Thanks for pointing out the cursor inconsistencies across the different tabs. I will update that as part of other UX improvements I have planned in the upcoming patches.
Regarding equipping directly from the Equipment tab in the Lorestone, I think that would introduce quite a bit of complexity and may not be the best fit. Equipment in the Lorestone can exist in several states (unlocked but not crafted, crafted, and broken). On top of that, different turtles have different equipment slots. Supporting this properly would require additional logic to handle equipment states, check the current turtle, and enable/disable them depending on whether it's Nix or Pebble. With turtles, the Lorestone selection helps avoid cycling through them manually, but for equipment, the current slot-based dropdown feels more straightforward and consistent.
As for Nix in hard mode, I will look into ways to make reaching Deepwater more achievable without introducing a separate hard mode specific rebalance or significantly affecting normal mode. It may take some time to find the right approach.
I will also be taking a short break from Serenitrove, as the Farfields update launch took quite a lot of effort, along with the full week of post-update bug fixing and balancing.
And thanks again for all the suggestions! Feedback like this really helps catch smaller details that are easy to miss.