On the legacy version, I would start a new map in creative mode, scope out all the good POI's, jot down where everything was at, plus figure out where the best place was to build a base, log out, delete the save and start over in normal mode. I noticed yesterday when I was trying out the advanced map generation thing, to me it feels like the random gen isn't too much random gen since the game always starts out in the pine forest and the other biomes are all on the outside of the forest. I think the legacy had a better random gen. Maybe it's because of the trader progression, I don't know.