HDMI volume control through the connected device, not from the laptop.
Displayport should work OOB, but I'll reconfirm on 10.13.x since I last check on 10.12.x
APFS.efi is only needed if you're planning on converting from HFS+J to APFS.
Not sure what you mean by scrambled graphics after boot. Boots totally fine on my end. Update Clover to v4359, your signature shows 3911, which is really old.