Level Up (A5E) I have some questions about the artificer

Big fan of the 5e artificer and a big fan of a5e in general so I went to have a look, pleasantly surprised to see it seems to be a hybrid between 5e artificer and PF2 alchemist (which I did enjoy playing but did have some late game scaling issues, or perhaps I made some mistakes in my build)
However I do find I have some questions:

1. Did I understand correctly that a first level artificer has 2 prepared spells they can prepare from the entire artificer spell list and can keep casting each spell until that spell fizzles? If so, interesting! A refreshing take. And also, the wording seems to imply that when it does fizzle it fizzles AFTER casting that spell right? So the spell still goes off, that's just the last casting of that spell for today right?
2. Spell focus, tools of the trade mentions being able to use tools as a spellcasting focus, but you also need to be wielding your spell invention, do you need to wield your invention in one hand and your focus in the other to cast spells with a material component then? Or is there a way to cast one handed? (Which would be useful on a class that gains shield proficiency of course) or do you just have to have the spell focus at the time of creation of the spell invention?
3. Material components with costs, I am confused by the sentence: "You can change your list of prepared spells and replace or create new spell inventions whenever you finish a long rest by spending at least 10 minutes tinkering and experimenting with 1 gold worth of materials per new spell invention (in addition to any material components the spell requires)."
   Which seems to imply you spend the cost for your material components at the time of creating the spell invention, however you can use it more than once. Does that mean you pay only once but you can cast it as many times as the fizzle die allows? Or do you have to pay again after the first casting (which you paid for after the long rest)
4. And last and also most certainly least: Any fun recommendation for common magic item schematics? Most of them seem to be flavour over usefulness but I enjoy having some flavourful extra options.

Thanks for reading!

This is not really an answer to any of your questions, necessarily, but have you checked out the revised version of the class in Advanced Artificers (DriveThruRPG)? Same author, but it includes a number of tweaks based on feedback from the community, so it's definitely the definitive version and may answer some of those questions.

I have not, thanks for the info, now I have to wonder to myself wether my curiosity to see what the revisions are is worth spending 10 bucks. I might...

My phone's browser "ate" my reply twice already, so now an answer from my desktop:

1. Completely right.

2. I always interpreted the spell inventions as spellcasting foci just for that spell. That should help with the "missing" hand if you also have a shield.
This isn't stated explicitly but since the spell invention is the equivalent to the material components (that you'd replace with spellcasting foci like wands of staffs) it isn't far fetched.
Also A5E (unlike O5E) doesn't explicitly mention that you could use the same hand for the S component that you use your M component for. Instead "A spell cast with a seen component can’t be cast by [...] a creature that has its hands full with weapons (or a shield) that are not being used as a spell focus."
I'd interpret a spell invention as "a weapon that is being used as a spell focus" in this case even if the invention isn't a weapon.

3. As written it could lead to some strange situations:

• Some spells probably couldn't be prepared too far in advance as a spell invention (which takes at least 10 minutes) if the material component is specific to the target (like Creation "tiny piece of matter of the same type of the item you plan to create" which would limit the spell to only those materials that you include in the creation of the spell invention)
• If you have to pay/include the cost of material components with a price at the moment you prepare the spell you'd have to pay them every time you change the spell slot to this spell even if you never cast the spell.
• On the other hand... if you pay the cost at the time you create your spell invention you could just spent costly components once (no matter how often you actually cast the spell) and then never change the spell slot. If it fizzled you can repair the invention on the next day for free.

My experience with spell components in almost every edition has been... Don't sweat it but keep in mind costly/rare components since they usually also balance the use of the spell.

I'd just see if you got the component when you prepare the spell (invention) and just remove the consumed components every time you cast the spell.

I'd also allow the artificer to salvage all components when he changes the spell invention to another (unless you only got one use of the costly component and you cast it)

4. Common items depend on the style of your character (or what you group could need, but I am partial to:

• Atlas of Libation
• Inkpot of the thrifty apprentice
• Legerdemain gloves
• Lockpicks of memory
• Wand of the Scribe

As for the standalone Artificer supplement (by the author of the original article from GPG0):
It has 3 additional archetypes (Alchemyst, Armiger, Thopterist - Machinist is reprinted as Engineer), 10 additional Field Discoveries and has some fine tuning to some of the features (like a way to get new schematics even if you don't find any magic items that you can try to analyse).

Great! Thanks for taking the time to reply (and doing so three times even )
Good to see the issues I've encountered aren't just a case of "read better" but actually up for interpretation. Thanks for your solutions, I agree with them they are probably the most elegant ways to deal with them.

And thanks for your item suggestions, I hadn't seen the atlas of libation yet, pretty funny, and more useful than a first glance might suggest, a map that once per day can lead you to alcohol and probably civilisation? Though it might lead you to a bandit camp or a goblin moonshiners cabin, but hey, at worst you find booze!

and I see you've gone the same bookish direction I also was considering, I also found the letter-lift paper, useful for fast copies of documents or ancient books or perhaps even a way to sneakily copy a rivals schematics if the DM allows me.

I am currently playing a kobold (winged, dreaming wilds culture, eccentric experimenter background) artificer who multiclassed into naturalist savant, specialised into Archivist artificer and is on his way to Genius Inventer Synergy Feat chain.

He originally flavored many of his spell inventions as "alchemy" but is now turning into a "book wyrm"