Something that really helps being efficient is keeping in mind the differences you see from similar assets in a reference. That way, when you go to model, you can just copy those differences onto another side of the model, and then you have a lot of room to re-use a single asset as much as possible. I did this for all the props in my scene.

List of Modular Assets:

Icy ground rock: x1 (will dup around)

Ground: x1 (seamless tileable sculpt or material to use as surface for plane)

Icy pillar: x1 (highlighted in purple)

Cave wall: x2 (enclosures of the cave)

Snow building up: x1 ( snow seems to be present around areas)

Icicles: x3 (three prominent variations seen in ref)

Making an asset list and checking them off as I go helps me stay focused and on track, making the process much smoother and more efficient.

Scene Blockout

I began by blocking out the scene in Maya. This was just a quick and rough layout where I can play around with composition, shapes, and lighting. I can go in and duplicate, group, scale, and really just start trying to understand how this environment will assemble together once the pieces are there.