Newbie Help

About level 13, haven’t cleared third district yet, and every time I join a co-op match I can’t tell if it bugs and disconnects or if the other player kicks me, but I’ve never gotten through a co-op. (Can barely say I’ve even started a mission in one lol)

Still a little confused:
I I think I understand that after you start a new run and pick your loadout, the loadout lantern void thing rises and you can’t change until you start a new run. I know I can find stuff to store, purify, and it gets added to my permanent collection, but I feel like sometimes the gear loses the abilities it has and idk why (say a sword I pick up has Impaling Throw and Light Attacks do 100 bleed, it wont have those after I return and purify) am I missing something with that? How do we get our permanent gear to have all those buffs and abilities on them? I have a random few that do, but not many, and they basically make my entire starting loadout, I never change it up (e.g I have the gauntlets that restore health on kill and I never change those cause it’s the only gauntlet piece I have that purified and held onto an ability like that) all my chest/head/leg pieces just have base stats and a minor buff to stamina, mana, crushing or slashing

Now when in a mission, say I find a nice new sword (well my loadout weapon is purified and I’m not gonna lose it, I wanna try this sword) and I finish the mission with the sword…..I am now stuck with that sword for the run right? (Looping back to loadouts locking when you start a run)
I imagine it plays the same way? If you equip a new piece of gear during a mission/run, you won’t “lose” your old piece so to speak(it’s still in the perm armory) but you are now stuck with that new one for the rest of the run (or until you equip another piece)

Finally, between missions:
Gold is permanent currency, souls is temporary/run based. I guess the soul based gear from both merchant and blacksmith is what confuses me. When I first tried reading about it and looking it up, I thought I understood that the soul currency was used to buy potentially better gear from the merchants in between missions, sort of as a developer goven loophole to not being COMPLETELY locked out of changing gear between missions…but it does seem that the only way to actually change gear after starting a new run, is when it drops during a mission and you have to make the decision right then and there. So unless I’m missing something, what is the point of buying that gear with the souls? Just to help your initial loadout at the start of your runs?

If I’m missing something major please let me know cause I’m definitely loving this game, but I don’t feel like I’m progressing properly or is it all just me, and that is how this game plays haha