Nice! Glad to hear that you are enjoying it, happy that the recommendation worked for you! Agreed about the armor. I did miss that. I did enjoy the weapon level ups and finding rings that worked well together. It was a good way to scratch the first person dungeon crawler itch.
I installed PopOS last year after I got fed up with bloatware, adds, and just outright annoying “notifications” in windows 10 and 11, and I haven’t looked back.
I found a great resource in the ProtonDB website for configuring proton settings as I have also occasionally had games not work properly that are steam deck verified. There are typically enough people posting how they overcame issues and their build components so you can try to match up their fixes with your computer parts. It helps a ton most of the time.