Okay, so I know researching myself is more efficient, and have for ages, but with Decay I'm proceeding at such a rapid clip that even researching myself isn't keeping up with demand, although to be fair I'd switch to building whenever I needed to boost storage or build housing and then forget to switch back. Maybe I should be more on the ball next time I try.
See, maybe I need to start prioritising some pieces of eq over others. I always prestige everything in one tier before moving on to the next. I don't want to be low on attack, but also I don't wanna die too hard either. Getting to the point where I oneshot everything would be nice, of course, and there are times when I completely splatter anything that comes my way, but that's usually just after prestiging or in the early zones where I'm stronger than everything. I know there are some challenges further down the line, like Mapology, where focusing on the first few eq pieces is the way to go because of limitations set by the challenge, but I'm not sure how effective that would be in a normal run and I don't like being oneshot myself.