Odyssey – best way to get started on Odyssey suit/weapons upgrading?

I'm an old player coming back and getting into Odyssey. It's a little confusing all the stuff you can do with suits and weapons.

What's a no-brainer first few things I should be doing to get started learning about upgrading my Odyssey gear, and improving my loadouts? I think I'm realizing the reason I keep getting bored is I don't really have a goal in Odyssey, so I jump in, mess around a bit, think "OK that's pretty neat", and then hop off.

I have a couple suits and weapons that I bought that have level 2 upgrades, or at least open slots, but not sure best way forward from there. It's just via engineers, right? Is it still a horrible grind like people were saying when it came out? I don't need to be level 5 everything, but would like to at least not be level 1 everything lol.