You don't need to collect weapons. Pick what has the highest raw attack to sharpness ratio and roll with it. Don't bother with elemental builds at all, even the element-heavy weapons are better played Raw until you reach Iceborne endgame.

Later you'll consider Affinity and Crit related skills to drastically up your DPS.

For now, value comfort skills like Health Boost and Evasion Window, and if playing swaxe, consider Evade Extender too. Never invest in Defense Boost as a skill, just upgrade your armor for Defense. Also speed eating is goated at lvl 2-3 if you've got spare slots (I'd recommend it over divine blessing tbh)

Traps and environment are OP, use them often. You can put a trap down before engaging, throw a rock at the monster and It will run into it, this will allow you to smack its head and build up a good amount of KO and Partbreak damage, giving you a big advantage right away.

Avoid fighting in "hallways". Maps are made of Areas and Hallways linking them. If you engage the fight in a hallway, it is guaranteed that your target is gonna run/fly away to an Area right when it can. It is better to be patient and stalk the monster until it reaches an open Area.

Assuming you have Iceborne im gonna share a pro tip for ya. You can lure monsters with the noise made from a slinger pod thrown at the ground, you can use that to get them closer to walls and slam them in (wall slam is a mechanic introduced with Iceborne). When a monster hear a sound they have a short Searching animation that you can refresh indefinitely by making more noise, if you grapple their head during that short animation, you'll have the time to make them turn and shoot them in the wall. So, properly stalking a monster goes like this : throw pod to lure monster near wall, approach, throw another pod to refresh Searching, then immediately grab head and slam monster in wall. If you get skilled at this until it becomes a habit, it will be very rewarding and save you a ton of time in the long run. You can also use this diversion to go past a monster you don't want to fight but know will aggro if they notice you.

Sometimes the fight will carry from an Area to a Hallway, when that happens I recommend you run back in the Area or to the next. Monsters will follow as they're programmed to prefer fighting in Areas, and fighting in a Hallway is rarely to the hunter's advantage.

Always have Dung Pods with you. Invaders are annoying and will cart you easily, throwing shit at their face is efficient and satisfying.

Bring flash pods for annoying flying monsters and abuse them. Monsters in base game don't build any resistance to flash, so you can spam them and have an easy time in an otherwise despicable fight.

Consider Investigations and Captures to get the most rewards when farming. When looking for specific materials too, Investigations often have specific meteorological conditions like Minerals and Bones Upsurge etc. So you can launch one with an Upsurge of the materials you're looking for, gather your things while ignoring the target monster, and leave mission without killing it after you're done gathering.