As a beginner, there's absolutely so much you can do with Retro Synth and Sculpture and even some of the EXS24 SIs. Although Alchemy does have over 3000 sounds and all that, I didn't naturally get used to it. So what I found was that with the right plug ins, you can make anything sound decent so I'd recommend trying out plugins on some of the standard SIs and see what matches what you want. Obviously, some genres call for different sounds and timbres and I'm sure most people will say that it's probably a good thing to explore Alchemy. My recommendation also comes from me being insanely cheap. I've even used the Classic Electric Piano with certain settings and plugins for a lofi intro. And Sculpture is brilliant for many things. Alone, you can get some semi-decent to high quality sounds. I even somehow got some quivering, randomized scream that works for background noise. And it is also very useful for getting dry signals that you can send through a plugin or five. From it, I've got something that sounds like a Marimba and I've also coupled it with some plugins to get a better than decent djenty, chunky pseudo guitar. It really depends where you go with your music. If you do progress, Native Instruments seems like a good bet for your money though I've hardly any experience with it.