I'm a bit surprised you haven't tried smelting ore in the first 30 hours!
Skitter resets duration of the buff when the Rat uses it, so the "stats" wont go up twice as high or anything like that.
I haven't fully made up my mind in regard to how to deal with her Mom yet, she might be a continues reference in places, where people mention that she was here recently but you just missed her. Or I might make her an actual NPC with all the various interactions that come with it. But yeah, not really sure yet, I guess it depends on how the story progresses and how well her presence would fit in the future.