I was seeing all of this only use your left hand on even numbered days and then do it at such and such corner (but only once a week!) that I wondered if I should give a shit.
you really don't need to give a shit. For a while I was stashing away everything I thought might be useful but the reality is soooooo much loot drops in this game that there are only a tiny handful of things to give a shit about:
1. farm hyena keys using some of the videos above, they are useful in building the chatterbox exotic and keys are on a timer where you can only loot ~30 keys every 24 hours, you only "need" 4-15 hyena keys to build a single chatterbox so its really not that bad but with some bad RNG it can take a few days since you are gated on keys and then the chests that the keys unlock may not drop the parts you need.
2. you may get a level 1 D50 Eagle Pistol, KEEP IT dont dismantle it! Its a yellow high end but level 1 weirdly, you need it to create the Liberty exotic
3. as you level up to gearscore 425 just equip anything new that looks like an upgrade and don't stress too much about min/maxing. I did all the missions in hard mode with random ass guns and gear and they really aren't that difficult with a flame turret and hanging back and staying in cover. They are far easier with matchmaking since most of them have respawn zones so you just need 1 guy to run away and stay alive if things go south. I have never once used voice comms for anything. Each World Tier unlocks as you complete the strongholds in order, you have to have a minimum gearscore for it to "count" as complete even though the matchmaker will let you in at any GS.
4. there are a few decent things to stash away for upgrades later, but again you get soooo much loot i wouldn't stress hard about it they will come again. Honestly you'll just find yourself liking a certain gun and play style - SMGs, LMGs, Rifles, snipers - and once you figure out the talents that work for you, just stash a few of em away so you can recombine future gear. I just dismantled all the shit I had in my stash because I get so much loot every game session.
5. once you start hitting gearscore 440-450 you'll just work on building a decent gear load out for yourself, trying to get the exact right talents and perks on all your weapons and gear. The XP loot box (every "ding") and the clan loot box (weekly) give higher gearscore drops than your current GS, ideally you get some with decent stats and then infuse your existing 450 gear into them (rinse and repeat at 500 in a week).
6. But again, its really, really not that important. The hardest content, challenging mode right now, can be done in really shit gear you just will do it faster and die a lot less if everyone is better equipped. I've cleared almost all the challenging content in pugs without too much frustration.
7. When Basin releases next friday it'll raise your gear score cap to 500 once you finish it, so really whatever loadout you have now is just to ensure you can do Basin without being super frustrated. I can't imagine it being insanely hard at the normal difficulty which is all you'll need afaik to hit WT5. After that its back to releveling to 500 then refarming all your gear to just more +gooderer because the next goal after that will be to get geared up for the future raid.
8. all of this is ignoring PVP which is a very different build/spec to PVE. SMGs seem to be pretty insane buildouts in PVP.
9. mod blueprints (attachments to guns/gear) can be farmed via control point farming, i haven't done any of it and don't really know how but something to do once you hit WT4
