1. Charts. Use a soft pencil eg 2b is my preference & an eraser. It can be used on anything you need to write on. If, for some reason, you lose all your pencils into the aircraft's secret belly pencil hold, you can still write on the chart with just about anything. The charts will last for years. Avoid laminated. They're bulky, hard to fold, force you to have a special writing tool that you generally can't use on anything else, may need to carry some form of cleaning fluid/wipes and a glossy surface needs to be held at specific angles to avoid reflections (think night flying).
2. Whiz wheel: Use the same soft pencil. Use a cross or dot or whatever you like as long as you can solve the wind triangle correctly.
3. Landmarks: It takes practice. Using Ded. reckoning based on time you can refer to where you expect to be on the chart and what you should look for on the ground. Work from the largest, most obvious feature (oceans, coastline, large lakes) to smaller, less obvious things. Don't rely on a single feature or marker. It's the combination of things that identifies a place.
4. GPS: If you feel you must, then put on in your bag. Scores of pilots learned the fundamentals of navigation without them. No reason why you can't. You may get lost. So what! There's procedures to follow to deal with it. Every mistake you make & recognise is a lesson learnt that adds to your skill.
5. Autopilot & crosswind: Presuming it's slaved to a navigation receiver and not in heading mode, it will start with track as heading & then constantly refine heading it steers to maintain the course deviation indicator or equivalent in the 'on track' position. In a short time the heading will stabilise with a suitable wind correction angle applied. Probably more efficiently than the pilot due to the constant monitoring & adjustment.