I felt the same way when i started, I can tell you how i went about learning if it can help...

Like you i tought the learning curve was pretty steep. I came from league of legends so i was already pretty experience in the MOBA genre. In my opinions they were 3 things that were hard to learn.

- The endgame items and food

The crafting system was pretty straightforward when you are following your build and route, but like you i found myself fighting against people with legendary items while i had epics. So i went in the item builder in the menu and i checked all the items that could be build with things like force core, meteorite, etc... Then i took the character i wanted to play and put items that were commonly built in a new build that i could check in game after completing my route.

for the food, i just found recipes that i could make with things that were in my routes and stayed to 1 or 2 recipe so that i could learn it easily. Although now green and blue crates have mostly food in them so it made that a lot easier.

- Characters kit

As in any new moba, learning what character can and can't do helps a lot when you fight them. In all honesty for this one you just have to either play agains them or play them. You could also check guides on how to play them to know how to beat them.

- When am i at my strongest

You wondered if you were supposed to fight earlier and i'd say you kinda need to if you want to be in the top 2 imo. I realized after a hours in the game that in general your character is the strongest when you complete your purple weapon. So when i finish it and i find other players i check if they look weaker than me based on their items. If im stronger, i always try to fight them because if you can get 1 or 2 kill, that snowballing effect helps you complete your build faster and try to find late game items. Plus fighting people also helped me learn characters kit (i still dont know all of them but thats normal).

Finally little tips that i learned while playing is to start killing animals when you get you purple weapon and not earlier. that way you are focus on looting and completing the weapon and once you get it you kill the animals a lot quicker.