For about $50 the high quality recoil lug and nut is worth it in my opinion. What is a skew barrel worth to you if the stamped recoil lug is tapered ? Or the nut is not faced square to the threads ?
The optics question is going to depend on your eyesight. Chuck Yeager had incredible eyesight and he could probably outshoot me with iron sights if I had the choice of any scope on the market. But I really do not have great eyesight, never have. Some people will never understand that. If you can't see the target and see your aiming point clearly, you are probably not going to hit it no matter how good the rifle. "real" targets tend to be well camouflaged, with poor contrast and no well defined aiming point and usually appear in poor light too.
So for ME, the sighting system is very important indeed. A good trigger is critical, because you are usually not shooting from a bench rest. The quality of the barrel is very important, because your rifle needs to be consistent. You will need to reload, else the high quality ammo you will need will be so prohibitively expensive you will not shoot enough to stay "in tune". Besides you can never exploit the full accuracy of the weapon unless you have control of the reloading parameters. Whatever stock you get, it should be free floated and properly bedded to the action.
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