The OpenAL issue was actually pretty easy to diagnose and fix. The crash comes with a pretty detailed log indicating the game encountered an issue when OpenAL was trying to load. And, lo and behold, staring at me was a checkbox in Prism Launcher's options to "Use System OpenAL." I ticked it and haven't had a single issue since, my guess is that the launchers bundled version of OpenAL just didn't play nice with my system.

I've even manually added a few mods since installing, still no issues.

I do understand where you're coming from though, I personally enjoy tinkering and problem solving almost as much as actually using my computer. It's a learning experience for me and makes my computer really feel like my own at the end of the day. However I totally get that not being everyones cup of tea.