As vampire neither eat nor drink they receive fewer positive thoughts in regards to such things and they can go insane. IIRC they are also affected by lowered work speed if they don't drink alcohol and since they can't ... it just gets worse.
LNP can disable aquifers and does have it set to do so by default. I messed around with this a couple of days ago and have determined that a world genned with no aquifers will not get any if you turn aquifers back on. I am not clear on exactly how or if genning a world with aquifers on then turning them affects things. I dug out an entire Z level of a map in the range DFhack said the aquifer was present and received no damp stone warnings and caused no floods so either I picked the wrong Z level or the world only exists in the abstract until it is visited/revealed and the LNP has until you actual embark or reveal tiles to suppress aquifers. The former is more likely and I am not sure that the latter is actually possible.
The embark doesn't straight up tell you about sand instead clay. You can also use DFhack's prospect to get an idea of the surface composition of the embark area, or prospect all to get an idea of both the availability and prevalence of anything you can mine. Once you have actually embarked prospect all will give you a more exact figure and also list trees and vegetation.
Minecart QSPs only require a track stop, a minecart, a hauling route and stop, a feeder stockpile and the QSP stockpile. I am assuming the set up puke was talking about is one track stop and one track, but if it is two track instead it could be a less fiddly method.