As I see it, and ignoring the fact that you battle monsters to pop NM and loot etc, exploration for me is also to fly around spotting random treasure coffers in the field and gathering around to pop even more. Also, uncovering the map was a big exploration for me and it took me two runs to complete it (missed the landing areas, tiny pixel is tiny). I know most of the people go fight and report gatherers as trolls, at least in DF, but maybe your server does like mine and organizes gathering only runs? Imo the term exploration gets fulfilled when all the aspects of the duty get played. Battle, fishing, mining, logging, and exploring spotting random chests in the field. Which was Yoshi-P's original intention with the design.