Deeper mechanics questions

[DarkSorrow]

Been playing a game for a while now and I'm wondering about some deeper mechanics or things that I can't for some reason test myself without wasting a lot of time or resources.

1. How much does item level affect affixes? Is it worth going for those nodes that give you a potential +10 levels on artifacts and +5 on items if Epiphany doesn't generate additional rewrite path?

2. What determines the point cost of putting in an extracted affix? I know that rarity of the item that it was extracted from affects this, however, I had once two extracted devastator affixes from an artifact rarity, yet one cost 9 points to put in, the other 15 points. Is it tied to the "strength" of the affix? If yes, do these have an upper limit or it can keep costing more the stronger it gets, going beyond the maximum of the points that a craftable item can have?

3. In terms of endgame, do you actually focus on barrier? Feels like a waste of a stat. Structure has powerful regens like health on hit and natural regen, not to mention a lot of buffs from other sources (and the fact that some weapons damage your health even with shields on). Feels like investing into barrier is a waste of an affix "space".

4. Anyone has any idea on how much loot quality is "good enough"? I assume that at some point the cost outweighs the benefits.

5. Is the second mining upgrade worth it? There's barely a few calcium per map, and it takes a lot of time to actually find those asteroids. Will I be wasting 50 calcium just to get 1 extra calcium per map from that point on, or will this result in some noticeable increase in drops overall? (whether from ships and stuff or just asteroids)

6. Does the number of the cycle actually affect anything? I see a lot of people doing like 15 breaks and such... I completed my reality stream and "true ending" on my cycle 4 or 5, don't really feel the need to do more breaks honestly (outside of making one item more op due to the favored item mechanic).

7. When you craft an affix onto an item with that Reality stream thingy selected that boosts 1 crafted affix by 200%, can you then still extract that "boosted" affix afterwards?

Any other endgame tips that you might have are welcome. Thanks. :)

[JunK]

im very curious about this stuff too

i also got my true ending on cycle 4 or 5, but essentially i just play through until true ending over and over and break the profile just to farm RP. i'll do this until i fill out all the RP talents then i probably won't do it again

i do wish some more things were explained in game. there are some items or some things that happen where i'll get a ridiculously powerful affix or rewrite and i'll have no idea how it happened or whats going on, lol

regarding loot quality, it seems like the higher the better. im sure there are breaks though. but i ended up getting a crazy item with nearly 5000 loot quality (somehow) and i was still getting all types of rarity.
epics were becoming more common but certainly still not "common". i imagine getting even higher, like tens of thousands (if you can) would result in more epics and even artifacts dropping
seems like most artifacts would be created by rarity rewrites though

as for barrier. i've had the same thoughts.
i've seen some items and affixes where i could see barrier builds doing well. i know you can get hundreds of thousands of barrier, and that certainly is good especially with the epic/whatever mod where you can get 100% reduced recharge delay while still having shields
but i can't help but see lots of HP builds available. seems like there are some really good buffs if you have no barrier and have HP, so i just see myself making an HP build, not carrying about barrier. getting regen and hp on hit

[Inferius]

I also wonder if there is any point to keep ending cycle.
Sure it was important to farm RP, because I was getting like 3k per run few times until I unlocked chaotic multipliers. Pulled 3 artifacts in a run.
In the end I got total 120k rp in one run. 100k nowhere to spend.
Game needs some way to improve character endlessly like eggs system in vampire survivors

[DarkSorrow]

Originally posted by JunK:

i do wish some more things were explained in game. there are some items or some things that happen where i'll get a ridiculously powerful affix or rewrite and i'll have no idea how it happened or whats going on, lol

This... I noticed the same thing. Is it some loot quality chance thing? Is it just a chance thing? What is it? XD

Originally posted by JunK:

as for barrier. i've had the same thoughts.
i've seen some items and affixes where i could see barrier builds doing well. i know you can get hundreds of thousands of barrier, and that certainly is good especially with the epic/whatever mod where you can get 100% reduced recharge delay while still having shields
but i can't help but see lots of HP builds available. seems like there are some really good buffs if you have no barrier and have HP, so i just see myself making an HP build, not carrying about barrier. getting regen and hp on hit

That's the thing that I meant, barrier has only that one thing going for it, constant regen with an item passive, but compared to structure, you can get that same thing with HP regen and maybe one of the HP regen buffs. However, on top of that you can add "on hit" healing, and many other buffs (like the one that you mentioned about not having barrier). Seems like a much better overall option.
It looks like barrier is more like an early-mid game efficiency thing (get one item passive and a lot of barrier, all done), and structure build would be something for end-game once you get more control over affixes, like crafting specific items and farming for specific stuff.