Look out for freebies on Epic Games Store, sometimes they are giving away great old titles, and there will be a bunch of good games before Christmas for sure, as every other year. They even gave away GTA V few years back (but that wasn’t for Christmas)

If you are going to play games from Steam only, there is no need for modding/tinkering. It’s getting a bit more difficult if you want to play games from outside of the Steam Store, like from other game stores, or emulators etc. byt that’s not really hard to do, it doesn’t require coding for sure, all you have to do is to follow guides, and there are many of them on the internet

This article may be helpful: Developing for Steam Deck without a Dev-Kit

It should be enough, but only if it has 15V output. But generally, it’s better to use 45W charger

Because, technically, it’s the same platform with the same performance. It’s just a nice hardware revision, but technically it’s the same device from, for example, game devs point of view (I know it’s not exactly good comparison, because there are no games made exclusively for Deck, but some games have built-in optimized presets for achieving best performance on Deck, because it’s a popular system with uniform specs). Deck 2 will bring improved performance, and that will be a step for next generation, not some minor hardware improvements

I am using Skull&Co. FPS Thumb Grips and they work with capacitive sensor (not the raised one, you may have to look up how this set looks like, because they’re delivered in set of 3 pairs of different height), and also it does fit in both stock case and under JSAUX ModCase front cover (again, only the low profile ones, not the raised grip)

I am using EGS like that without any problems (running Skyrim, GTA V, Fallout 3, Dishonored 2 and Horizon Chase Turbo). Easiest way of adding games to steam is by using BoilR (just click “Find games” in Non-steam-launchers window, it’ll download and run latest version of BoilR), it should find EGS games without any additional setup. For games which require launching through EGS you would have to tick option to force launching particular games through launcher in BoilR settings (you do that for each game separately). BoilR can also automatically download arts for games, but you need to sign up to steamgriddb.com and generate API key (link for generating key can be found in Settings section in BoilR)

I’d say, if the cost is not a concern, go with WD SN770M. If you want good quality drive at reasonable price, go with Micron 2400

I’d say, get 2x512GB LCD refurbished, it’s 10$ more expensive than new 64GB. I got 64GB refurb 3 months ago and I couldn’t be happier, all I had to do was upgrading internal memory, so that’s why I’m suggesting going with reasonably priced 512GB refurb (you can try waiting for 256GB or even 64GB refurbs and upgrade SSDs if needed, but 512GB is the only one available now, in my region at least)