I find myself giving advice often enough that I figured I should start posting it rather than reiterating every time. Now, the thing about backpacking is everyone has their own way of doing it, just like life. Everyone has their own little things that bother them, habits they like, solutions they've found etc. So even experienced people all do it very differeintly. So, really any advice is a series of questions, with answers that the original advisee must answer. The one thing I can say for my advice is that while I'm biased, I can see all sides, and I know of all of the options. Also my personal biases are clear, and usually very clearly stated.
The thing about gear is that you can't ACTUALLY seperate the catagories, the usefulness and practicality of every piece of gear depends on the rest, to an extent far deeper than you might expect. But here we'll try anyway, because we have to start somewhere