A lot to read, but hang in there.
Keep farming your phoenix team to 5 stars first, and make sure to farm gear for them, gear level is in my opinion more important than star count, because a 5 star gear level 10 character is as strong as a 7 star gear level 8 (maybe 9) character. (When they are 5 stars, stop and do the below suggestion).
Then farm a credit heist team to 5 stars and gear level 8, you will be glad if you do this, because upgrading characters is expensive (upgrading a character from 6 stars to 7 stars alone costs 1 million credits), my recommended credit heist team is: boba (leader), stormtrooper han, lando, cad bane and IG-88, they will clear the highest tiers of credit heist easily at that level (and training droid heist), plus they are all easy and quick to farm. Getting them to 5 stars and gear 8, will also clear the crit chance mod challange for you as well. Plus level up a character from level 1 to 85 costs about 6 - 7 million credits.
Then return to farming your phoenix squad to 7 stars, some may say they are not good in raids, not true, i use them for phase 1 rancor raid and phase 2 aat raid, they are very good in those phases (never ever use them in phase 1 aat raid, they will get wiped out right away, and they are not good in phase 3 rancor raid, other rancor phases decent).
Then planning for your future, i my opinion you will have more fun with the game if you have characters that help you climb arena and raids and clear galactic war (although phoenix will help you to clear galactic war every day), so i recommend these characters: 1) luke skywalker (farmboy), 2) old ben, 3) biggs, 4) leia, 5) wedge, 6) ackbar, 7) tarkin, 8) empire tie pilot, 9) stormtrooper, 10) magmatrooper, 11) teebo and 12) rex.
The last 2 empire ones are not great, in fact stromtrooper sucks, but when you get palpatine through phoenix squad (they clear palp event easily), you will then have a decent empire team (better with royal guard and vader, but you are not there yet and will take some time to get there). Royal guard is one of the very best dark side tanks in the game, my personal top 3, he has saved my arena team almost every single battle (his passive works kinda like general kenobi).
As for where to farm them, i suggest you don´t farm them in fx cantina and hard nodes if you can farm them in arena store or galactic war store or cantina store, try to farm them simultaneously at each location according to their priority. When farming luke in cantina battles, farm biggs in galctic war store and leia in arena store and stormtrooper in cantina store at the same time.
As for crystalls you get, don't waste them on packs or shipments of any kind, use them only for energy refreash, you decide on energy or cantina energy, it´s not worth it otherwise. Unless you are not f2p.
After all of those you should be ready for the commander luke skywalker event, when it comes back in april or may (my own guess, but i think it will take you that long to get ready anyway).
When you get to ships, i recommend these ships: ahsoka tano, jedi consular, biggs, wedge, boba, empire tie pilot, FO tie pilot, fives, sun fac (darth vader´s ship is the best in the game, although it is f2p and easy to farm, it does not show in feet store often, but get it whenever you can). They are all good and easy to farm ships, about half of them are still used in high fleet arena rankings, however your first priority after getting a full fleet arena team, should not be to farm ships, it should be to farm characters needed for those ships (star count will help to make them stronger), but number 1 is chirrut (he is amazing, even without baze malbus, very good and strong and useful character).
Farming advise, usually when i farm a toon, i farm him/her all the way to 7 stars, you avoid wasting time and resources that way, but you decide otherwise if you want to get ready for an event, if so prepare for 1 event/challenge at a time.
Some galactic war advise, pick 3 teams to gear upgrade side by side, when toons in the first team are all the same gear level, do the same for the other 2 teams in order, after that and go back to the first team and repeat the process, that way you will avoid getting sudden or impossible difficulty spikes in galactic war, at least you will have 3 teams to finish galactic war while using your weaker other teams as canon fodder.
My last advise, farm first order and resistance factions, does´nt matter which ones really, they are becomming must have characters in the game, strong in pretty much any area of the game. First farm first order, then resistance. By then you will be ready for jedi training rey event.
P.S. Other characters that would be good for you to farm are: qui-gon jin, phasma, HK-47, IG-86, barris, jedi knight anakin and ayla secura (plus the jawas eventually). Ewoks? Other than teebo, meh. Except maybe ewok elder.
