I've just gotten started with this pack, and I tried to find an island so I could keep from loading the mainland (which would destroy it). I never found one, but I did find a twilight forest portal. Now I'm living there and only going to the overworld if it's absolutely necessary.
I also had to switch to peaceful to avoid dying because farming is simply too slow. Still didn't stop hunger, but I was able to loot food and other goodies from the towers. Now I need to figure out how to get these crops to grow... Especially wheat. Trees also seem to be frustratingly slow.
Edit: Seems like running off to the twilight forest is too cheaty in peaceful after seeing a post about zombie dogs being everywhere in that world and that being intentional to stop people from doing what I went and did.
Welp, I guess once I get my launcher working again (it hates being offline) I'm doing some more boating. Then I need to figure out the goddamn farming.
Not certain if that version of the mod is affecting crop growth, but to fix the speed either way, use Agricraft.
Basically, you make Crop Sticks, place them on tilled dirt, and then right click seeds onto them. Use double-placed crop sticks to spread/breed the seeds for better growth speed, yield, and resistant-to-weeds stats. Breeding, depending on what's been chosen in the config, is either done by placing multiple (fully grown, on sticks) of the same type of seed around a double crop, or by just letting one seed spread along a line of double crops.
Also, you can use sprinklers, tanks, and channels from the same mod to water the crops and potentially help them grow faster, though how much is also dependent on config choices. The sprinklers have a coverage of about 7x7, and a max height above which they won't reach the crops, so careful where you place them.
Pam's Harvestcraft works by having most base ingredients give about one hunger point to two, and combining or cooking them gives more for your trouble, as well as more saturation. I recommend taking bread and cooking it in a furnace to make toast, as this almost doubles it's hunger value, and if you want more than that turn it into toast sandwiches.
As to what to do while living out in the overworld.... I built a giant wooden boat flotilla in the middle of the ocean. Alternately you could go find a pure node and build a skinny tower right in the middle of it's zone. Maybe with a kind of sky island setup above the cloud layer so taint swarms don't aggro onto you.
