Hey! Excellent points, learning a lot about the game since there isn't really a proper tutorial in place yet, let me respond to each of these in turn:
1. I had NO idea what those bonfire tokens do, VERY good to know! Still a little obnoxious since I find myself having to rest to at *least* half health every tile or so in the late game which may constitute backtracking which consumes more food so still an annoyance but definitely an improvement over 5 health.
2. Anecdotal since I never did like a proper Chi-Square on it or anything, but I've maxed out on forager on a ranger build I did once just to see if it would help and I *still* got bad events pretty darn frequently. And again the events it considers "good" are still either debuffs or usually not enough.
3. That's great to know!! It happened to me once against Dark Knight in the old build and I'll be totally honest with you I've been so paranoid about that shit since then that I never let it drop to 0. I also don't know any way of getting extra willpower (I know one-time events and whatnot give it). Even still, sometimes it's fun to challenge yourself not to lose dignity! Maybe you're doing kind of a "top" run or a virgin run so there are still reasons it shouldn't ever be really inconvenient not to take a hit.
4. Oh shoot that's a great recommendation! Perception doesn't give a clear tooltip about how much benefit it confers (although some events like the Naga do require stealth which scales off of DEX and also eats up lots of food). I also had *NO* idea achievements actually did anything. I'll be totally honest I download the new patch once every couple of months and make a fresh save just to see the new scenes and content. The game isn't super-duper replayable so grinding 2 playthroughs out for stat points isn't really appealing but I'm glad that's an option!
I always buy a full set of the stat armor but find I'm still under-statted for most scenes (because of the aforementioned injury penalty, drunkenness penalty, cum penalty, etc...). You raise a point I made in that getting high stats on a *fresh* run (assuming you are a first-time player trying to play the game) is pretty hard. I usually want all companions in any game I play, especially this one where they get new scenes added all the time. That necessitates a LOT of charisma, like 7 or 8 I think? Then utility stats so I don't auto-fail important events, like 5 or so for both dex and per, then an offensive stat like str or mag. That's a big ask for some classe, especially with the aformentioned stat penalties.
5. Okay, you're correct! But I still see that as a flaw; since this game is not linear, not having a farmable source of money is a *problem*. Firstly, the brothel madam quests, while they give a chunk of change, are a grind, are not really fun to replay, and take resources (food from map travel and combat) to complete (some of which you will likely have to buyback with the money you get). If memory serves, the full array of stat armor you mentioned earlier is like 200-300 gold or so, maybe even more if you have armor or a weapon you need for your build, so that's a HUGE amount of your opening funds. I don't spend money on *anything* until I have that. I'll be honest, I never stock up on food at the inn because in an older patch it never came back and it's something like 64 food total? Nothing that would make a significant dent in what I'm expending.
The Quetzal fight is also really hard, especially for certain builds. Maybe I have no idea how to optimize the mage build I'm running with but he just gets flattened, so I eventually gave up. All the random events you listed are also early-game, which means in the mid-late game you are just *bleeding* money at any food event. Maybe you're not having an issue with that, but in my experience, it incentivizes me to make unfun decisions (saveloading hunger events, resetting combats to lose less health, sub-optimal stat allocation to try to save on hunger) to try to curb that loss. Any game that has exploration as a core pillar of its gameplay and requires a resource to continue or streamline travel should have a way to renew that resource.