I was actually enjoying it. Later tasks become too much of a time-gate for my liking. Making a higher end sword requires materials from the rpevious tier, which of course that tier requires materials from the previous tier, so on.

While I'm not fan of the requirements(or maybe even just the time for an individual task - maybe previous tiers get sped up exponentially once you've outleveled them?), and I'm sure it's done to lengthen the game - I'm less of a fan of watching hours of waiting go down the drain because i forgot to pause combat, so those items I was wearing broke. I think they should go to 0 durability or even just turn into a 'broken' version that requires less materials to repair it than crafting a whole new one.

Research length was also tiring. But maybe I'm just not the right audience for the game