Oh word. You're well on your way already. While there's plenty out there that can't be cracked in a reasonable time, I find that half the battle is knowing what to try based on the SSID format. Have you run across this table?

https://forums.hak5.org/topic/39403-table-of-wifi-password-standards/

For example, if spectrum is prevalent in your area, grab a copy of the spectrum-netgear wordlist.

https://github.com/andrewjlamarche/PSKracker/tree/master/dicts/netgear-spectrum

this will run through a combo of adjnoun and then 3 digits for each combo. takes about an hour on a 1050ti

hashcat.exe -m 2500 "C:\hashfile.pcap.hccapx" -a6 netgear-spectrum.txt ?d?d?d

I also always throw phone number combos of my local area codes at it. tbh, this is usually what does it if they've got a custom SSID.

hashcat.exe -m 2500 -a 3 -1 ?d "C:\hashfile.pcap.hccapx" 555?1?1?1?1?1?1?1

Honestly, I totally get it, I've got more fluff in my skull than brains. So it's very hard to keep in mind everything I should. I mostly just had some favorite techniques I relied on to do my basic exploration and then once I have a system I can set my sights on that's when I did research and built a plan of attack. I would say definitely check out those syngress books. In case I didn't express that well enough, they're basically hypothetical scenarios wrapped around actual techniques. Great for getting the juices flowing and thinking big picture and how different techniques can tie in to each other. Definitely read the hackback papers.

In minecraft, I would recommend really sitting down and thinking about what it is you're trying to do with these skills and then build up profiles of the types of organizations you would like to work with in the future. Check their job listings for software and hardware they use, try and build org charts to find out the people you would want to get in contact with, etc. From there, the jhaddix methodology is a great start. https://github.com/jhaddix/tbhm