For what its worth, bogys are up full time in gusgen and lower delkfuts, plus the robe is a much more common drop than the skull.

Never had much problem running into the pirates myself, they do show up somewhat frequently in my experience, just make sure you take the ferry during their window.

These vanaversery RoE's are based of off old playstyles. Fusion on crabs happened quite a bit in valkurm when didn't have a lot of options. On the food, just use it before going out to do a number of the vanaversery RoEs, 30m doesn't take that long to pass while doing them.