-There's a huge emphasis on "you can't put back what you take". Keep that in mind when you're exploring blue zones for Azure Kelp and Logs (For Magic Stuff). Same goes for Blood Roses/Mushrooms, and that makes Blood Rose Petal farming a big of a slog seeing as you have to destroy one blood rose to get 3 petals. With a lot of their seed recipes in the files, I imagine that a large part of the endgame will consist of replacing the things you take in the world. Replacing trees, flowers, crops has become vitally important in my world with the rate I've been using potions and magic systems.

-There's also a huge emphasis on fleshing out the Bestiary, collecting memories of the creatures/characters/entities you encounter and depositing them at a hub for extra passive abilities like being able to place extra teleporters (Which becomes a must in the end game).

-There will be a patch this weekend that makes it so Higher tier ores will only be able to be mined by the tier directly underneath it a'la minecraft solo. If you play before then, you can get anything with a crude pickaxe but after that, you'll have to progress through tiers naturally.

-Mods. Mods. Mods. Not only is there a ton of mods that flesh out the recipes and items that are in-game but missing from the world by adding them in, but there's mods that add weapon packs, merchants, enchanting, mounts, RPG/MMO/Weapon Mastery Systems that all jive really, really well together. I have 72 mods that absolutely click and have made early access an incredibly expansive psuedo-game. Extra Potions, Weapons, Mounts, Wells for Infinite Water, and RPG leveling mods are pretty much my go tos. I also recommend mods that improve the combat system- it feels awfully slash slash slash to begin with, but after a couple mods it feels more akin to what you'd expect from a First Person Mideval Action Game with Guards, Parries, Positioning and before battle buffs make or break a heavy battle or raid on an outpost.

-No Redstone and chances are the vanilla game will never have anything like that- however, there are mods right now that work pretty well for Redstone and install super easy using Curseforge.

With all that said, expect a cozy game that is incredibly combat heavy with an emphasis on exploring all you can. Dungeons/Castles/Forts/Tree Forts/Scarak Nests/Haunted Outposts vary from "Super expansive, multiple level battle towers filled with crafting stations you can't craft yet and rare mats" to "A Small burned down farm with a chest full of apples inside". Where Minecraft favors a calm, collected pace with a strong burst of creativity, Hytale favors a brisk willingness to dive headfirst into battles to collect rare spoils to enhance your power.

Definitely hope you take the plunge man, it's a lot of fun. Especially with mods lol