Hello,
One of the fun things, (for me), about art and design is building my toolbox.
I’m hoping to get “the best” suite of stuff set up that will reduce my workload when I’m making common environments and scenes using primarily Blender. It might include the hardware, software, the procedures, or myriad stock assets.
I know, that’s a pretty general statement.
Umm… so for example:
I have great hard-surface capability with regular Booleans and the Auto Smooth, KitOps, HardOps, and BoxCutter. I could buy more KitOps widgets or packs or whatever they call them, but I’m pretty happy as-is.
Characters often wear clothes. I don’t have a good plugin for that and I don’t have a great handle on designing clothes for characters, so this is something I’d like to learn more about.
If I want fluids, I hear that FLIP Fluids is really nice. I’m not at the level of needing it yet and I’ll be starting with Blender’s standard dynamics.
Terrain is pretty easy to do manually, (so far), or the terrain script that comes with Blender is nice. I also got True Terrain in case I get stuck and need a push in the right direction(s).
Stuff to COVER the terrain is a bit more involved. Graswald seems to be the premier plugin if you want to animate the wind blowing through grass and stuff. It’s pretty expensive though. It’s not pricey in the relative scheme of things - like 6 months of Autodesk pricey - but for a Blender add-on it’s up there. I’ll put that on my “window shopping list”.
I got the Definitely Eevee materials for KitOps for Blender and I’m having a great time with their node setups. I’m also subscribing to Substance this week or next week. It’s really reasonable. So… I’m not worried too much about materials. KitOps even does a passable glass material, which is tough from what I’ve heard.
I’ve only rigged one character and it was one of the more difficult things I’ve done so far. I got Auto Rig Pro on sale so I feel like I’m covered there.
I got the Interactive Physics Editor add-on yesterday. Now I can put stuff on the ground and table without having to eyeball it or enter numbers in. Yay! 
I have yet to find a “ground-up” training course for Blender 2.8 scripting. I could pick up something about 2.7x scripting, but then I’d probably just end up unlearning some habits in a month or two.
I can re-topologize Blender’s crazy geometry after sculpting using the Tesselator add-on.
I don’t see an add-on that helps to create animatable trees for Blender 2.8. There seem to be one or two for 2.7x. Nine out of ten forest rangers tell me that trees are useful for many scenes.
A friend of mine is learning about 3D printing and I’m hoping that I can pick his brain and possibly use his 3D printer someday.
Hardware upgrades are ongoing things. I upgrade over whatever bottlenecks I find whenever I can afford to.
As a graphic designer, Photoshop is a lot of what I do, so 2D image editing is probably the “most locked-down” thing I have.
I have Gaffer to help with lighting. The guy who makes it is nice enough to offer a free version, but if I end up using it more than a couple of times a month I’ve got no problem with buying it.
If I need something real-time, I’ve got my very basic skills with Unity. On a level of clueless college freshman to master chef, I’m about ready to be able to boil spaghetti, but at least I have a direction.
Can’t think of much else I’d need. Sounds and music would be nice… I’ve no idea what low-cost solutions out there exist for this. Knowing virtually nothing about audio, I’m guessing that I’d be buying more stock-y stuff than not.
Continuing my studies at Udemy and YouTube stuff, having a blast. Any suggestions welcome.