you had more stutters at the beginning because when something loads for the very first time, stuff gets compiled. it gets better the more you play.
it's a godot issue, in theory it should work much better in 4.4 (i'm upgrading as i type this, dealing with jolt shenanegans right now)
my current HUD is actually extremely lazy and it is mostly dealt with by hide() and show(). i even add some duplicates here and there to avoid moving things as much as possible. the entire thing needs an entire revamp eventually...
thanks for playing!