Now that the finalized version is out, it looks like there are only minor changes, so it is, unfortunately, still a dud for me. From a formatting perspective, seems odd to have the laboratory feature lumped in at the end of the spell list. The construct capstone feature is okay, but it's generally a worse companion than the O5e battle smith just gets and doesn't have to use up infusions for AND you don't get it until level 20, so that's kind of meh. I do like that they swapped modifications to using up infusions instead of spell inventions, but otherwise almost none of my questions/concerns were addressed, so... yeah. Really bummed about this one, was hoping for something better than O5e and I kinda feel like it's generally worse.