Just by playing 9chal. I won it only once when I got extremely lucky with item drops, but I’ve been trying to get a win again and get better. I personally don’t find experimenting with builds in 0chal fun anymore, as it’s so easy that everything feels pointless. But learning how to survive 9chal runs and getting more consistent at it is plenty interesting.

I usually recommend to go for the challenge that you think is the most interesting/fun instead of directly easiest. Champions add quite a bit of variety to combat, badder bosses make interesting tweaks to bosses, FIMA forces you into a playstyle where you avoid taking hits as best as you can, pharmacophobia forces you to proactively avoid bad situations by taking away the easy solution to all problems, etc. Choose whatever you like

I’d say you can’t go terribly wrong with choosing a first challenge, even the hardest challenge (pharmacophobia) doesn’t make the game terribly difficult if it’s the only thing you enabled (it was my first challenge even), so don’t worry

Enemies can walk over hidden traps as if they don’t exist for some reason. They will avoid a trap only if it’s revealed to you

Not really. I would hate these traps if they were in sewers, but it’s caves, by this point it’s really unlikely that you have no options to deal with them. They give you one turn before you fall and you can use a consumable, artifact or subclass ability to get out of its range and you’re fine