Suggestion 1) Replace monster damage UV's on weapons with just 'plain' damage. (needed for suggestion 3) Also feels out of order with damage trinkets/armors - eg damage for all swords OR damage for all weapons against slimes VS. only one sword having damage only against slimes. ASI/CTR is a feature of the weapon not it's victims, so I feel this might fit better?

Suggestion 2) Let a weapons built-in monster damage (eg cold iron's undead high) sit beyond the MAX cap for the single reason of allowing that defining feature of to be retained rather than wasted when combined with damage buffs. Perhaps we should all be 1/6 of each monster type in lockdown?

Suggestion 3) Wall of text:

Once you bring an item up to 5*, the upgrade process has ended. All you can do now is replace the UV's on it until you get something good.
However if you could upgrade the UV's on the item by adding the relevent trinkets to the item itself, this gives us a longer and predictable upgrade path.

Let's say you bring a calibur all the way to a Leviathan. That's 1450 energy spent in the process - but did you get ASI, CTR or damage UV's along the way? Today if you want to max all the stats of this sword, you need to Punch it up with double UV's until you get ASI and CTR then combine that with a Skolver set+BTS+relevant trinkets (or other complex mix and matches). But how many people do this? (I don't know)

Let's imagine you could take your stock Leviathan and somehow fuse it with 3ASI med trinkets+3 damage med trinkets+2 CTR med trinkets - now you can get exactly what you want (and consume a whopping ~11050 energy in the process). It gives us an immense potential upgrade process/sense of progress, everyone can do it and above all it fits into the game mechanics as they are right now by respecting the MAX caps. Just make sure you can't use 6x 4* trinkets rather than 3x 5*...

For helms and armor the approach could be similar, as long as the existing MAX caps are in place it should not get out of hand. A 5* defense trinket is equal to a med I think? However I believe the 4*'s are equal to a low and a half so it could be a bit tricky. It would be nice to have 'stun' and 'normal' trinkets though. Probably a bad idea to attach heart/offense trinkets... and heart trinkets feel more like a function of the knight rather than the gear anyway.

What I haven't thought about is what this would mean for all the armor sets. If we could buff up our gear on demand, would we need anything other than skelly/jelly/magic? They seem to have the most shadow/piercing/elemental defense. Should we be able to have more than 3 UV's on helms/armors/shields?

As for what this does for the economies of punch rolling, UV trading and CE purchases I have no idea. Would swapping UV rolling/crafting for UV-on-demand be a better cash cow? As a player who prefers the look and feel of this whimsical world over a stock market simulator this is beyond my concern.

Just a simple idea, might have severe bugs I haven't considered, but seems to fit into the offense system the game has. Not too sure about the defense system though..
Doesn't break lockdown I think, as an ASI VH(+CTR VH) toothpick/skolver striker already has max stats on his weapon.