to your post... very well & wise said
but also from answers you can learn if you study them... earlier, when i started cracking, i looked at the differences... before patching, after patching. in this time i wasn't able to unpack any packer, this was really interesting what was done... why did a cracker that steps. and after that period, i figured out how to find my own solutions for everything. so much different ways to patch.
to be on the way you said... this target doesn't use a API to kill your olly. it has a way of anti-debug i never saw in other targets.