it seems that playing with the environment lighting and changing the base texture to slightly offwhite yields better results without touching anything else.
@KW_Arts Thanks man! Yeah, The ground is going to have a lot of work done to it. I kinda just threw my tileable on there and moved onto something else for now.
Well, the scene escalated to something else. Just finished it and posted on art station. Happy with finally finishing up a complete scene :P https://www.artstation.com/artwork/Nxx8zq