Being predominantly active as a character modeler / sculptor, here are the external add-ons I always add right after a fresh Blender install:
- BlenderKit (my favorite material library, predominantly free)
- Brush Quickset (this should be in Blender by default)
- EdgeFlow (smooths out edge loop flow in Edit Mode)
- Mesh Fairing (mesh fairing is in Sculpt Mode as well, but the add-on is a bit more versatile)
- Modifier List (Blender’s native modifier stack should be like this)
- Pie Menu Editor (a must-have if you want customized Blender menus)
- Quad Remesher (the most useful paid add-on to me)
- Scale with modifiers (corrects modifier values when applying scale)
- SimpleLattice (makes working with the Lattice modifier a lot easier)
- Volume Preserving Smoothing (another paid add-on that’s really worth its price)
In case I’m working with the Octane Blender build, I always install Node Wrangler Octane.