these small cases are never a good start (in mine and many other peoples opinions) - whilst they may be able to make music with they will be very very limited in terms of patching
they always look like the total research done was watching a single ricky tinez (or similar) demo video (whihch whilst being vagualy entertaining are not a good introduction to modular synthesis) and not reading any beginner threads (or at least not taking advice from the answers to the beginner threads)
the cases are expensive for what you get, you may or may not actually need a lot of the built in functions, you are commited to 1u tiles that have limited functionality, there is not enough space to actually work out what you need as opposed to what you want
there are no vcas in this build - these are an important part of synthesis - see youtube video "why you can never have too many vcas" ) they are just as important for modulation as they are for audio
I can't really see the need for the steppy
as a minimum (and if you know you will need the built in functions) go for the larger 104hp case - better yet get a mantis and get modules you actually want/need to do the things you need (mantis is quite portable unless you are a small child)
get the minimum you need to start and grow organically from there: a sound source, a modulation source, a sound modifier, a way to play and a way to listen
sound source - the ia if you particularly like that
modulation source - Pams - this will give you more modulation and envelopes plus clock and related functions in a single module
sound modifier - the happy nerding fx aid xl would be a better choice than the
way to play - the mimetic digetalis - or midi - do you really need both???? probably not, at least to start with
way to listen - get a quad vca (veils) or a triple (happy nerding) - these will also work as mixers
if you insist on getting a palette - get noise tools over the steppy, if not get a kinks
patch that for as long as you can without buying anything else - and only buy things as you need them
remember you don't need to buy everything at once
"some of the best base-level info to remember can be found in Jim's sigfile" @Lugia
Utility modules are the dull polish that makes the shiny modules actually shine!!!
sound sources < sound modifiers < modulation sources < utilities