I’m a beginner (played before but getting back into the game)

They either seem really minor (Vial of Blood ime) or run defining (Eye of Newt was great on Assassin)

Alchemy was a pretty intimidating system to get into, but Trinkets, because they’re self contained and seemed to promise a minor effect, were a fun, low resource cost way to experiment.

I usually just make whatever seems fun and discard it if it proves harmful or if I need the inventory space. Upgrading them doesn’t seem worth it, but I dump excess energy into them if I have redundant consumables in the Caves.

I love the fact that they can be discarded when needed, so their effects could totally be made riskier imo, but that could make them tedious to manage.

My current run has a +3 Exotic Crystals, which I took because I’m less familiar with exotic pops, and while I didn’t like what I was getting, I kept it because I knew I could throw it away if I got low on regular stuff. This led to a fun encounter where I got surrounded, and popped a Purity potion followed by a Corrosion potion. I would never have made a Corrosion pot, but now I have a good reason to thanks to the Trinket :)

I use vi-keys as well and agree with this.

I play DCSS a lot and miss autoexplore more than Shift move, but that wouldn’t be enough to get me to play with keyboard in SHPD.

To add to this, the autorepeat causes a tiny bit of delay when moving (I think it registers a move on key release rather than press?), and there don’t seem to be keyboard shortcuts within menus (at least for item interaction).

Touchscreen/Mouse works well enough and it feels novel since most roguelikes don’t implement them.

Not sure if I completely understand your question, and how this would affect dice patterns, but I think you’re looking for the advanced notation here.

For rotations, just use x, y, & z moves from a fixed orientation (most people start with White on Top & Green in Front) or specify the center colors directly. Just mentioning the color on top isn’t enough info btw.