, so your best gear is usually made. Even making better gear (besides materials) requires you to upgrade the townsfolk with souls.
Souls is the resource from killing enemies or harvesting the landscape. You are always getting them and you always need tons more as it drives everything. You upgrade your crafting people with souls, you repair gear with souls, you heal the world tree with souls, and you need souls to build up your industry outside of the town. Also, when you die, you lose all your unspent souls. You will drop a materials chest that can be recovered in a corpse run, but the souls are gone. To me death is a pretty big deal when solo.
Souls are not it though. You will need twigs, flint, stone, teeth, leather, iron, sap, and so on. Different biomes have different difficulties and in these biomes you find other materials. Out in the wilderness you can also find portal stones. Once you activate one, it is a quick travel point both to and from your town.
There are also quests on a town quest board and random world events. These too have you exploring the unknown.
The counter pressure is the nighttime. At night hellthings attack your town. Some nights they are harder, some nights they don’t attack at all. You can build defenses, but early on it’s mostly you. Also world bosses periodically spawn and slowly walk across the world towards your town and they too need to be dealt with. This counter pressure can feel like a lot. Especially as you learn the game systems. Also Saga mode exaggerates the night pressure as part of its shorter run focus (Season 1 Saga/Story caps at a certain number of days whereas survival goes forever and doesn’t have the same story tweek Saga does to create urgency). I think this is the biggest issue folks have with “exploring” versus defense. Day 3 was a hard wall to climb over. Once I did that, I understood a lot more and like days 1-9 are pretty chill even solo in Saga now.
So…with all that, what is exploring like in ToM?
I am constantly foraging and harvesting as I look for newer, higher rated biomes, natural connection terrain, and portal stones. Where are the silver deposits in this world? Can I make the next stone or do I turn back now? Is there even another portal nearby? It’s dusk. Should I roll off this cliff, my self port is on cool down, what if I can’t find a way back around? Night is almost here, but I’d really like to finish this quest, where is the blah blah thing for it? I’ve upgraded my town, can they handle the hellthings tonight? (Event happens)… Yes, no hellthings tonight! Sweet, a world event just spawned out near the Jotun, I’ll nibble away at it while I snag the event. Two for one! Wait, what is that over there…
That sort of stuff.
It has a sort of Dark Souls element as you are forever pushing your luck going for that next portal as you explore new goodies, but risk a major setback of death or waiting too long to return home. Or worse yet, return home frivolously and by foot. If you do find the portal, you blip back, do town stuff, wipe out some hellthings, and zip right back out to where you left off. Or strike out in a new direction.
Even having a really good handle on early systems, each world seed is full of exploration. Just explore like Columbus or Cortes (by that I mean commit to the ocean and burn your ships, not the disease and genocide stuff). Push out. Ride the line of utter destruction as the voice in your head screams to turn back. Find the new lands. New critical discoveries. And reap the headwinds that make the next exploration so so, SOOOO much easier.
If you overcommit and disaster looms. Bifrost out. This lets you earn valuable golden horns anyway.