>>26896423It helps to have variety and focus more on building up to a collab instead. Those are the game changers that can carry through and if you can get 2 or 3 you'll see the bosses melt. You can always level up your starter weapon later on the amount of exp it feeds you/random upgrades from the miniboss boxes.
Here's a build where I got 3 collabs up and STILL got my starter to level 7 after.