The Germ created by the equipment exists independent of the equipment once living weapon resolves
D&D campaigns are (very often) all about powerful characters that take on evil doers to save the world, or at the very least a town or city, from destruction
If the target creature is an illegal target by the time Lifecrafter's Gift tries to resolve, the spell doesn't resolve
To help populate your graveyard (preferably with four or more card types), the deck has a number of strong mill cards like Nyx Weaver, Stitcher's Supplier, Cemetery Tampering, and of course, the deck's face Commander itself
It's an excellent protection spell that makes great use of its flexibility to adapt on the fly to the state of the game
In fact, Ruby, Daring Tracker is the ideal card to lead a Commander deck full of monstrous creatures ready to leap into actionquite the switch from being a helpless victim of a big bad wolf