You have really been giving this some thought, huh?
These are good ideas if I choose to develop this further
These are all methods I've used in games before... and they all worked successfully.
If I come up with anything, I'll update this post here to give you more inspiration...Of course, all of this is under the premise of ensuring ease of implementation and not causing game chaos. Here, we need to mention some basic design principles, such as considering the deployment of global and local events... Currently, most bugs are caused by global event calls.
However, that was 12 years ago. Back then, due to issues with RPG 2003 and the XP engine, I could only place the puzzles on a separate map. When the player investigated, there would be a "black screen and teleportation to another map," and the character would be replaced with a mouse icon. The player's pointer was actually a different image of the main character, and the puzzle itself was created using a background image and terrain map... XD Because your game doesn't use AI and you don't have a team to help, I believe your game is worth continuing development.
In this regard, I can only help you based on my own professional experience... Try to avoid those "damned timers" and "variable settings" that cause event stacking. Just use simple switches and item checks to create the most basic and stable system.