Sadly, another one of the gatchas in Fortnite. There's a robust rpg but everytime you feel in control of things are moving forward you get throttled. Evolve your schematic too early? Prepared to be missing mats. Want to evolve your soldier to tier 3 prepare for mandatory 35 node placements (there's also a 310 cap, so trees are getting leveled in a nearly pre-planned way which takes out any unique builds you may be going for). Didn't upgrade, or have the rain drops for your tier 1 stuff? Prepare for more grind in Stone wood, but now you're missing tier 2 stuff. Want to push your schematics forward to stop the gating behind tiered mats? Better farm rain drops that RNG might grant you a daily on once per day. Want to get some new gear to update your kit? Save v-bucks like a miser until super, legendary, or troll Llama comes and hope you've made enough - they aren't common or easy to come by and if you've beaten the node locks, skill point caps, resource rubix cube, evolutionary mats throttling, then don't worry we have the research tree to insure you can't be any more powerful at this point then you've paid to be. Basically, get used to it. Fortnite is addictive, but it's got soft caps and time gates all guiding a pay wall the node system is only one element of finally tuned mobile game experience.