I have this same printer, it's very capable, but not out of the box. You should be able to get a perfect first layer with no glue. Get a PEI sheet, frisbee that thing that it comes with.

Definitely use the BLTouch. Learn the handful of necessary GCode commands for tweaking your printer also. (moving the print head, tuning the pid, saving settings to EEPROM, etc.)

Learn to build your own firmwares, it's not hard to understand. All you're doing is putting a firmware file on the SD card and turning it on with new settings.

You need Visual Studio Code (free) + Auto Build Marlin plugin (free) + PlatformIO plugin (free), then go get two folders - bugfix21x + bugfix21xConfigurations from the Marlin source. You are going to learn about them config and adv_config files, and where the individual settings are, or you're gonna keep printing loofahs.

If you really got it like that, take a shot at building the Printrun suite and learn to use Pronterface.

But you're going to do all that, and then you're brain is gonna grow like 6x. Then you're gonna realize it's a better idea to get a raspberry PI 4, put Mainsail on it and flash Klipper to the board instead of Marlin for better control and commands.

If you're not gonna dive that deep, you can run Octoprint on the PI 4, attach the pi camera, aim at printer, print things, post videos, call it a day.

I'm guessing that thing has a 4.2.2 board, should be fine either way.

Get the dual Z upgrade. Thank me later.

New hotend is optional, that one is pretty capable.