It's not as bad as you might think, especially if you're going with a kit / something that's popular and out there. As far as tips go, you could try to practice soldering some if you've never done it before? But that's really not too tough either and you could pull it off for the first time on a board probably. Building yourself is a great idea if you know it'll save you some money, and makes having the end product much more gratifying in my opinion! I would definitely say to go for it. There's lots of people in the community that are willing to help out if you don't know what you're doing (Discord servers are nice for that)