The World and Its Inhabitants

When the hero defeated the monsters, the world began to change.[0]

As if the planet's very axis had tilted, the coldest days got colder, and warm rains now grace the jungle in the summer months.[1] Some crops are struggling with the new climate, while others flourish: trees have sprung up where they never grew before,[2] and once-sterile flowers germinate and spread.[3] Free from the threat of skeletons' arrows, a fresh variety of birds are nesting in the trees.[4] Even familiar horses are showing new colors.[5]

Magic thrives on growth. Where archwood and source berries bloom, the air crackles with mana.[6]

The monster war left its marks in the ground: swaths of rock have changed color and character, and surface flowers sometimes hint at rich ore caches. Miners find bones and skulls in the dirt, or twinkling gems among coal.[7] The last pillagers and evokers built desperate outposts in unfamiliar terrain; it didn't save them, and neither did the stolen artifacts they left there.

War begets resourcefulness, and the people of the world have not been idle. Frightened villagers built shelters underground, and found friends there: shy stonelings, and ancient toretoises with metal on their backs.[8] When caves became safer, goblins crept out of hiding and brought valuable skills with them. Villagers who stayed on the surface learned to tend their surroundings and keep them lit. A few industrious ones even built stables in the plains to support a cavalry that never arrived. Many people are still without homes and eager to rebuild and settle.[9]

Refugees from the ender front have settled in the overworld. They're difficult to distinguish with our alien eyes, but some will trade in their own currency, and others seem to be mindless but loyal.[10] It's not clear whether they built or manifested the obsidian towers that followed them here.

Footnotes/hints:

[0] Hostile mobs do not spawn in the overworld, nether, or end. Most of their drops are craftable.
[1] Craft a calendar to observe the passage of the year. Plant crops under glass or deep underground to help them thrive out of season.
[2] Use shears on a tea tree (as in right click; it's not like vines) to collect leaves without damaging the tree. You'll need a teapot, cup, and teabags to drink it.
[3] Most flowers can be crafted with a seed to make a flower seed.
[4] Craft a bird encyclopedia to track your sightings, or an incubator to nurture eggs.
[5] Use a book on a horse to learn about its genetic traits. Use p while riding a tame horse to make it yours, and v to summon your personal horse from anywhere.
[6] The worn notebook is a thorough introduction to Ars Nouveau.
[7] Craft a foraging research journal for more possibilities.
[8] You must sneak to approach a stoneling. They drop the item they're carrying, or rarely, a Heart of Diamond which you can use on stone to summon a tame one. You can harvest from a toretoise with a pickaxe. They eat cactus, but do not reproduce.
[9] Craft and place a supply camp or supply ship to start a colony.
[10] Farlanders and wanderers trade. Enderminions can be tamed with apples.

Technology and Leisure

The speed of wartime innovation pulled technology in disparate directions, but all of them are bulky -- there are no complex factories in a tiny cube here. The most compact might be the two-meter melter for tinkerers.[0]

Some engineers set out with brick ovens and copper wires, and the most successful of those set their sights on railroading empires.[1] Others kept their vehicle aspirations in their garages and focused on refining novel fuels.[2] Ambitious miners can extract resources from bedrock, or even the void itself,[3] but the most elaborate contraptions are kinetic.[4]

Of course, people still need to eat. Horse-drawn plows till large fields quickly, and there are similar carts for transporting livestock and goods. Aspiring chefs can build entire custom kitchens to ensure a healthy variety of nutrients.[5]

The newfound leisure of peacetime has brought a resurgence of the arts. Photography,[6] painting,[7] and sculpture[8] are all growing in popularity. Banner crafting has evolved past battle standards into new designs and even quilts.[9]

Footnotes/hints:

[0] Materials and You has the basics, but see the Tinker's Construct wiki for more information about what's new.
[1] Craft an engineer's manual to learn about Immersive Engineering. Immersive Railroading also has one, but it's just a link to their wiki.
[2] Craft a vehicle workshop to see options and materials. You'll need fluid extractors for ender pearls and blaze rods and a fuel mixer to get them moving. (This mod never really left beta, so if you're confused the problem is not you.)
[3] Environmental Tech doesn't have in-game docs for this version yet, but there are guides on youtube.
[4] Create blocks have rich documentation via tooltips; try looking up the windmill bearing or water wheel to get started.
[5] A cooking table gets better with every Cooking for Blockheads kitchen block attached to it. The Spice of Life book will help you keep track of what you've tried.
[6] Craft a camera and keep paper in your inventory for film. You can store photos in albums.
[7] Craft a paint palette with three slabs horizontally and any two dyes above; you can add more dyes later. Use a palette in one hand and canvas in the other to paint.
[8] Chisel blocks into fine shapes with a Chisels & Bits chisel (you'll also want a bit bag for storage). Chiseling block textures begins with a chisel station.
[9] After customizing a banner in a loom, you can craft it with a bed to make a custom bedspread.

Further Adventures

The overworld, the nether, and the end are free now. But there are more worlds out there than these.

Miners who care more for ore than safety have discovered a dimension of stone, caves, and the overworld monsters who escaped there.[1] A curious apiarist was shocked to discover what happened when they threw an ender pearl into a hive.[2] Research into the mechanics of nether portals has revealed variations which lead to other places.[3] Sometimes just a piece of candy can lead to a whole new world.[4]

Explorers in our dimension and beyond have a plethora of tools to help them. Sleeping bags and hammocks let them rest and pass the time without making a new home, or they can bring home with them in a yurt.[5] Handheld guns can fire rope bridges and ladders.[6] The deep sea has become more accessible with fancier boats[7] and bigger and more robust oxygen tanks,[8] and the highest peaks are quickly traversible with a good set of skis.[9] And nearly everyone has a use for a good tool belt or a backpack.[10]

As for the monster-defeating hero ... well, no one has seen them since. That's curious, isn't it? Wouldn't you return to the world that you saved?

Footnotes/hints:

[1] Craft a mining dimension teleporter to visit.
[2] Exit through the top or bottom.
[3] One uses a stone brick frame, and a crafted catalyst instead of flint and steel. Another is a square pool of water at least 2x2, with a horizontal frame of dirt or similar covered in plant life. Throwing a diamond in activates it.
[4] A warp pop can be crafted in the overworld. The return pop to bring you back needs materials from the other side.
[5] Right click to pick up an area of blocks in the world with the bottom-center at the block you click on. Right click again to put it down.
[6] Both of them use ropes and slabs as ammunition. Hold right click to fire.
[7] Place a chest in a placed boat, or craft one with a furnace for a speed boost.
[8] Look for limestone outcrops underwater to find titanium to build them.
[9] For best results, hold a ski pole in each hand.
[10] Craft pouches with the tool belt to add slots. Use its hotkey to swap out your active hotbar slot.

Swords to Plowshares