After 6 years of helping people get started I understand what you are saying. Everyone starts the same everyone says they should have done something different after about 4 months.
It has to be up to the new vaper to decide on their first kit. That is the first step everyone takes. Digging around to find what they like and don't like in eliquid cannot be advised it has to be experienced by the new vaper.
What you in hindsight see as avoidable expenses are just part of the process. Everyone takes these steps.
The ONLY circumstance I would ever recommend to a newbie to start with this type of advanced outfit is if they had an experienced MATURE vaper to be there showing them the way in person.
I would recommend the iStick 30 w (or the iStick 40 w temp control which you don't have to use the temp control feature, it takes special coils) along with an Aspire Nautilus Mini. Get a 5 pack of spare coils 1.6 or 1.8 ohm. The Nautilus is a mouth to lung vape and both the iStick and Nautilus are user friendly.
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@KJW77 I knew you could find help here! These are two of my go to info people who I spoke of and BTW does that last pic look familiar lol. You have to find the path and setups that will work for you and that may or may not take a couple tries...for me it was a pen style, then a slightly bigger still round battery...and now for months is been the pic I sent you...except now I have mod collecting disease (also known as shinyitis lol) and I have a different on inbound Tuesday. and I have more tanks than I use...everything from apire K1 to a monster called the phantom.
But still my nautilus mini is my go to tank every evening
(BTW for gene, you know my DAD, it took one setup an Istick with an artic tank...at least so far its just that and is working for him...its his mentality that we are working to 'adjust')