As in the subject - swapping you mainhand or offhand item always iterate all enabled slots - whether they are or are not used at the moment.
for the mainhand it kind of makes sense if you want to use your fists, for the sidehand though…
It kind of would make sense for mainhand, if it was scaling / improving somewhat. For now, fists do 5 damage per hit (at 30) and the game doesn’t even bother showing “fists” stats (they scale with nothing from what I can see).
So, I’d expect fists to be available as a last resort - e.g. when all the slots are unequipped.
As much as I get that it doesn’t make sense considering we have 3 mainhands yet we don’t sheathe them, they just disappear when switching. So why not just let us “sheathe” just 1 more weapon and use fists with a keybind or button combo on controller so this issue isn’t required and we can enjoy only running 2 weapons without the idea that we can’t decide not to check for a weapon we don’t have in a slot we unlocked.
This is like checking all your dresser drawers for a pair of socks even though you know you don’t have any. Why “check” or switch to fists if I don’t actually want to. Choices and options are always better than assumptions of playstyle and mindset.
It is early access, maybe something will be made out of it, maybe not… just wait.
And for the toggle issue, a small button in the inventory with “activate/deactivate slot” would do the trick.