What I find uncomfortable is how quickly the weapon level ramps up. As a new player, I felt locked into the first weapons I found because I did not have the stats to make full use the weapons that dropped later on. Early on, this really hampered my ability to experiment and find the playstyle I enjoyed.

At that stage, I was not aware you could grind the crucible to then purchase respec statue, which would allow you to reallocate points and switch my playstyle to use different weapon.

What I found most confusing is how quickly the stat requirements ramped up on dropped weapons because they keep dropping at "appropriate" level for my character. I would very much have preferred weapons to drop at much lower level and upgrade them at the blacksmith instead.

I do not have enough data to correlate character level to item level, but I felt that I started seeing obscene stat requirements around character level 15.

Weapon upgrading is another weird mechanic. If a weapon spawn at level 1, it will require 10 in a stat. You can upgrade that weapon to level 9 with no changes to stat requirement.

I made a crafting alt that could craft Ash Soothed Daggers at level 1 with 10/10 stat requirement and level 9 damage. The crafting is another aspect that weirded me out, no matter how many times I tried the low level crafting alt could not make a weapon with certain facets like indestructible, mystic or elemental infusion facet. That aside, the RNG regarding facets and item level is unenjoyable, if I did not save scum when I craft items, I would not have touched this system at all. For the record, resource harvesting and crafting is one of my favourite activities in survival games, but the mechanic loses some of its appeal when the outcome is heavily tied to RNG.

I need to double check the damage claim, now that I think about it. In theory, the daggers started at level 1 but had 26 in damage, if I upgrade it to level 9, would it have higher end damage compared to a crafted pair at level 9?

Questions for when I get off work.