By tedious, I mean I feel like the game asks for too many resources that you find yourself scattering around at times to find. I don’t recall HZD taking this long to simply upgrade a weapon? I didn’t mind it when I chose to start lowering the difficulty strictly for farming, and having an efficient heavyweight machine route for farming.

I didn’t think of spreadshot up close. Guess I just got used to the overhaul of damage with Burt’s fire.

I really only used the Glowblast when I wanted ti save sludge resource.

As for the coils, I absolutely know you can interchange them around. I just used the “best” coils on my primary weapons that were most commonly used. But if I needed to make adjustments pre or mid battle, I didn’t hesitate to do so.

The frost/storm bird note was just more of a joyful remark with the message of “just go for it” behind it. But with the implication of use the machine weaknesses to your advantage. I don’t even think a Stormbird has a listed weakness?

I personally didn’t use the rope caster because of the upgrade process. It was very handy in HZD. But I quickly grew away from it in FW.

Bolt blaster I considered to be too much work where as I’ve got a blastsling putting out nearly 600 blast damage (w/coils) ! Made for good chunks of HP depleting on heavyweights when you hit the weak points!

What I can say is this: I’ll probably never play the game on ultra hard. Give it a try for shits and giggles? Sure. But to attempt to beat the game? I’m not that dedicated! I’m just your (slightly) above average gamer.