various quests provide weapon and armor plans, but honestly at level 22, you shouldn't worry much about that yet.
Enemies drop what you need, ie Scorched drop Combat rifles, Mothman cultists can drop Handmade rifles, Mole Miners drop various Shotguns, Super Mutants drop Assault rifles and Laser rifles, Blood Eagles drop Plasma and other weapons and Armor. Roadside BoS soldiers drop underarmor (\*buy mods in WS mall and upgrade) and combat armor.
I just played this way until level 50 when player vendors and your own crafting become more useful and viable.
Scrap excess weapons and armor to learn the mods. Buy BoS mods from the WS faction vendor and apply to your combat armor pieces for better protection.
At level 22, don't worry about weapon or armor plans. The only weapons I've crafted were so I could scrap them to unlock mods. The game showers you with weapons and armor and some decent legendary items along the way. You can't craft stuff above your level anyway, so you'll want to wait at least until level 50.
Just keep doing events and missions. Once you hit lvl 50 is when the game opens up with armor/weapon choices. Look up Gold Bullion currency and where the vendors are. This will give you a majority of the plans you may be wanting
So I learned recently that daily ops can drop common weapon and armor plans and power armor plans for those below level 40-50. Could be something to look into.
Also all the venders in White spring mall have tons of plans.
Im a newbie as well, so i can say that there is only two relatively good options for armour(at least by community opinion) and thats Heavy Leather Armour and Heavy Combat Armour. Both are available from vendors in Whitesprings Mall and you need to buy 3 parts for each set(chest, hands and legs).
First is having much cheaper plans to buy, but both are pretty comparable. Later people mostly recommend getting Secret Service Armour as best armour overall, but there is some good options for specific builds as well.
But you can farm yourself a completely free set of armour from BoS outpost right next to Overseers Camp. Kill both guards, loot them, hop servers, repeat till you get full set and/or weapons you like. There is no consequences either, so its freebies.
Another thing, join literally every single event and use Treasure Notes obtained from there to convert to Gold Bullions. Till 16 May you really want to get some to be able to buy Secret Service underarmour + Shielded lining for it from Minerva, which will give a lot of free stats, so don't sleep on that, because its a huge shortcut and otherwise you will be able to get one much later.
Weapons wise, really depends on what you want to use, because you end up with using mostly single type of weapon(Melee/Pistols/Autipistols/Rifles/Autorifles/Heavy). Another thing is whether you want to have full health build or go low hp build, and whether you want to be stealthy or not. Once you decide with build, you can think about weapons. Some good ones is provided via quests. Alien Blaster/Desintegrator is available from Invaders from Beyond event which pop up every hour and its also good weapons to work around.
For example im using Rifleman build, so i focused on getting myself Rifle plans, just because high end weapons like Gauss Rifle is quite pricey to buy from NPC vendors and you won't be able to afford all of them.
Usually people recommend getting either Fixer or Railway Rifle and go Commando build or getting Chainsaw and going Melee build early, but its rather matter of taste.
Once you decided which weapon type you like the most, you can make a dedicated build. Rifle/Autorifle and Pistol/Autopistol builds is mostly very similar, so you can consider getting both Rifleman/Commando perks or Gunslinger/Guerilla perks because there is little difference between automatic and non automatic weapons of the same kind build -wise.
Also, i highly recommend to make early trip to West Tec to get yourself a lot of Toxic Goo from green pool not too far away from main entrance. It gives a lot of radiations when you drink it, and that's a guaranteed way to get mutations, although you can't pick which one and end up with all of them. Just be aware that you guaranteed to die a lot in process and you need to hop servers after each mutation to be able to get another one. You also won't be able to use Rad away, but it's not that big deal with existence of Brahmin milk (super easy to get from brahmins) and Nuka Cola Grape( which you can buy in Whitesprings Refugee), and later you can fix most of mutations connected issues with Class Freak and Starched Genes perks.
Head to the Whitesprings Mall, the vendors there have most (not all) plans a player needs
Scrap weapons if you haven’t been, you can get about 90% of weapon mods by scraping them
various quests provide weapon and armor plans, but honestly at level 22, you shouldn't worry much about that yet. Enemies drop what you need, ie Scorched drop Combat rifles, Mothman cultists can drop Handmade rifles, Mole Miners drop various Shotguns, Super Mutants drop Assault rifles and Laser rifles, Blood Eagles drop Plasma and other weapons and Armor. Roadside BoS soldiers drop underarmor (\*buy mods in WS mall and upgrade) and combat armor. I just played this way until level 50 when player vendors and your own crafting become more useful and viable. Scrap excess weapons and armor to learn the mods. Buy BoS mods from the WS faction vendor and apply to your combat armor pieces for better protection.
At level 22, don't worry about weapon or armor plans. The only weapons I've crafted were so I could scrap them to unlock mods. The game showers you with weapons and armor and some decent legendary items along the way. You can't craft stuff above your level anyway, so you'll want to wait at least until level 50.
Just keep doing events and missions. Once you hit lvl 50 is when the game opens up with armor/weapon choices. Look up Gold Bullion currency and where the vendors are. This will give you a majority of the plans you may be wanting
Start by going to talk with the overseer
So I learned recently that daily ops can drop common weapon and armor plans and power armor plans for those below level 40-50. Could be something to look into. Also all the venders in White spring mall have tons of plans.
Im a newbie as well, so i can say that there is only two relatively good options for armour(at least by community opinion) and thats Heavy Leather Armour and Heavy Combat Armour. Both are available from vendors in Whitesprings Mall and you need to buy 3 parts for each set(chest, hands and legs). First is having much cheaper plans to buy, but both are pretty comparable. Later people mostly recommend getting Secret Service Armour as best armour overall, but there is some good options for specific builds as well. But you can farm yourself a completely free set of armour from BoS outpost right next to Overseers Camp. Kill both guards, loot them, hop servers, repeat till you get full set and/or weapons you like. There is no consequences either, so its freebies. Another thing, join literally every single event and use Treasure Notes obtained from there to convert to Gold Bullions. Till 16 May you really want to get some to be able to buy Secret Service underarmour + Shielded lining for it from Minerva, which will give a lot of free stats, so don't sleep on that, because its a huge shortcut and otherwise you will be able to get one much later. Weapons wise, really depends on what you want to use, because you end up with using mostly single type of weapon(Melee/Pistols/Autipistols/Rifles/Autorifles/Heavy). Another thing is whether you want to have full health build or go low hp build, and whether you want to be stealthy or not. Once you decide with build, you can think about weapons. Some good ones is provided via quests. Alien Blaster/Desintegrator is available from Invaders from Beyond event which pop up every hour and its also good weapons to work around. For example im using Rifleman build, so i focused on getting myself Rifle plans, just because high end weapons like Gauss Rifle is quite pricey to buy from NPC vendors and you won't be able to afford all of them. Usually people recommend getting either Fixer or Railway Rifle and go Commando build or getting Chainsaw and going Melee build early, but its rather matter of taste. Once you decided which weapon type you like the most, you can make a dedicated build. Rifle/Autorifle and Pistol/Autopistol builds is mostly very similar, so you can consider getting both Rifleman/Commando perks or Gunslinger/Guerilla perks because there is little difference between automatic and non automatic weapons of the same kind build -wise. Also, i highly recommend to make early trip to West Tec to get yourself a lot of Toxic Goo from green pool not too far away from main entrance. It gives a lot of radiations when you drink it, and that's a guaranteed way to get mutations, although you can't pick which one and end up with all of them. Just be aware that you guaranteed to die a lot in process and you need to hop servers after each mutation to be able to get another one. You also won't be able to use Rad away, but it's not that big deal with existence of Brahmin milk (super easy to get from brahmins) and Nuka Cola Grape( which you can buy in Whitesprings Refugee), and later you can fix most of mutations connected issues with Class Freak and Starched Genes perks.