The Living Ram item gets x3 on a charge, so bonus from Spirited Charge feat, but also the bonus for charging with a spear - minor here, but an interesting bug, probably applies to a ton of other more impactful stuff.
But if you skip defense you don't get to visit marketplace 2.0 and kill the nabassu?
That is correct.
You can just rest spam after clearing everything, so there's no danger of skipping the defense unwittingly.
After tavern defense Marketplace is repopulated, but is there anything important there except the nabassu? No other areas change, can just wack the nabassu and go to GG?