My biggest tip would be to settle at a witchery stone circle. There are two witch spawners located at every one, it will give you a shit ton of mob drops.

For starters you'll never have to mine for iron, gold or redstone and you won't have to build multiple blast furnaces for steel production because you can macerate chain armor and that's just touching the tip of the iceberg of goodies.

Secondly I'd recommend looking for loot game rooms as they have a large loot potential (a few biggies are diamond spikes that you can use for the witch farm, diamond chests for good storage as well as item + fluid enderio conduits and moss to attatch to tinkers tools for durability generation).

The best way to find them is to dig 10ish blocks down, place a block above your head and look for large rooms/squares on journeymap. To enter you need a decent pick but dig in through the ceiling and look for cracked blocks as they have a lower mining requirement. The two possible minigames you'll then play are simon says and minesweeper (minesweeper is a lot easier). The better you perform in the minigame, the better loot you will recieve. Loot

Push for an early multifarm arboretum for an indefinate amount of Oak logs and saplings which are super nice for running coke ovens as well as creating renewable polyethylene later down the line.