So what's the best guide for Guiding Lands? Just vary what ones you have high based on gear needs or are there regions better than other? For instance high end LS set is Kaiser (Teostra), Rajang and Garuga gear. Are there certain areas I'd want to focus on for that then?
Well early on you're capped, you need to increase your MR(by doing GL imo but you can do other stuff too, just since you're gonna need to do some GL might as well) to unlock more levels which unlock the good stuff.
The main thing to understand about GL materials is they can all be melded(besides the tempered dragon ones) at the melder, but only show up once you've seen them one, or you've seen their tempered version(each material has 2 version for the normal and tempered, normal is unlocked if you get the tempered first too). So in theory your goal in there should be to kill every monster at least once, and often twice(in normal then tempered form, but if you just get the temp it's fine). It helps if you make a list. This way if you ever need a material, you can just convert some other shit to it.
The basics is you should get Forest up to 3+ first, to get Garuga to spawn to get the legs asap, although I think you might be able to do the event currently running for it if you have the MR without needing the GL(you might still want to lvl it to get Zinogre for the quest). Then you should get Wildspire, Coral and Vale to 5+ to get Gold Rathian(weapon), Silver Rathalos(mostly armor for elemental user, not useful for long sword but eh), and Brute Tigrex(chest and set can be used for nice stuff). They don't all have to be 5 at the same time, just you get them to 5, find the monster there and drop them. You might be able to do investigations for them instead though once you have the right MR(49+ iirc?).
Gold Rathian should be the highest priority for your since LS has it as a weapon, and by default goldian weapons tend to be the best when they exist, they have good base white sharpness so you don't need handicraft, have base affinity, have very high raw AND have poisons. They basically have no downsides, other than requiring 3 tails which is fucking annoying at times. As soon as you unlock Gold Rathian(kill him once to get research 1 for it), send your tailrider safari to Elder's Recess constantly to get investigations(can also manually farm tracks there).
Eventually you'll want to rotate everything to 7 to get every materials, but the priority to 7 should be Coral by far(Tempered Namielle drops the materials for the R12 health augments) and 2nd priority should probably be Volcano for Temp Lunastra(Handicraft and Agitator charm upgrades), she spawns in Wildspire too but Volcano is better because it also spawns Kushala if you end up needing that. And once you have these 2, you can work on getting every other area to 7 as the 3rd, Vale so you get temp brute tigrex and temp vaal, Wildspire for temp gold rathian(not super useful mind you but it's unique) and forest for Scarred Garuga.
Rajang can spawn everywhere once you've done the quest for it, which should pop I assume after you've done the MR49+ unlock, although tempered only spawns in volcano which is another reason you want volcano(temp rajan is used for the 2nd augment slot upgrade, which makes the R12 weapons able to roll both health augment and affinity, making builds a lot easier).
Also one big tip in case you haven't been reading random messages here too much, ALWAYS have Geology 1 in your sets for GL. Make a copy of every armor set you run and replace something with Geology 1, I usually replace a health boost or a crit boost depending on the set, I have a page of sets with GL in the name for that specifically. Geology 1 makes it so every monster that has bones in its loot tables(which is 95% of the monsters, only shit like Jagras or Coral Pukei or whatever don't have them I forgot which exactly), you can loot the drops twice, meaning you'll get a shit ton more materials, so you won't need to grind that place nearly as long.
For example you can get enough materials to make like 4 augments off a single Namielle kill, which is a stark contrast from the old system where you'd need to kill 20 elders to get a decent chance at the right streamstones and even then it might have been the wrong ones. So you can get your shit done pretty quickly once you've unlocked the monsters, you'll still want to keep farming some for the great spiritvein gems for armor augments/slot augments and the solidbones for melding decos, but you can get your augments sorted pretty quickly for your main weapons once you're MR99+.
