Calamity is known to be a mixed bag when it comes to people's opinion towards it. some people love it, some hate it. personally, i'm not a big fan of it, it's simply too ambitious of a project to tackle. i much prefer something lighter on content, like Thorium mod. perhaps, you just find Calamity's volume of content overwhelming.

meanwhile, some QoL mods genuinely make the gameplay loop more streamlined by removing the downtime the grinding and storage management give out. if i'd ever revisit the game, I would for sure slap some QoL for a Vanilla+ experience.

I basically can't go back to vanilla, mods are so good, I have a mod list that's basically vanilla+, but I can't remember what mods it had, and I'm not at my computer atm.

But I've been making mod packs for me and my friends for calamity, starlight river and stars above (I liked this combo), and thorium. We are going to go back and play calamity again after I beat my current solo playthrough cause one of my friends missed out.

I eventually want to make a super mod pack with a little bit of Y E S, just throw everything in it and get it to work to have the most horrifyingly difficult amalgamation to play, but that's for the future :)

I like using mods. At the very least, I couldn't go back to not using things like Magic Storage.

Recently finished making a Soul of Eternity in Fargo's Soul mod using Calamity + Thorium + DBZ + Soul mod DLC fork*. Twas a lot of fun. Maybe will eventually go back and try to get some of the other end-game items, but even equipping just a couple of the precursors to the soul of eternity started causing a lot of lag.

*in 1.4 Fargo stopped including Calamity, Thorium, and DBZ items in the Soul of Eternity crafting tree, but others have added that.