The most minimal set of proven tools?

[mayonnaiseman]

I've been finding my own way for some time, but I've found myself jumping from tool to tool to often. Not only DAW, but plugins as well. Truth is though, I can't really tell some of the free stuff from the paid stuff. Either because I don't have the ear, or because the free stuff is in some cases actually damn good. I'm not sure for which ones that is actually the case. I skimmed through free vst awards and the likes and read reviews, but I find the number of users often to be too small to get a good overview of what is the way to go at the moment.

I'm mostly into ambient and orchestral stuff, while also recording my guitar rather often. I'm also really interested in sound design. I should add that I'm aware that most DAWs already have pretty good stuff built-in. I'd like to be independent of my DAW however.

I've made a list of things I already use or might need and what my choice (and likely future choices) so far is as well as my (probably false) reason or understanding of their use I have so far. Would be great to hear some alternatives, things I should look at and corrections to misconceptions I might have. Also in what parts this would limit me a ton?

Required:
Reverb:
Algorithmic Chamber/Hall/Room: Used in most cases especially on everything that is an actual recording.
[Valhalla Room]
Algorithmic Other (except Spring/Plate): Anything not bound by physical laws or limitations. For anything but acoustic instruments and vocals.
[Valhalla VintageVerb, Valhalla Shimmer]

Synth:
Wavetable: General purpose.
[Serum]
Resynthesis: Special effects, complex sounds, another angle to the whole process. Deeper sound design and manipulation.
[Harmor]

Compression: Though I'm not sure why more than one or perhaps two. I've tried listening to the much loved The Glue, the probably transparent as it gets Pro-C as well as Boz +10db. The only difference I could hear was with the last one and those differences were not pleasant. +10db sounds very harsh when using shorter attack times. What makes The Glue so great? I wish I could hear it. Some tube compressors sound different but I always used those to also drive a weak signal. Gently applied those differences seem to go away. The only reason I can see to choose one of those is the interface, which Fabfilter seem to nail in all their products. However a compressor isn't that complex to setup and Kotelnikov seems to be well received and free. It doesn't look that good and has a few knobs too many for learners but I guess I could manage. Presswerk also looks absolutely lovely and very versatile. Some of these aren't very versatile (no gate, expansion).
[[TDR Kotelnikov or Fabfilter Pro-C] and [Klanghelm DC8C or U-He Presswerk]]

Questionable:
Reverb:
Convolution: Seems to be the choice for acoustic instruments. Can also emulate most hardware reverbs. Can't emulate modulation. It was my first choice when I started playing guitar through amp modeling. However I found that tweaking simpler reverbs got me the tone I want, while flipping through spaces never did. I found the amount of choices overwhelming but the results never more real or better sounding. However I like the idea of choosing an impulse response of my liking while the software itself is of little consequence or influence, as well as beeing grounded in something real. However it adds the question of whether the impulse response one is using is actually "good", in whatever way that could be judged or measured.

Synth:
FM: Harder to use. Can quickly emulate sounds that are hard to achieve in other synthesizers like bells.

"Colored" Compression: Apart from very specific circuits and tube compressors I wasn't able to hear much of a difference.
Chorus: Overdubbing just better? Only useful for practice or live playing? Always liked a tiny amount on my guitar, however such amounts could be faked in a lot of ways. Acon has a free one that looks rather powerful.
Distortion/Saturation: Can be achieved by using (or abusing) amplifiers, like guitar amplifier modeling. How useful is tape saturation?
Tape Delay: Sound odd? I know that some guitarists still use them even though old real ones seem to break every five minutes (or so I'm told). The generational loss sounds lovely, however I don't see how that would benefit slapback. For guitars I much prefer reverbs anyway.

Unsure why:
Reverb:
Spring: People seem to like it on guitars. I don't get why.
Plate: Same as above, except it seems to work better for drums and especially vocals. Real ones are expensive and unwieldy (same goes for springs). Sounds too metallic to me.

De-esser: No interest in vocals or recording in general. Does it have other uses? Seems to be possible with multiband compressors.
Fuzz: Combination distortion with clipping on purpose. Though one? But not often used anyway.
Harmonizer: Pitched down second take/vst or set manually. Useful for other intervals and live playing?
Leslie Emulation: If it benefits from it it might have one (Hammond organ) built-in.
Noise Gate: Can be done by some compressors anyway.

Left out:
Flanger, Ring Modulation, Phase, Tremolo, Vocoder, Wah-Wah.

[rod_zero]

The minimal set up is using just your DAW included plug ins. Really not many reasons to add stuff except for a synth.

[RichieWitch]

Rather than try to comment on that entire list, I'll focus on the one I've worked with the most: compression. I have an embarrassing number of compressor plugins and even a couple hardware compressors. If I had to limit myself to two (which I think is the minimum I could live with), it would be the Glue and Presswerk.

You said you can't hear the Glue? Well, that's sort of the point. I use the Glue to meld together layered kicks, layered synths, and percussion groups, to improve the cohesiveness of the sound. It's only going to work if you're trying to combine multiple sounds into one sound--at least from my experience. And even then, you're not going to "hear" it per se; it's more like the sonic edges of your sounds melt together into smooth, creamy goodness. For orchestral work, if I was trying to get the strings from different samplers to sound like they were sitting in the same orchestra, I would use the Glue followed by light reverb. This would make the string section sound like they are all sitting together in the same concert hall.

For Presswerk, I could sing its praises all day. When I get to mixing down a track, I will add compression wherever I think I need it. I'll cycle through all these compressors I own (mostly trying to justify what I paid for some of them /sigh). When I get frustrated with this, I give up and just drop Presswerk in that spot and get the job done. It sounds amazing on everything because it has so many controls and configurations that you can emulate any sort of compression you could possibly dream up. I use it on my drum bus, on my bass line, on my master track, and on any instrument where I think a little saturation might add warmth or heft.

Kotelnikov is another good one and the demos show that it can sound amazing... if my style of music was different, I would use it more.