Debesiss

I've had that happen once or twice, seems like some sort of problem with shaders because nothing happens when walked into. Rejoining/reloading fixes it for me.

There is a foraging class actually, it's the Malefactor class! It has a forager trait that has +10% loot from foraging and +20% wild crop drop rate. When it comes to cooking, in my opinion it would make the survival part of the game a little too easy, you can always change the hunger rate if it's an issue.

When it comes to using mods, you don't have to be stuck on one version. I've been playing on one world since 1.20.3 and it only recently started breaking, mostly due to mistakes on my part like not checking mod updates frequently enough so do keep that in mind! Remember to make backups just in case, there's a button for that in the modify world menu. As for mod recommendations, I'd suggest Simple HUD Clock Patch and Better Firepit, they bring pretty small changes but are still very useful. Other ones I'd recommend the most that bring bigger changes would be Better Ruins, Better Traders and Primitive Survival.

I think what you might be looking for is in this video, the power cost of everything is explained in a pretty simple way, helped me a lot too! When it comes to the side question, I don't think the direction matters. Hope this helps!

Sorry if there's any mistakes, english isn't my first language. I wouldn't say you ruined it for yourself by watching that video, having seen it I'd say there's still a lot to discover so don't worry! Going in blind is a fun way to get into the game, keep in mind that there's a handbook in-game for a reason, you won't need any help other than that probably. The only thing I can say is that you can set a period of time before mobs spawn, finding a place to set up at first can be a pain sometimes T-T