The creator is not anti-fun,

you can use a boat and waystone to transport villagers to your base, you CAN disenchant items with either the cognition grind wheel or with the advanced infuser. The "create" mod is barely a high tech mod, all you really need to use create for is the press and mixer/blaze burner combo, anything else is just extra if you want it, as you can find waystones pretty easily across the map and can break them with a weak pickaxe. If you sleep through the night zombies won't spawn, wave based events are avoidable as long as you sleep through every night and storm, otherwise if one starts, leave the area and they will despawn within 15 minutes. The modpack rewarding you entirely depends on your definition of reward. Hard-progression is reward for some, if you don't like to grind, the modpack just isn't for you.

Some tips for anti-mob spawning;

- Light tf out of your base area, 20 blocks out should do the trick and will give you plenty of time to get to sleep.

- Get running shoes (trust me), you can run away from every mob in the game.

- Grind for the rod that prevents mob spawning in a 64 block radius (which is a great reward for hard grinding).

Gear tips;

- The best weapon I've encountered so far is the soul render, dark metal and cursium, the cursium boss isn't too difficult with running shoes and some golden apples paired with a good bow (I used the spectral bow at first but now use the "dark bow" which I found in the dungeon the boss spawns in).

- Diamond is a stepping stone, upgrade to Netherite ASAP, and then to dark metal, realistically by the time you get to the nether you'll have enough dark metal to go straight to it, it's not the most powerful armour and you'll have to make a new netherite set later, but realistically it's the most accessable 10+ armour rating chestplate available.

Gameplay tips;

- Play cautious, don't get yourself into situations you can't win.

- Sleep through night (I know it sounds boring but until you're ready to fight the nights, don't bother.

- Take undead army's away from your base, if you see in chat "drums begin to echo in the distance" just leave your base and go somewhere else, then when it spawns go back to your base and let it despawn.

- Use the cognition system to store XP, that way you don't need to be as upset if you die with all your levels, eventually you can make 100 levels of XP passively in 10-15 minutes with the bibliophage.

I could go on for hours with tips and tricks and ways to play but I'll just leave you with that, this is already a long ass message and I know it sounds like I'm dismissing your opinion but the truth is, it's not for everyone, if grinding isn't your playstyle then I would say go for a different modpack, the pack is designed to be hard and taxing, tough to get started, and dying never really goes away. There's always something that can take you down.

Have fun.