I might be older than you and you appear to have jumped from 1st/second edition to this so I expect it to be jarrring

Tieflings and Dragonborn have been a core race since 2014. There are other races now such as Goliaths, genasi and even turtle people etc so an elf is very vanilla. Drown are also now more common and don�t have those pesky sunlight restrictions. If you were to step into a local game store group you might find a halfling etc but tieflings are much more common

It�s not a beholder but something called a spectator. Slightly weaker and meant to be a challenge for a party of 3rd level so if you found it before then you were overmatched

Larian has tweaked magic but in many ways it�s modern (last 20 years) of d&d

I�m happy to answer more questions on modern d&d. I am definitely one of those back in my day we were lucky to survive keep on the borderlands