Don't use doom etc, just standard emacs, otherwise you won't have any understanding of what is happening and how to fix it. Here's a list of what I think is important, roughly more important to less:

    - corfu+marginalia+vertico+embark+orderless is the standard completion stack now
    - magit (maybe also see also the "casual" the transient front end for other modes)
    - avy
    - (fset 'yes-or-no-p 'y-or-n-p)           ; 'Y' or 'N' instead of 'Yes' or 'No'
    - (setq confirm-kill-emacs 'y-or-n-p)
    - evil (optionally if you like vim keybinds, you still need to know basic emacs))
    - if using evil: evil-collection, evil-args, evil-goggles, evil-traces, evil-escape, evil-nerd-commenter, evil-lion, evil-surround, etc are not "standard" but still useful 
    - configure melpa source
    - which-key
    - helpful
    - undo-fu
    - gptel
    - projectile
    - eglot
    - saveplace
    - desktop
    - uniquify
    - dired/wdired
    - flycheck/flymake
    - treesitter
      

Stuff that is nice but less essential:

    - general (for making your own keybinds)
    - some kind of multicursor mode (I use iedit but it's simple)
    - yasnippet
    - org (usefulness depends on the person)

I haven't switched to corfu+marginalia+vertico+embark so I don't know what the equivalent is but helm-swoop is nice.

Also, very important, learn the help system (C-h <key>), especially C-h f, C-h k, C-h w, C-h c. And the info system