I recently discovered the perspective of players who used to play alpha Minecraft, who strongly dislike present-day survival, and listened to their complaints.
I addressed all issues the present-day survival has, making monsters more difficult to fight, tools require bindings to make them, slowing progression of ores, bringing new cave generation, and making the player choose between getting a bed, or getting tools during the first day, since the player can only ever realistically do one, the challenge of the first night comes back, along with many more.
This modpack is currently in beta, the build is currently stable, however all mods are subject to removal.